Court Opinion

ID: 9958089
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-04-07 14:08:15.676709+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:17:45.395650
License: Public Domain

Supreme Court of Texas
                            ══════════
                             No. 23-0041
                            ══════════

  Albertsons, LLC d/b/a Randall’s; Albertsons Companies, LLC
d/b/a Randall’s; Randall’s Food Markets, Inc. d/b/a Randall’s; and
          Randall’s Food & Drugs LP d/b/a Randall’s,
                              Petitioners,

                                   v.

                        Maryam Mohammadi,
                              Respondent

   ═══════════════════════════════════════
               On Petition for Review from the
     Court of Appeals for the Fourteenth District of Texas
   ═══════════════════════════════════════

                            PER CURIAM

      Maryam Mohammadi slipped and fell at a Randalls grocery store.
She alleged that Randalls failed to properly warn of a puddle that
formed next to a shopping cart after an employee put leaking items in
the cart. Randalls obtained a jury verdict in its favor and a take-nothing
judgment.     The jury declined to find Randalls liable under a
constructive-knowledge standard of premises liability, which asked
whether Randalls reasonably should have known of the danger. Based
on that answer, the charge instructed the jury not to answer a question
about Randalls’s liability under an actual-knowledge standard.
         A divided court of appeals reversed, holding that the jury should
have been permitted to consider liability under the actual-knowledge
standard       even    after    finding    no    liability   under    the
constructive-knowledge standard. 656 S.W.3d 851, 864 (Tex. App.—
Houston [14th Dist.] 2022). As explained below, we need not decide
whether the charge incorrectly instructed the jury not to consider
liability under an actual-knowledge theory. Any such error would have
been harmless because there is no evidence Randalls had actual
knowledge of the wet floor.       Since there is no evidence of actual
knowledge of the danger, no reasonable jury could have answered the
actual-knowledge question in Mohammadi’s favor, even if we assume
the court of appeals was correct that the question should have been
asked.
         The error identified by the court of appeals was therefore
harmless (assuming it was error at all), which means reversal was not
proper. See TEX. R. APP. P. 44.1(a). The judgment of the court of appeals
is reversed, and the judgment of the district court is reinstated.
                                     I
         Maryam Mohammadi worked at a Wells Fargo located inside a
Randalls grocery store in Houston. Randalls often placed returned or
damaged items in shopping carts near the front of the store.
Mohammadi slipped and fell next to such a shopping cart. Mohammadi
sued Randalls.

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      Some of the facts about the fall were disputed. Mohammadi
alleged that the shopping cart was the source of the liquid on the floor.
An inconclusive video seemed to show a store employee placing a wet
plastic bag in the cart. The footage also showed the store manager
wiping the floor with a paper towel after Mohammadi’s fall, but he
testified that the paper towel was not damp when he picked it up. The
manager also testified that he did not notice any liquid when he
inspected the floor before and after Mohammadi’s fall, despite claiming
to have observed liquid on the floor after the accident in the report he
made at the time.
      Before submitting the case to the jury, the court determined that
Mohammadi was an invitee, rather than a licensee, at the time of the
accident.   This meant that Mohammadi did not need to prove that
Randalls actually knew of an unreasonably dangerous condition, as
would a licensee. See Sampson v. Univ. of Tex. at Austin, 500 S.W.3d
380, 385 (Tex. 2016). Instead, liability to an invitee can attach if the
defendant knew of the danger or reasonably should have known of it.
CMH Homes, Inc. v. Daenen, 15 S.W.3d 97, 101 (Tex. 2000).
      The court bifurcated the premises-liability question. Question 1
asked about Randalls’s liability under a constructive-knowledge,
“reasonably should have known of the danger” standard. Question 2
asked about Randalls’s liability under an actual-knowledge-of-
the-danger standard. The charge instructed the jury not to answer
Question 2 unless it answered Question 1 in favor of Mohammadi. The
disputed portion of the charge read:

