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File Name: 16a0599n.06

Case No. 16-5194

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

PATRICE SNIDER,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

WAL-MART STORES, INC.; STANLEY 

BLACK & DECKER, INC.,

Defendants-Appellees.

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ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED 

STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR 

THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF 

KENTUCKY

BEFORE: KEITH, SUTTON, and DONALD, Circuit Judges.

SUTTON, Circuit Judge. An automatic sliding door at a Wal-Mart store hit Patrice 

Snider’s hand as she entered the store with a friend—all captured by video footage at the 

entrance to the store. Seeking damages for her injury, Snider sued Wal-Mart and Stanley Access 

Technologies, an automated-door provider, alleging they were negligent in maintaining the door. 

The defendants moved for summary judgment. Snider did not respond with evidence of 

negligence by either defendant. She instead claimed that the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur by 

itself permitted the case to go to a jury. The district court granted the defendants’ motion for 

summary judgment. We affirm because a prerequisite for the doctrine—evidentiary necessity—

does not apply when the underlying incident is captured on film. In this setting, Snider could not 

seek relief solely on the ground that the accident “speaks for itself.” She had to introduce 

evidence showing that one or the other defendant, or both of them, was negligent in maintaining 
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Snider v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. 

2

the door. When she failed to do that, the district court properly rejected her claim as a matter of 

law. 

Kentucky, like all States, permits negligence liability under the res ipsa loquitur doctrine. 

In permitting claims to go to a jury because “the thing speaks for itself,” Kentucky common law 

allows a jury to infer negligence—in truth to presume negligence—where they can “reasonably 

infer both negligence and causation from the mere occurrence of the event and the defendant’s 

relation to it.” Love v. Walker, 423 S.W.3d 751, 756 (Ky. 2014) (quotation omitted). The 

doctrine fills an evidentiary gap for plaintiffs who, through no fault of their own, lack evidence 

of the defendant’s negligent acts. See Smith v. Hamm, 235 S.W.2d 437, 439 (Ky. Ct. App. 

1950); see also Morris v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 330 F.3d 854, 858–59 (6th Cir. 2003). 

The circumstances that gave birth to the doctrine, however, confine its reach. Think of 

Byrne v. Boadle, 2 H. & C. 722, 159 Eng. Rep. 299 (1863), known to law students as the “barrel 

drop” case. The only evidence in the case was this: testimony from two witnesses who saw a 

barrel of flour falling from the window of the defendant’s shop, the plaintiff’s testimony that he 

saw the barrel and remembered nothing except blacking out, and the testimony of a physician 

concerning the plaintiff’s injuries. In the absence of evidence that someone saw what happened 

inside the flour maker’s shop, the plaintiff appeared to lack any evidence of negligence by the 

defendant. But the court filled that gap by permitting the jury to infer that negligence by the 

defendant was the common sense explanation for what happened—that indeed “the thing speaks 

for itself.”

Consistent with Byrne, evidentiary necessity remains a prerequisite for applying the 

doctrine. The doctrine thus applies only where “the court does not know, and cannot find out, 

what actually happened in the individual case.” Restatement (Third) of Torts: Phys. & Emot. 
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Snider v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. 

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Harm § 17 cmt. a (ALI 2010); see Moore v. Lexington Transit Corp., 418 S.W.2d 245, 247 (Ky. 

1967). “[T]he plaintiff may not claim the benefit of the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur . . . when all 

the facts causing the accident are known.” Schroerlucke v. McDaniel Funeral Home, Inc., 291 

S.W.2d 6, 8 (Ky. 1956). Where such direct evidence is available, the jury is presented with “a 

clearcut issue as to whether the action taken by the [defendants] constituted negligence,” and 

there is “simply no place for an inference of negligence arising out of an unexplained 

occurrence.” Moore, 418 S.W.2d at 247. All in all, res ipsa loquitur is a doctrine “of necessity,”

not of convenience. O’Mara v. Pennsylvania R. Co., 95 F.2d 762, 763 (6th Cir. 1938); see also 

57B Am. Jur. 2d Negligence § 1169; Hall v. Chastain, 273 S.E.2d 12, 14 (Ga. 1980) (“The rule is 

one of necessity in cases where there is no evidence of consequence showing negligence on the 

part of the defendant.”) (quotation omitted); Heffter v. N. States Power Co., 217 N.W. 102, 103 

(Minn. 1927) (“Necessity seems the best support for the rule . . . . It must therefore follow that 

the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur has no application where all the facts and circumstances appear 

in evidence. Nothing is then left to inference. The necessity therefor[e] does not exist.”).

The problem for Snider is that no evidentiary necessity exists. The video captures the 

incident in its entirety. No one needs a speak-for-itself inference that the door caused the injury

when a thousand-word picture captures the incident. The video, it’s true, does not show

negligence by either defendant, and it’s not even clear from the video that the door 

malfunctioned. That explains why the plaintiff is right to worry about connecting a design defect 

in the door to the accident. But she is mistaken to think res ipsa loquitur fills that gap. It was 

incumbent on Snider, as it is incumbent on most negligence plaintiffs, to establish wrongdoing—

to establish that what the video shows happened due to a malfunction in the door or a defect in 

its design. Snider did not do that, and res ipsa loquitur offers no salve for the shortcoming. 
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Snider v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. 

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Perhaps Snider might respond that her case is more like Byrne’s than we acknowledge. 

Here too, for example, she has evidence that an accident occurred, but no evidence to show how 

or why it happened. But Byrne contains an evidentiary necessity that this case does not. There,

the plaintiff had no way of knowing what occurred inside the flour shop. Here, both Snider and 

the defendants are in the same position with respect to uncovering the cause of the malfunction

(if in fact any malfunction occurred). Both would need to find an expert to look at the door and 

review the video, all to the end of figuring out what happened and whether it could have been 

prevented with due care. 

Any other approach would do considerable damage to the fairness of negligence 

litigation. Res ipsa loquitur permits something extraordinary in American litigation: an 

inference of wrongdoing “as a matter of common knowledge and experience” rather than proof. 

Banes v. Otis Elevator Co., 2 F. App’x 461, 467 (6th Cir. 2001) (unpublished) (quoting Bell 

& Koch, Inc. v. Stanley, 375 S.W.2d 696, 697 (Ky. 1964)). Permitting juries to use this inference 

where it is unnecessary would erode burden-of-proof protections essential to the fairness of tort 

litigation, and as shown here would be of little use in determining which defendant, if either of 

them, was negligent. In the last analysis, the doctrine has no role to play in this case. A video 

captures the incident, which leaves the plaintiff with the threshold obligation to produce evidence 

of negligence by one or both defendants in designing or maintaining the automatic doors. When 

she failed to do that, the defendants were entitled to summary judgment.

For these reasons, we affirm.