Court Opinion

ID: 9410881
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-07-24 21:00:48.858619+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:21:01.044582
License: Public Domain

USCA11 Case: 22-14239    Document: 40-1     Date Filed: 07/24/2023   Page: 1 of 8

                                                  [DO NOT PUBLISH]
                                   In the
                United States Court of Appeals
                        For the Eleventh Circuit

                          ____________________

                                No. 22-14239
                          Non-Argument Calendar
                          ____________________

       MELISSA STUTLER,
                                                     Plaintiﬀ-Appellant,
       versus
       COCA-COLA BEVERAGES FLORIDA, LLC,
                                                   Defendant-Appellee.

                          ____________________

                 Appeal from the United States District Court
                     for the Southern District of Florida
                    D.C. Docket No. 1:21-cv-24383-FAM
                          ____________________
USCA11 Case: 22-14239      Document: 40-1      Date Filed: 07/24/2023     Page: 2 of 8

       2                      Opinion of the Court                  22-14239

       Before JORDAN, BRANCH, and BRASHER, Circuit Judges.
       PER CURIAM:
              This is a slip-and-fall (or, more accurately, a slip-and-slam)
       case arising from events in a Target self-checkout line. Melissa Stut-
       ler appeals the district court’s entry of summary judgment in Coke
       Florida’s favor. She contends that the district court failed to con-
       sider the full record in the light most favorable to her on the issue
       of causation, an essential element of her negligence claim. After
       careful review, we agree and reverse.
                                         I.

               After an incident in a Target self-checkout line, Melissa Stut-
       ler filed this lawsuit in Florida state court. Her complaint alleged
       that she slipped on a puddle of liquid on Target’s premises. Trying
       to catch her balance, Stutler “twisted” on the liquid and slammed
       into the register and Coke Florida’s beverage cooler, sustaining in-
       juries. She alleged that Target breached its duty of care by negli-
       gently maintaining its premises. Target removed the case to federal
       court.
              Stutler later amended her complaint, adding Coca-Cola Bev-
       erages Florida, LLC, as a defendant. Stutler alleged that the liquid
       had leaked from Coke Florida’s cooler. And because Coke Florida
       had a duty to maintain that cooler, Stutler contended, the company
       had acted negligently by failing to keep it in a “reasonably safe con-
       dition.”
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       22-14239               Opinion of the Court                          3

              The parties conducted discovery, and Coke Florida moved
       for summary judgment. Stutler filed a brief opposing the motion
       along with several photo exhibits of the accident site, which argu-
       ably show a puddle of water coming from Coke Florida’s cooler.
       Target had produced one of the photos during discovery. Stutler’s
       daughter had taken others on the day of the incident and in the
       following months. Until that filing, though, Stutler’s counsel had
       been withholding the full photos taken by Stutler’s daughter under
       a work-product-privilege theory.
               A few weeks later, Target and Coke Florida sought—and the
       district court granted—an extension of the discovery deadline.
       With the additional time, Stutler requested more written discovery
       from Coke Florida and deposed Liliana Mejia, a Target employee.
       Shortly after the new discovery deadline, and without leave from
       the district court, Stutler supplemented her opposition to Coke
       Florida’s summary judgment motion with additional evidence—
       Mejia’s deposition transcript and exhibits. Those exhibits were the
       same photos—one produced by Target, the others taken by Stut-
       ler’s daughter—that Stutler included in her original opposition to
       summary judgment.
              The district court granted summary judgment for Coke
       Florida. The court ruled that Coke Florida had “a [contractual]
       duty to maintain” the cooler at issue in this case. Because Coke
       Florida had that duty, the court reasoned, the company “may be
       held liable to members of the public, such as [Stutler], for its negli-
       gence in performing that contract.” But the district court
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       4                      Opinion of the Court                22-14239

       concluded that Stutler “failed” to establish “the existence of a gen-
       uine issue of material fact” that Coke Florida’s “cooler caused the
       liquid to be on the ground where [Stutler] slipped and fell.” Among
       other things, the district court (1) concluded that summary judg-
       ment was not premature; (2) refused to rely on the photos Stutler’s
       daughter took because they were not timely produced in discov-
       ery; and (3) determined that Stutler’s amended answers to Coke
       Florida’s interrogatories contained unsupported factual allega-
       tions.
              Stutler moved for reconsideration, arguing that the district
       court failed to construe the evidence in the light most favorable to
       her—mainly, by ignoring Mejia’s testimony. Stutler also contended
       that she was entitled to additional discovery. The court summarily
       denied that motion.
             Stutler timely appealed.
                                        II.

               We review the district court’s grant of summary judgment
       de novo, applying the same legal standards as the district court. Ur-
       quilla-Diaz v. Kaplan Univ., 780 F.3d 1039, 1050 (11th Cir. 2015).
       Summary judgment is appropriate if the record establishes “that
       there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant
       is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a).
       When reviewing the record, a court must draw all reasonable in-
       ferences in favor of the non-moving party. Ryder Int’l Corp. v. First
       Am. Nat’l Bank, 943 F.2d 1521, 1523 (11th Cir. 1991).
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       22-14239               Opinion of the Court                         5

                                        III.

