Tracy J. Renshaw has taken her restaurant mashed potato lawsuit into federal court, accusing Outback Steakhouse of causing a slip-and-fall at a Sterling, Virginia, location and seeking $1.5 million in damages. The case was removed to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on May 27, 2026, more than a year after she first filed the complaint in county circuit court.
Renshaw says the fall happened on May 14, 2023, while she was walking to the restroom. In her complaint, she alleges she slipped on a slippery foreign substance that appeared to be mashed potatoes, then fell face forward onto the hard restaurant floor. She says the condition created an unreasonably dangerous hazard for customers and that no warning was posted.
She is seeking compensation for what she describes as serious and permanent injuries, great pain of body and mind, reduced working capacity and hospital bills. reported that Renshaw was 56 years old.
Outback Steakhouse has pushed back hard. In its response, the company said it could neither admit nor deny that it operated a Sterling location and asked that the allegation be treated as denied. It denied there was any substance on the floor that caused Renshaw to slip, denied that it had a duty to post a warning and denied that it knew of any defective condition. The chain also denied that Renshaw suffered serious and permanent injuries.
The fight now centers on notice: whether the restaurant knew, or should have known, about the alleged spill before the fall. Renshaw says the floor was not properly inspected or maintained and that the hazard was left in place long enough to make the area unsafe. Outback says there was no hazardous condition at all and, in any event, that any danger would have been open and obvious to a careful customer. The company has also raised assumption of risk and contributory negligence.
The next stage is federal litigation in Alexandria, where the Eastern District of Virginia will take up the case. No hearing date has been set, and the key question remains whether Renshaw can prove a dangerous spill existed long enough for Outback to be blamed for not addressing it.
