Title: ANNIE CLARK V K-MART CORP

State: michigan

Issuer: Michigan Supreme Court

Document:

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Michigan Supreme Court 
Lansing, Michigan 48909 
C hief Justice 
Justices 
Maura D. Corrigan  
Michael F. Cavanagh 
Elizabeth A. Weaver 
Marilyn Kelly 
Clifford W. Taylor 
Robert P. Young, Jr. 
Opinion 
Stephen J. Markman 
FILED OCTOBER 23, 2001  
ANNIE CLARK and WALTER CLARK,  
Plaintiffs-Appellants,  
v  
No. 117511  
KMART CORPORATION,  
Defendant-Appellee.  
PER CURIAM  
Plaintiff Annie Clark1 was injured in a slip and fall  
accident at defendant’s store.  She brought this negligence  
action, and a jury trial resulted in a verdict in her favor.  
However, the Court of Appeals reversed, concluding that there  
was insufficient evidence that the hazardous condition which  
caused the fall had been in place long enough to put the  
defendant on constructive notice of the condition. 
We  
1 Plaintiff Walter Clark’s claims are derivative, and 
Annie Clark will be referred to as the “plaintiff.”  
 
conclude that the plaintiff presented sufficient evidence to  
create a jury-submissible question on the issue. We reverse  
and remand the case to the Court of Appeals for consideration  
of the other issues raised by the defendant in its appeal to  
that Court.  
I  
The trial testimony established that plaintiff and her  
husband visited defendant’s Super Kmart store in Dearborn at  
approximately 3:30 a.m. on October 8, 1994.  As they walked  
through a closed check-out lane into the store, Ms. Clark was  
injured when she slipped on several loose grapes that were  
scattered on the floor.  Walter Clark testified that he saw  
footprints made by “some big, thick, rubber-soled shoes”2  
leading away from the grapes, which were smashed on the floor.  
The case was submitted to the jury on a negligence  
theory, and it returned a verdict for the plaintiff, awarding  
a total of $50,000 in damages to her and her husband.  
After denial of its motion for judgment notwithstanding  
the verdict or a new trial, the defendant appealed, and the  
Court of Appeals reversed in a two-to-one opinion.3
 The  
majority’s analysis focused on Ritter v Meijer, Inc, 128 Mich  
App 783; 341 NW2d 220 (1983), a case on which plaintiff had  
2 
 This testimony was offered to establish that the  
footprints had been made by someone other than plaintiff 
because the prints were from the soles of shoes unlike those 
plaintiff was wearing at the time she fell.  
3 242 Mich App 137; 617 NW2d 729 (2000).  
2  
 
 
heavily relied.  In Ritter, the plaintiff said she was injured  
when she slipped and fell on a grape in the defendant’s store,  
and that the grape felt as though someone had previously  
stepped on it. 
The Ritter panel concluded that the  
plaintiff’s testimony was sufficient to avoid a directed  
verdict.
 The Court reasoned that because the grape would  
occupy only a small portion of the floor, the jury could infer  
that some time would have to pass before someone would step on  
it.  This made, in the judgment of the Ritter panel, the  
“stomped-upon” grape sufficient to prove constructive notice  
of a slippery condition. 128 Mich App 787.  
The Court of Appeals panel in this case declined to  
follow Ritter. 
It found too logically attenuated Ritter’s  
conclusion that the defendant had constructive knowledge of  
the grape on the basis of it previously having been stepped  
upon, and concluded that this was insufficient to remove the  
plaintiff’s case from the realm of conjecture.  Thus, the  
majority concluded that the trial court should have granted a  
directed verdict because the evidence was insufficient to  
support an inference of constructive notice of the presence of  
the grapes.4  
II  
In reviewing a trial court’s decision on a motion for a  
directed verdict, an appellate court is to examine the  
4 Judge Kelly dissented, believing the analysis of Ritter  
to be sound and applicable to the case.  
3  
 
