Opinion ID: 2208199
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Denial of Defendant's Motions for Judgment as a Matter of Law

Text: At the close of plaintiff's case-in-chief, and again at the close of all the evidence, defendant moved for judgment as a matter of law. On both occasions, defendant argued that the trial justice should enter judgment in its favor because plaintiff had failed to introduce sufficient evidence to prove each of the elements required to establish negligence in this premises-liability case. These elements included, according to defendant, some sort of a pre-incident notice to defendant concerning an allegedly dangerous artificial condition existing on the premises. As we previously have held, however, actual notice is not always a condition precedent to liability in these situations. See Tancrelle v. Friendly Ice Cream Corp., 756 A.2d 744, 752 (R.I.2000). Rather, premises-liability law in Rhode Island imposes an affirmative duty upon owners and possessors of property: to exercise reasonable care for the safety of persons reasonably expected to be on the premises    includ[ing] an obligation to protect against the risks of a dangerous condition existing on the premises, provided the landowner knows of, or by the exercise of reasonable care would have discovered, the dangerous condition. Id. (citing Cutroneo v. F.W. Woolworth Co., 112 R.I. 696, 698, 315 A.2d 56, 58 (1974)). In this case, defendant argued that plaintiff did not produce sufficient evidence to establish that it either knew or should have known that a dangerous condition existed on the premises before Lucas's fall. And even if it had such notice, it argued, it still had to be afforded a reasonable time thereafter either to remedy the danger or to warn of its existence. When considering a motion for judgment as a matter of law, the trial justice must examine: the evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party, without weighing the evidence or evaluating the credibility of witnesses,    draw[ing] from the record all reasonable inferences that support the position of the nonmoving party.    If, after such a review, there remain factual issues upon which reasonable persons might draw different conclusions, the motion for [judgment as a matter of law] must be denied, and the issues must be submitted to the jury for determination. Marketing Design Source, Inc. v. Pranda North America, Inc., 799 A.2d 267, 271 (R.I.2002) (quoting Martinelli v. Hopkins, 787 A.2d 1158, 1165 (R.I.2001)). Thus, the trial justice should grant such a motion for judgment as a matter of law and dismiss the claims in question only when, `no relevant issues of fact exist and defendant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law   .' Id. at 272-73. In reviewing a trial justice's decision on this score, we are `bound by the same rules and [standards] as the trial justice.' Id. at 272. After analyzing the evidence in the light most favorable to plaintiff, the trial justice denied defendant's first motion for judgment as a matter of law at the close of plaintiff's case-in-chief. In doing so, the trial justice observed that the jury had heard conflicting evidence concerning the lighting situation that prevailed in the outside stairwell area adjacent to the building on the night of Lucas's injury: In any event, the club certainly knew that the children were running in and out of the building that night. The plaintiff's theory is quite simply that in the dark, Lucas Landry, playing at 10-years old with 8 years [ sic ] old Kerri Hamelin, ran around the corner of that building and ran ahead falling down stairs, that that was occasioned, if by nothing else, certainly by the lack of lightingwhich has been testified to by a plethora of plaintiff's witnesses although contradicted also by one of the club members called as an adverse witness in the plaintiff's case. All of this, however in the [c]ourt's judgment, adds up to a case where reasonable minds may differ and a case upon which the evidence, if believed, could reasonably satisfy the elements that are necessary to find the defendant negligent, negligent in the maintenance of the premises on that night and in that location. So after completing this analysis, the [c]ourt believes it is compelled as a result of this finding to deny the motion for judgment as a matter of law   . By this point in the trial, numerous witnesses had testified about the lack of any artificial illumination in the area of the stairwell on the night of the wedding reception. Several of plaintiff's witnesses specifically testified that they observed the descending staircase to be dark and unlit on that evening. For example, Jacques Staelen was the person who descended into the stairwell and eventually retrieved the injured Lucas, who he found lying on his side in the dark at the concrete base of the stairs, semiconscious and curled up in the fetal position. He testified that the stairwell was so dark that night that he was unable to locate Lucas on his first trip down the stairs and that he needed to use his cigarette lighter for illumination. Not until his second trip down the stairs was he actually able to perceive the ten-year-old child lying at the bottom of the stairwell. Another witness for plaintiff, Officer Jackie Davison of the Woonsocket Police Department, testified that he drove to the scene on the morning after the accident to photograph the area where the injury occurred. Officer Davison testified that he observed that the light bulb was missing from the light fixture over the stairwell's door. He also observed, upon closer inspection, that cobwebs were present, both on the empty light fixture and within the socket area. As the trial justice noted, Wayne Grady, an officer of defendant, appeared to contradict this testimony when he stated that he had observed a light bulb in the fixture earlier on the night of the accident. Because the testimony of these witnesses conflicted on the issue of whether a light bulb was present in the fixture on the night of Lucas's injuries, and, if not, for how long the light bulb had been missing, we hold that the trial justice properly denied defendant's motion for judgment as a matter of law at the close of plaintiff's case-in-chief. The question of whether a light bulb was present in the stairwell area on the night of Lucas's injury and, if so, whether the stairwell light was operating and illuminating the stairwell area, turned on a credibility determination that was properly within the province of the jury; it was not a decision for the trial justice to make. See Marketing Design Source, Inc., 799 A.2d at 271. If the jury concluded that defendant neglected to insert a light bulb in the stairwell's light fixture and failed to ascertain whether the stairwell light was functioning properly on the night in question, then it could find (1) that these circumstances amounted to defendant's maintaining an unsafe and defective artificial condition on the premises, and (2) that defendant should have discovered and corrected it before allowing its premises to be used for hosting a nighttime wedding reception. Likewise, the same reasoning applies to the trial justice's decision to deny defendant's renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law after the parties had presented the court with all the evidence they sought to introduce. When faced with defendant's renewed motion for judgment at this juncture, the trial justice again observed: With regard to the question of notice [or] lack thereof of a dangerous condition, the testimony of Officer [Davison], without weighing his credibility that he saw no light bulb, he took a picture of it and he saw cobwebs residing in the socket, is directly and diametrically opposed to the testimony of Mr. Grady. There are two apparently reasonable persons where reasonable minds could differ. Do you believe Mr. Grady or do you believe Mr. [Davison]? There [are] enough grounds to deny a motion based on that particular issue. We agree, and hold that the trial justice properly ascertained that a material issue of fact remained in the case, that its resolution required a credibility determination, and that such a fact-finding exercise was proper for the jury to undertake. Thus, we uphold the trial justice's ruling denying defendant's renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law at the close of the evidence.