Court Opinion

ID: 9544085
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:51:51.700199+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:11:57.899839
License: Public Domain

MAUGHAN, Justice
(dissenting).
Respectfully, I dissent.
With the legal analysis, of the main opinion, I cannot agree. This is not a typical slip and fall case, wherein plaintiff alleges a dangerous condition on the premises, of which defendant, in the exercise of due care, knew or should have known and remedied. In this action plaintiff correctly alleges that defendants were engaged in an activity, viz., dispensing cottage cheese and that this activity was conducted in a negligent manner, which caused plaintiff serious bodily injury. Plaintiff alleged that defendants were negligent in dispensing cottage cheese in a busy food market, knowing that it would be served to children and adults alike, and that there would be a reasonable likelihood of it being spilled on the floor, creating a hazard for the patrons using the market.
Plaintiff does not urge that the distribution of food samples is negligent conduct per se, but that this activity involves a foreseeable risk of harm to patrons of the store, unless certain reasonable measures are taken to protect those using the *178premises. As evidentiary facts to support his claim that defendants had not fulfilled their duty of due care, plaintiff cites (1) the failure to maintain waste receptacles throughout the store where one could deposit unwanted cottage cheese (the only waste receptacle was located by the table where the cottage cheese was being dispensed) ; (2) no regularly established procedure, for inspection and clean up during these demonstrations, although an agent of defendant Albertson conceded that after a demonstration, it was his experience that unwanted samples could be found throughout the store. Significantly, a substance, such as cottage cheese, is usually distributed to patrons of a supermarket in a closed container. It would not reasonably be expected to be spilled upon the floor. When defendants for their own business advantage departed from the customary method of distribution of cottage cheese and permitted its circulation without the protection of a container, and without a procedure for inspection and clean-up; they undertook a commensurately higher duty of care, to protect patrons from the increased hazards which were reasonably foreseeable.
The trial court granted summary judgment to defendants under the authority of Long v. Smith Food King Store,1 viz., no reasonable basis in the evidence upon which it could be found that defendants had notice, actual or constructive, of the presence of the foreign substance on the floor. This conclusion is erroneous.
In Maugeri v. The Great Atlantic And Pacific Tea Company, Inc.,2 the Court stated that it was imperative to delineate between the two different theories of recovery which may be pursued in a fall-down case. The first is where the conduct of the defendant, in and of itself, creates a foreseeable risk of harm. For such cases, actual or constructive notice is not an element of proof. The second theory involves a condition which arises through no fault of the defendant. In such case, defendant cannot be held liable unless he had actual or constructive notice of the condition. The distinction between the two theories becomes particularly clear where there is an intervening act by a third party, for where the intervening act is foreseeable, the defendant remains liable even if he does not have notice of the condition created by it.
In the instant action, plaintiff proceeded under the first theory that notice would not be a prerequisite to recovery where an inference could properly be drawn that the manner, in which defendants chose to conduct the demonstration, created a foreseeable risk of harm to the customers. When the plaintiff has shown that the circumstances were such as to create the reasonable probability that the dangerous condition would occur, he need not prove actual or constructive notice of the specific condition. When plaintiff has thus introduced evidence raising an inference of negligence, defendant may negate such inference by submitting evidence of due care. Such would refute any allegation that this theory makes the proprietor an insurer. It is the role of the trier-of-fact to determine whether defendant was negligent in the manner he selected to demonstrate his merchandise.3
To further illustrate the theory the language of Wollerman v. Grand Union Stores, Inc.4 is instructive.
Here the hazard could have been caused by (1) carelessness in the manner in which the beans were piled and displayed; or (2) carelessness of an employee in handling the beans thereafter; or (3) carelessness of a patron. As to (1) and (2), defendant is chargeable whether or not it was aware of its employee’s neglect. Defendant’s knowledge *179is relevant only as to (3), but even there, since the patron’s carelessness is to be anticipated in this self-service operation, defendant is liable, even without notice of the bean’s presence on the floor, if (4) defendant failed to use reasonable measures commensurate with the risk involved to discover the debris a customer might leave and to remove it before it injures another patron.
