TEXARKANA, Texas (Legal Newsline) - A Walmart customer failed to show why the retailer should be held liable for a slip-and-fall in one of its Texas stores, an appeals court at Texarkana recently ruled in an affirmation of a trial court’s decision.
In deposition testimony, customer Paul Clayton said that the slip-and-fall happened in the salad dressing aisle on his second trip down the aisle. He had returned there about an hour and fifteen minutes after the first trip to retrieve an item he had forgotten. He stated he did not notice the spill on the first trip, but the second time down the aisle he slipped on “[m]ayo on [the] floor” or “something white.”
In its Dec. 11 opinion, the Texas Sixth Court of Appeals found that Clayton failed to support three arguments under Texas law that the store knew of the potential harm stemming from the spilled salad dressing: Clayton needed to show that the store caused the potential harm; show the store knew of the harmful condition and failed to remedy it; show that the condition was present for so long that it should have been discovered or removed in the exercise of reasonable care.
Citing earlier premises liability cases, Judge Scott Stevens in his opinion wrote: “There must also be some evidence showing the dangerous condition existed long enough that the premises owner had a reasonable opportunity to discover it. This ‘time-notice rule’ prevents the imposition of liability on a storekeeper for the carelessness of another over whom it had no control or for ‘the fortuitous act of a single customer’ that could instantly create a dangerous condition.”
But the judge said that no evidence existed that showed “when the spill occurred or who caused the spill, and Clayton himself testified that he did not see the spill when he first walked through the salad dressing aisle.”
“As a result,” the judge continued, “there was no evidence Walmart knew of the harmful condition or that it was present for so long that it should have been discovered and cleaned.”