SAN DIEGO (Legal Newsline) - A company that set up a table offering free samples inside a Costco warehouse store is potentially liable for customer slip-and-falls anywhere inside the building, a California appeals court ruled, overruling a trial court that found the vendor’s contract limited liability to within a 12-foot radius of the table.
Lilyan Hassaine sued Club Demonstration Services as well as Costco after she stepped on what she claimed was a greasy substance and fell inside a Costco store in San Diego. Video evidence, which Hassaine unsuccessfully sought to block from being introduced, showed a stain appeared under her cart while she was shopping with her sister-in-law that experts later said was probably liquid soap leaking from a container that had tipped over in her cart.
A trial court dismissed CDS from the case, citing its contract with Costco that limited maintenance duties to a 12-foot perimeter around each table. Hassaine fell at least 15 feet from the table.
Not so fast, ruled California’s Fourth Appellate District Court, in an April 22 decision. While Costco and CDS are free to apportion duties between themselves in a contract, that doesn’t relieve CDS of its general duty to protect store customers against unreasonable risks, the appeals court said. A judge or jury must decide whether in this specific case CDS violated that duty of care.
Hassaine argued the video evidence showed the stain was on the floor for at least seven minutes, during which a CDS employee walked past it at least twice without doing anything. CDS argued the stain wasn’t obvious, since Hassaine and her sister-in-law also walked past it without doing anything, before Hassaine claims she stepped in it and fell.
That doesn’t matter, the appeals court said. Even if Hassaine herself couldn’t see the stain, a jury might decide the CDS employee’s conduct unreasonably exposed Hassaine to the risk of a fall.
The court also rejected CDS’s argument it couldn’t possibly be liable for falls that occur anywhere inside the cavernous CDS warehouse. It cited another California decision where three vendors shared an enclosed market and all three were potentially liable for a customer who slipped on a discarded piece of onion, even though the plaintiff only shopped at one of them.
“By positioning itself inside a Costco store and offering product samples to Costco shoppers traversing store aisles, CDS had a special relationship with its Costco shopper-invitees that gave rise to a duty to exercise ordinary care,” the appeals court ruled. “That duty encompassed not solely the 12-foot “work area” defined in the Costco-CDS contract but extended to all areas that shoppers would reasonably be expected to use—i.e., the entire Costco store.”