The customer is hardly in a position to know precisely which was the neglect. Overall the fair probability is that defendant did less than its duty demanded, in one respect or another. At least the probability is sufficient to permit such an inference in the absence of evidence that defendant did all that a reasonably prudent man would do in the light of the risk of injury his operation entailed. It is just, therefore, to place “the onus of producing evidence upon the party who is possessed of superior knowledge or opportunity for explanation of the causative circumstances.”
In Little v. Butner5 this legal theory was applied to a factual situation similar to the instant case. The court stated:
The defendants, by their arrangement or agreement to conduct the demonstration, created a condition, the amended petition alleges, whereby they knew or should have known that patrons, customers and children of tender years would drop particles of meat on the floor causing it to become slick and slippery and creating a dangerous condition in that area of the store where the demonstration was being conducted. These allegations, which are admitted by the demurrers, clearly bring the instant case within the .first class of cases making proof of notice unnecessary. .
The dangerous condition here alleged was created and negligently maintained by the .defendants in agreeing to, and carrying on, the demonstration in a manner which they knew, or with the exercise of reasonable care should have known, would render the premises unsafe. Where meat samples are handed out by a demonstrator to customers in a large super market as a means of acquainting the public with the product, it is not unreasonable to assume that parts of such samples will be dropped to the floor and stepped upon by customers and patrons making the floor slick, slippery and dangerous to walk upon. Due care, under such circumstances, would seem to dictate that receptacles or other means be provided for their disposal and that seasonable cleaning of the floor would be necessary. Negligence is alleged to inhere in the condition created and the fact that meat particles were dropped by customers and children of tender years is immaterial. The over-all condition was created by the defendants in carrying on the demonstration without taking the precaution, it is alleged, of providing suitable means for disposing of the samples and of cleaning the floor at seasonable intervals. Under such circumstances, the defendants breached their duty to the plaintiff in failing to warn her of the dangerous condition created. Whether the defendants should have reasonably anticipated that the handing out of meat samples to customers and children in the store would result in meat particles being dropped, making the floor slick, slippery and dangerous for the use of plaintiff and other customers, seems clearly to present a question for a jury.6
The main opinion responds not to things as they are, but to things as they were. It applies old law, the rationale of which was designed to regulate conduct, not of the kind extant in the instant cause; but con*180duct of a static nature, as opposed to the active conduct, with which we are here confronted.
Against the back-drop of the modern supermarket, the law upon which the main opinion rests, alone remains on the stage, while the conduct it was intended to regulate has long since left. No well organized production is possible, for the. old law and the modern conduct are each acting from • different scripts. The late Mr. Justice Terrell, a long-time jurist of the Florida Supreme Court, and a pioneer in this field of the law, succinctly illuminated the anachronism when he said: 7
In light of the disparity between the modern food market and the old time grocery, it is out of the question to contend that they are governed by the same rules of care.
This case should be reversed and remanded for trial that the jury might be permitted to determine whether the defendants were negligent, in conducting their selected method of demonstration.
TUCKETT, J., concurs in the views expressed in the dissenting opinion by MAUGHAN, J.

. Utah, 531 P.2d 360 (1973).

. 357 F.2d 202, 203 (C.A.3rd 1966).

. See Thomason v. The Great Atlantic And Pacific Tea Company, Inc. (C.A.4th 1969) 413 F.2d 51.

. 47 N.J. 426, 221 A.2d 513, 514-515 (1966).

. 186 Kan. 75, 348 P.2d 1022, 1029-1030 (1960).

. Also see Jasko v. F. W. Woolworth, 177 Colo. 418, 494 P.2d 839 (1972) ; Rhodes v. El Rancho Markets, 4 Ariz.App. 183, 418 P.2d 613 (1966); Elrod v. Walls, Inc., 205 Kan. 808, 473 P.2d 12 (1970); Forder v. Grand Union Stores, Inc., 128 Vt. 389, 264 A.2d 796 (1970).

. 18 University of Florida L.Rev., 440.