               Stutler contends that the district court erred in concluding
       that she failed to “present sufficient proof” that the water she
       slipped on came from Coke Florida’s cooler. In its summary judg-
       ment order, the district court emphasized that Stutler failed to in-
       spect the cooler after she slipped to see if it was leaking, pointed
       out that the surveillance video of the incident did “not indicate
       whether the liquid . . . had been leaking” from the cooler, and dis-
       missed some of Stutler’s interrogatory responses as “unsupported
       factual allegation[s].” For its part, Coke Florida characterizes Stut-
       ler’s testimony as “unsubstantiated and conjectural.” But we agree
       with that Stutler that, considering all the evidence in the light most
       favorable to her, there is a genuine dispute of material fact that
       Coke Florida’s “act or omission was a cause-in-fact of [Stutler’s]
       claimed injuries.” Stahl v. Metro. Dade Cnty., 438 So. 2d 14, 17 (Fla.
       Dist. Ct. App. 1983).
              At summary judgment, a court must draw “all reasonable
       inferences in favor of the nonmoving party.” Jones v. UPS Ground
       Freight, 683 F.3d 1283, 1291-92 (11th Cir. 2012). A court “may not
       weigh conflicting evidence or make credibility determinations of
       its own.” FindWhat Inv. Grp. v. FindWhat.com, 658 F.3d 1282, 1307
       (11th Cir. 2011). And a district court should not discount testimony
       at summary judgment “unless it is blatantly contradicted by the
       record, blatantly inconsistent, or incredible as a matter of law,
       meaning that it relates to facts that could not have possibly been
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       6                      Opinion of the Court                22-14239

       observed or events that are contrary to the laws of nature.” Felici-
       ano v. City of Miami Beach, 707 F.3d 1244, 1253 (11th Cir. 2013).
              We think the district court overlooked several pieces of evi-
       dence that, when considered in the light most favorable to Stutler,
       could lead a reasonable jury to find that she slipped on water leak-
       ing from Coke Florida’s cooler.
               To start, circumstantial evidence in the record supports a
       reasonable inference that the cooler was leaking. There is video
       footage of Stutler slipping in front of the beverage cooler on a pud-
       dle of water. Target produced a photo of the liquid seemingly em-
       anating from under the cooler, though the district court failed to
       mention it. Further, a post-incident report prepared by Target
       states that Stutler “slipped on a water leak next to [the] beverage
       fridge.” The report also mentions that the floor was “wet” from a
       “cooler leak.” The district court acknowledged the first quote (Stut-
       ler’s characterization of the incident), but not the second (a Target
       employee’s version of events). Finally, there is no other likely ex-
       planation for how the water ended up on the floor beneath and
       adjacent to the cooler. The court failed to make the obvious infer-
       ence from this circumstantial evidence—that the liquid leaked
       from the cooler—in Stutler’s favor, a requirement at the summary
       judgment stage. See Jones, 683 F.3d at 1291-92.
              In addition to this circumstantial evidence, there is also di-
       rect evidence in the form of the deposition testimony of Liliana
       Mejia, a Target employee, which the district court did not address
       in its summary judgment order. After Coke Florida filed for
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       22-14239               Opinion of the Court                          7

       summary judgment, the district court extended the discovery dead-
       line at Target and Coke Florida’s request. With the additional time,
       Stutler deposed Mejia, a Target employee who arrived to the self-
       checkout area “a minute” after Stutler slipped. There, Mejia con-
       sulted another Target employee about what happened. That em-
       ployee said Stutler had slipped on liquid that “leaked from the
       cooler.” Mejia checked things out for herself and took a photo of
       the liquid on the floor, which was submitted as an exhibit at her
       deposition. After that inspection, she concluded with “100% cer-
       tainty” that the liquid leaked from the cooler—there was not “any
       doubt” in her mind. She was not surprised: she testified that the
       cooler had leaked before, “sometime in 2020.” To address that leak,
       Target’s staff wrapped a “snake”—a type of sponge—around the
       bottom of the cooler. They used a similar “snake” after Stutler’s
       slip.
               Coke Florida contends that, even if “sufficient record evi-
       dence exists to create a genuine issue of material fact on whether
       the Coke Florida beverage cooler in the Target store was the
       source of the puddle,” the district court was correct to grant sum-
       mary judgment because there is “no evidence showing that Coke
       Florida failed to properly maintain or repair the beverage cooler.”
       We disagree. The district court held that Coke Florida had a duty
       to maintain the cooler in a reasonably safe condition, a ruling Coke
       Florida does not dispute on appeal. And Coke Florida did not argue
       in its summary judgment motion that Stutler failed to present evi-
       dence that it had breached this duty. Instead, Coke Florida argued
       that it had no duty at all and that, even if it did, the cooler was not
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       8                      Opinion of the Court                  22-14239

       leaking. So Stutler was never put on notice that she had to provide
       evidence that the cooler was leaking because of Coke Florida’s neg-
       ligence and not some other reason. A court may “grant [a summary
       judgment] motion on grounds not raised by a party” only “[a]fter
       giving notice and a reasonable time to respond.” Fed. R. Civ. P.
       56(f); see Amy v. Carnival Corp., 961 F.3d 1303, 1310 (11th Cir. 2020)
       (concluding the district court erred by deciding an issue at sum-
       mary judgment without prior notice to the plaintiff). Stutler was
       never on notice that she needed to submit the evidence that Coke
       Florida says she failed to submit. Accordingly, we cannot affirm
       based on Coke Florida’s new theory.
               Our conclusion that a genuine issue of material fact exists on
       the issue of causation resolves this appeal in Stutler’s favor. Accord-
       ingly, we need not address her additional arguments that (1) the
       district court prematurely considered Coke Florida’s motion for
       summary judgment; (2) the district court erred by refusing to rely
       on photos of the liquid taken by Stutler’s daughter because they
       were not timely produced in discovery; and (3) the district court
       improperly characterized Stutler’s amended answers to Coke Flor-
       ida’s interrogatories as “unsupported factual allegation[s].”
                                        IV.

             For these reasons, the district court’s grant of summary
       judgment is REVERSED, and this case is REMANDED for further
       proceedings.