In
the case of Gumby v. Karns Prime and Fancy Food, Ltd., No. 2017-CV-7013
(C.P. Dauph. Co. June 4, 2019 Cherry, J.), the trial court in Dauphin County
entered summary judgment in a slip and fall case involving alleged liquid
and/or grapes on the floor of a supermarket.
According
to the Opinion, the Plaintiff testified that she was walking at a normal pace,
looking straight ahead, when she suddenly and unexpectedly fell to the
floor. The Plaintiff did not see
anything on the floor prior to her fall. She also did not know, when she landed
on the floor, what, if anything caused her to fall. After the incident, the Plaintiff believed
that she slipped on liquid from smashed grapes based upon a statement from one
of the store employees, who assisted the Plaintiff after her fall.
In
granting summary judgment, the court noted that, given the Plaintiff’s
admission that she had no evidence that the Defendant created the allegedly
dangerous condition, the Plaintiff had to show that the Defendant had actual or
constructive notice of the condition that allegedly caused her to fall.
Without
any evidence to support such a claim, the Plaintiff asserted that the Defendant
had notice because the Defendant store knew or should have known that grapes
may fall on the floor because of the packaging.
The court in Dauphin County noted that this theory had been rejected
previously by the Pennsylvania Superior Court in the case of Meyers v. Penn
Traffic, 606 A.2d 926, 930 (Pa. Super. 1992) (suggestion by the Plaintiff
that either an employee or a customer dropped a grape amounted to mere speculation and did not create any triable issues).
In
this Gumby case, the court also stated that the Plaintiff’s testimony of
shopping cart tracks in the area of the crushed grape or liquid equated to evidence
supporting an allegation as to how long the grape or liquid was allegedly on
the floor. The court rejected this theory as speculation as the alleged track
could have occurred in the moments before the Plaintiff’s fall, which would
have provided insufficient notice to the Defendant of any such condition.
The
court additionally noted that the Plaintiff could not satisfy the requirement
of constructive notice by asserting that the Defendant lacked an adequate floor
maintenance policy. The Gumby
court stated
that evidence of a clean-up policy did not amount to facts as to how long the
allegedly dangerous condition existed.
The
court noted in Gumby also rejected the Plaintiff’s assertion that
liability could be established under an argument that the Defendant’s policy
that all employees have a general responsibility to inspect the floors amounted
to no policy at all. In this regard, the
trial court pointed to Pennsylvania Supreme Court precedent indicating that a store
owner was not an insurer of the safety of business invitees and only owed a
duty of reasonable care under the circumstances, that is, to correct unsafe
conditions discoverable through the exercise of reasonable care.
Last
but not least, the court noted that the Nanty-Glo rule did not preclude
the entry of summary judgment as that rule was inapplicable where, as here, the
Plaintiff is found to have failed to establish a prima facie case of
liability given that the Plaintiff admitted that she did not know how the
grape or liquid came to be on the floor or how long it was there.
Anyone
wishing to review a copy of this decision may click this LINK.
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