Chipotle Mexican Grill of Colorado LLC on Wednesday won a reversal of a trial court decision that seemed to turn on its lawyer's punctuality.

Florida's Fourth District Court of Appeal overturned a ruling that would have allowed a plaintiff in a slip-and-fall case to access documents the restaurant chain said were confidential.

Chipotle, a defendant in a 2016 premises liability suit, objected to discovery requests by Yuvitkza Quinones, who claimed she slipped on a spill on a restaurant walkway in August 2014.

The company operates a chain of casual restaurants in Canada, Germany, France, the United States and the United Kingdom. It was due for a special-set, one-hour hearing before Palm Beach Circuit Judge Edward Garrison, but Chipotle's attorney was about 15 minutes late because of a calendaring error, according to the appellate ruling.

Court records show Hightower Stratton Novigrod Kantor's West Palm Beach partner Lee Kantor was the attorney of record July 31 when Garrison ruled against Chipotle. That hearing was supposed to address several issues, including Chipotle's objections to Quinones' first request for production and first set of interrogatories. When the defense was late, court records show Garrison entered a default judgment for the plaintiff.

“Quinones asserts that the trial court afforded Chipotle's counsel an opportunity
to argue the objections after counsel appeared,” a footnote in the appellate decision states. “This assertion is refuted by the trial court's order, which states that Chipotle's counsel failed to appear.”

The default judgment was a misstep, according to the unsigned ruling by Fourth DCA Judges Martha C. Warner, Carole Y. Taylor and Jeffrey T. Kuntz.

“In overruling Chipotle's objections, the trial court also failed to conduct an in camera inspection of various documents that Chipotle claimed to be privileged,” the panel found. “These documents were specifically identified in a privilege log filed by Chipotle.”

Quinones contended the company waited too long to provide a log of privileged records, then objected too late to discovery requests, therefore waiving any claims of privilege.

But the appellate court rejected that argument.

“Failure to timely raise objections based on privilege does not automatically result in waiver,” the judicial panel ruled. “Even if a claim of privilege is untimely raised, the trial court is required to conduct an in camera inspection of the documents claimed to be privileged. … Failure to conduct the requisite in camera inspection is a departure from the essential requirements of the law.”

Kantor and Hightower Stratton colleague Christopher S. Stratton represented Chipotle on appeal.

Lara S. Shiner of the Shiner Law Group in Boca Raton, Florida was plaintiffs counsel.

The attorneys had no comment by deadline.