INDIANAPOLIS (Legal Newsline) - An Indiana couple’s attempt to get their lawsuit before a more favorable state court failed, as the Indiana Supreme Court said they couldn’t sue the manager of a Walmart store in addition to the company itself.
The state high court was responding to a request from a federal judge to clarify whether Indiana law extends the duty of care to employees in such cases. The answer was no, meaning David and Tammy Branscomb couldn’t defeat so-called diversity jurisdiction by including an Indiana citizen in their lawsuit. Federal courts have jurisdiction over lawsuits involving citizens of different states, and Walmart is based in Arkansas.
David Branscomb claimed he tripped and fell over a wooden pallet in the garden department of a Walmart in Huntington, Indiana in 2019. He and his wife sued Walmart as well as store manager Jim Clark, saying the manager had failed to supervise his employees or properly inspect and maintain the store.
Walmart removed the case to federal court, saying Clark was added to the lawsuit solely to defeat diversity jurisdiction.
In an April 7 decision by Justice Steven H. David, the Indiana Supreme Court agreed. Indiana recognizes the tort of negligent hiring, training and supervision, the court ruled, but not when the employee is acting in the normal course of employment.
“Here there is nothing in the record to suggest that whoever placed the pallet on the floor in the Wal-Mart garden center did so outside the scope of their employment,” the court said. More importantly, a claim of negligent hiring must be made against the employer – “not the manager, supervisor, or any other employee of the company, but the company itself,” the court ruled.
Indiana law also allows suits over failure to protect visitors against hazards on a property -- “the meat and potatoes” of the this suit, the high court noted. But under Indiana law those claims run against the owner of a property.
“Here, Clark is not the possessor of the land: Walmart is,” the court said.
The plaintiffs cited several sections of the Restatement of Torts, a handbook of general tort law concepts, that supported their case. But the high court said “most of these sections have not been adopted in Indiana.”
One case that might have been helpful to the plaintiffs involved a property owner who could sue the owner and the “manager” of a neighboring property after a tree fell across the line and damaged his house. But the “manager” in that case was the landowner’s husband, who had been given complete control over the property.
“The record before us does not reflect that Clark took over control of the Wal-Mart premises,” the court ruled, nor that the plaintiffs “relied specifically upon him to ensure the store was safe.”
Clark’s only duty to maintain the store was to Walmart, the court concluded, not to its customers.