 
 
evidence and all reasonable inferences that may be drawn from  
it in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party. Hord  
v Environmental Research Inst of Mich (After Remand), 463 Mich  
399, 410; 617 NW2d 543 (2000).  Only if the evidence so viewed  
fails to establish a claim as a matter of law should the  
motion be granted.  Orzel v Scott Drug Co, 449 Mich 550, 558;  
537 NW2d 208 (1995).  
III  
The duties of a storekeeper to customers regarding  
dangerous conditions are well established and were set forth  
in Serinto v Borman Food Stores, 380 Mich 637, 640-641; 158  
NW2d 485 (1968):  
“It is the duty of a storekeeper to provide 
reasonably safe aisles for customers and he is  
liable 
for 
injury 
resulting 
from 
an 
unsafe  
condition either caused by the active negligence of 
himself and his employees or, if otherwise caused, 
where known to the storekeeper or is of such a  
character or has existed a sufficient length of  
time that he should have had knowledge of it.”  
[Quoting Carpenter v Herpolsheimer’s Co, 278 Mich 
697; 271 NW 575 (1937) (syllabus) (emphasis added 
by the Serinto Court).]  
See also Hulett v Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co, 299 Mich  
59, 68; 299 NW 807 (1941).  This case squarely presents the  
question whether the evidence would permit a jury to find that  
the dangerous condition was present long enough that the  
defendant should have known of it.  
Both the majority and dissent in the Court of Appeals  
have focused on Ritter, supra, with its ostensible similarity  
4  
 
in that both slip and fall incidents involved grapes that may  
have been previously stepped upon.  However, this case, unlike  
Ritter, presents evidence independent of the condition of the  
grapes, indicating that the grapes had been on the floor for  
a substantial period of time, making it unnecessary to  
determine whether Ritter was correctly decided.  
In this case, there was no direct evidence of when or how  
the grapes came to be on the floor of the check-out lane.  
There 
was 
testimony 
from 
Kmart 
witnesses 
about 
the  
responsibilities of employees for observing and either  
reporting or remedying dangerous conditions. However, there  
was no evidence that any employee was actually aware of the  
grapes in the check-out lane.5  
However, a Kmart employee testified that the check-out  
lane would have been closed6 no later than 2:30 a.m., about  
an hour before plaintiff arrived.  Given that evidence, a jury  
could reasonably infer that the loose grapes were, more likely  
than not, dropped when a customer brought grapes to the check­
out lane to buy them while it was still open.7  From this, the  
5 Janitorial services at the store were provided by an 
independent contractor.  No witnesses from that firm were  
called to testify about its employees’ activities on the 
morning in question.  
6 That is, closed in the sense that the register was not 
open for servicing customers.  The check-out lane was not  
blocked in such a way as to prevent people from walking 
through it.  
7 The store had a grocery department with a produce area, 
and presumably sold grapes.  
5  
jury could infer that an employee of defendant should have  
noticed the grapes at some point before or during the closing  
of the lane and either cleaned them up, or asked another  
employee to do so.  Further, the fact that the check-out lane  
had been closed for about an hour before plaintiff fell  
establishes a sufficient length of time that the jury could  
infer that defendant should have discovered and rectified the  
condition.8  
The availability of the inference that the grapes had  
been on the floor for at least an hour distinguishes this case  
from those in which defendants have been held entitled to  
directed verdicts because of the lack of evidence about when  
the dangerous condition arose. See, e.g., Goldsmith v Cody,  
351 Mich 380, 387-389; 88 NW2d 268 (1958); Filipowicz v S S  
Kresge Co, 281 Mich 90, 94-95; 274 NW 721 (1937); Whitmore v  
Sears, Roebuck & Co, 89 Mich App 3, 9-10; 279 NW2d 318 (1979);  
Suci v Mirsky, 61 Mich App 398, 402-403; 232 NW2d 415 (1975);  
Galloway v Sears, Roebuck & Co, 27 Mich App 348, 349-351; 183  
NW2d 354 (1970).  
We conclude that the evidence was sufficient for the jury  
to find that the dangerous condition that led to the injury  
existed for a sufficient period of time for defendant to have  
8 
 There was no testimony concerning the last time the 
floor of the check-out lane had been cleaned.  However, 
testimony described the floor as generally “dirty,” which 
could reasonably be viewed as negating a suggestion that it 
had been cleaned after the lane was closed and that the grapes 
were dropped thereafter.  
6  
 
 
 
 
known of its existence.  Therefore, we reverse the judgment of  
the Court of Appeals.  In light of its analysis, the Court of  
Appeals did not fully consider the issues raised by the  
defendant with regard to the trial court’s jury instructions.  
We remand this case to the Court of Appeals for consideration  
of those issues in a manner consistent with this opinion.  
CORRIGAN, C.J., and CAVANAGH, WEAVER, 
KELLY, TAYLOR, 
YOUNG, 
and  
MARKMAN, JJ., concurred.  
7