Court Opinion

ID: 9853154
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:43:29.217721+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:41.466236
License: Public Domain

Beasley, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent.
There is evidence that the employee had brought out a dolly with eight to ten bread trays containing products to be stocked. She placed it directly in front of an end cap and took one of the trays from it and put it in front of the center end cap, which separated aisles two and three. Ms. Ramirez was looking for a product which she says one of the employees said was on top in aisle three. As she came around from aisle two to aisle three, she did not see the bread tray on the floor, stepped in it, and fell. It was not an obstruction which the cus*832tomer could see from a distance, because of where she was coming from.
Decided March 16, 1993.
Freeman & Hawkins, Alan F. Herman, William G. Scoggin, for appellant.
Webb, Carlock, Copeland, Semler & Stair, Kent T. Stair, Lisa M. Smith, for appellee.
“ ‘[T]he merchant must so place such articles so as not to threaten danger to those using the aisle and so that they are in full sight and within the observation of everyone.’ (Cit.)” Big Apple Super Market of Rome v. Briggs, 102 Ga. App. 11, 14 (115 SE2d 385) (1960). Whether this obstruction, large and low, was placed in a way which a person rounding the corner would not be expected to see or anticipate before being tripped by it, and whether plaintiff exercised ordinary care in failing to discover the obstruction which she suddenly came upon and to avoid tripping over it, are jury questions in this case. Should Ms. Ramirez have discovered the bread tray in the exercise of ordinary care, before stumbling on it? The question is to be determined “in the light of the attendant circumstances,” Big Apple, supra, and I cannot say that she should have done so, as a matter of law. Issues of negligence, diligence, and exercise of ordinary care for one’s protection, except in plain and indisputable cases, ordinarily are to be decided by the jury. Church’s Fried Chicken v. Lewis, 150 Ga. App. 154, 156 (256 SE2d 916) (1979).
I am authorized to state that Judge Cooper joins in this dissent.