Holy mackerel.
An Upper West Side salsa dancer reeled in a shocking $6.45 million verdict after slipping on a slop of slimy fish guts outside a gourmet grocery store — a nasty spill that’s sent her to the operating room at least 12 times over the last decade.
A Manhattan jury awarded the woman the massive windfall Tuesday, finding that Citarella on the Upper West Side was at fault when she dislocated her knee in the 2014 slip-and-fall that’s since hindered her running, salsa dancing and amateur bodybuilding hobbies.
“It’s been a long, long, long process,” said the plaintiff, who asked only her last name, Castillo, be used. “My life has been at a standstill for 10-plus years.”
Ironically, Castillo is a retired trainer for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, where she taught construction workers how to avoid falling on job sites.
“Of all the things that could have happened to me, and I slip on slimy, clear fish guts,” she told The Post Friday. “But you know, I don’t teach how to avoid slime.”
It was Labor Day weekend, 2014, and Castillo, then 53, was getting ready for a glorious beach day with her mom, husband, daughter and granddaughter.
That’s when she took the tumble on West 75th Street and Broadway that would change her life.
“My whole body turned,” Castillo recalled. “It literally turned my knee to the opposite side of my leg.”
As her 5-year-old granddaughter cried for her to get up, Castillo said she realized her leg was “rubber, like in a cartoon,” just being held on by her skin.
When she arrived at the ER, she said the doctor was “shocked.”
“The first thing he said was: ‘Can I take a picture?’” she recalled.
Her injuries included a total knee dislocation and three ruptured ligaments, plus many holidays spent in the hospital, enduring “surgeries from hell.” And gone were the days salsa dancing with her husband, cooking big family dinners and shopping for groceries on her own.
“So it’s like, OK, take my joy away,” she said.
“I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy. I feel like I have been in jail for 10 years.”
Castillo said she didn’t initially want to pursue legal action — but the shop refused to hand over an accident report for her medical insurer unless she had a lawyer. They also refused to apologize for not keeping the sidewalk clean.
That move may have cost the grocer $6.45 million.
Finally, this week after her 10-year legal battle, the Manhattan Supreme Court jury decided that Citarella — which tried to partially blame Castillo’s lupus diagnosis for her injuries — was 100% responsible.
“This Manhattan jury listened to all the evidence, and they spoke through their verdict that it is not OK for a grocery store to take over a sidewalk for their business and profits and not protect pedestrians in doing so,” said attorney Sharon Scanlan of Jacoby & Meyers, who represented Castillo.
Citarella did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Castillo still has a long road ahead of her — her doctor said she’ll never be able to move freely again and might never avoid her now-daily pain.
She said her experience has been “enlightening to think how corporations treat the smaller people, or how corporations don’t have no heart, because there’s some that really care,” she said.
“I feel like people have lost heart in this country. We used to always take care of each other.”
