An elderly man has filed a lawsuit against a Publix in Ocala, claiming an employee struck him with a train of carts near the entrance of the grocery store and left him with “substantial and permanent injuries.”
Kent Sloan and his wife, Melodie, filed the lawsuit against Publix Super Markets, Inc., in the Fifth Judicial Circuit Court of Marion County on July 22.
According to the complaint, Mr. Sloan was shopping at the Publix located at 3450 E Silver Springs Boulevard in Ocala on June 12, 2025, at around 12:08 p.m.
While Sloan was near the entrance area of the grocery store where the “carts are kept for customer use,” an employee of Publix was “pushing a group of grocery carts” into the same area.
The lawsuit alleges that the employee pushed the carts “directly into Kent Sloan so that the carts knocked him over and severely injured him.”
Sloan was allegedly “taken by ambulance to Shands Hospital” immediately after the incident and sustained “substantial and permanent injuries,” according to the complaint.
Sloan’s attorneys claim that, as a “direct and proximate result of Publix’s negligence and the actions of Publix’s employee that occurred on Publix’s premises,” their client suffered bodily injury and “resulting pain and suffering, disability, disfigurement, mental anguish, loss of capacity for the enjoyment of life, expense of hospitalization, medical and nursing care and treatment, loss of earnings, loss of ability to earn money, and/or aggravation of a previously existing condition.”
Sloan’s losses are described as “either permanent or continuing” and the complaint suggests that he will “suffer the losses in the future.”
Prior to the injury, the complaint alleges Mr. Sloan was in “good physical and mental condition and was a faithful and dutiful husband.” After it, Mrs. Sloan claims she has suffered from a loss of “her husband’s services, companionship, and consortium” now that he has been injured.
The Sloans are seeking in excess of $50,000 in damages, exclusive of interest and attorney’s fees.
The lawsuit is one of many that have been filed against Publix locations in Marion County this year. In fact, Marion County Clerk of Courts’ records show that through July 30, at least 11 lawsuits have been filed against the state’s most popular grocery chain.
A couple of weeks before the Sloans filed their lawsuit, another elderly man sued a Publix in the Grand Oaks Town Center after his cane got caught on a shelving unit and he tripped near a bathroom.
In May, a woman claimed she allegedly slipped and fell while she was “walking down the aisle” of a Publix in Dunnellon after her foot became stuck to a “sticky, spilled/leaked substance on the floor.”
In April, another individual said she slipped and fell on pudding while walking through a Publix in Ocala.
Before those filings, at least four other local residents filed slip-and-fall lawsuits against Publix locations in Ocala dating back to the beginning of the year.