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                   QUESTION NO. 1
       Did the negligence, if any, of Randall’s Food & Drug,
L.P. proximately cause the occurrence in question?
     With respect to the condition of the premises,
Randall’s Food & Drug, L.P. was negligent if—
       1. the condition posed an unreasonable risk of harm,
       and
       2. Randall’s reasonably should have known of the
       danger, and
       3. Randall’s failed to exercise ordinary care to
       protect Maryam Mohammadi from the danger, by
       both failing to adequately warn Maryam
       Mohammadi of the condition and failing to make
       that condition reasonably safe.
....
Answer Question No. 2 if you answered “Yes” to
Question No. 1. Otherwise, do not answer Question
No. 2.
                   QUESTION NO. 2
       Did the negligence, if any, of Randall’s Food & Drug,
L.P. proximately cause the occurrence in question?
     With respect to the condition of the premises,
Randall’s Food & Drug, L.P. was negligent if—
       1. the condition posed an unreasonable risk of harm,
       and
       2. Randall’s knew of the danger, and
       3. Randall’s failed to exercise ordinary care to
       protect Maryam Mohammadi from the danger, by
       both failing to adequately warn Maryam
       Mohammadi of the condition and failing to make
       that condition reasonably safe.
....

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The jury answered “No” to Question 1 and therefore did not answer
Question 2.    The district court rendered judgment for Randalls.
Mohammadi appealed.
      The court of appeals reversed, over a dissent. 656 S.W.3d at 865.
The court concluded “[t]here was no evidence that a Randalls employee
observed any liquid on the floor where Mohammadi slipped and fell
before she slipped and fell.” Id. at 863. The court nonetheless concluded
that Mohammadi was entitled to a jury question on actual knowledge.
Id. at 864. Relying on this Court’s decision in Corbin v. Safeway Stores,
Inc., 648 S.W.2d 292 (Tex. 1983), the court of appeals held that Randalls
could be charged with actual knowledge of the danger even without
actual knowledge of the wet floor, because its employees knew a leaking
product placed in a shopping cart would drip onto the floor. 656 S.W.3d
at 864.
      Randalls raises multiple issues in this Court, but we can resolve
the case by considering only whether failure to submit the
actual-knowledge theory of premises liability to the jury was harmful
error. For the following reasons, it was not.
                                   II
      The district court and the court of appeals agreed that
Mohammadi was an invitee, rather than a licensee, at the time of the
incident. Randalls disagrees and asks us to hold otherwise, but we need
not resolve that question.    We will assume, without deciding, that
Mohammadi was an invitee.
      An invitee in a premises-liability case “must prove that the
premises owner had actual or constructive knowledge of a dangerous

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condition on the premises.” Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Reece, 81 S.W.3d
812, 813 (Tex. 2002) (emphasis added). “Actual knowledge requires
knowledge that the dangerous condition existed at the time of the
accident.” Sampson, 500 S.W.3d at 397 (quoting City of Corsicana v.
Stewart, 249 S.W.3d 412, 414-15 (Tex. 2008)).             “[C]onstructive
knowledge can be established by showing that the condition had existed
long enough for the owner or occupier to have discovered it upon
reasonable inspection.” CMH Homes, 15 S.W.3d at 102-03. Unlike
actual knowledge, constructive knowledge “can be established by facts
or inferences that a dangerous condition could develop over time.”
Sampson, 500 S.W.3d at 397.
      We previously approved of the following jury instruction for
premises liability to an invitee:
      With respect to the condition of the premises, defendant
      was negligent if—
          a. the condition posed an unreasonable risk of harm;
          b. defendant knew or reasonably should have known of
          the danger; and
          c. defendant failed to exercise ordinary care to protect
          plaintiff from danger, by both failing to adequately
          warn plaintiff of the condition and failing to make that
          condition reasonably safe.
See State v. Williams, 940 S.W.2d 583, 584-85 (Tex. 1996).1           The
knowledge element of this instruction incorporates both actual
knowledge and constructive knowledge. A finding that the defendant
had either form of knowledge is sufficient for liability under the invitee

      1 See also Comm. on Pattern Jury Charges of the State Bar of Tex.,

Texas Pattern Jury Charges—Malpractice, Premises & Products PJC 66.4
(2020).

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standard.   The instructions used in Mohammadi’s case track this
standard instruction in many ways, but they deviate with respect to the
defendant’s knowledge.     Question 1 asked whether the defendant
reasonably should have known of the danger, while Question 2
separately asked whether the defendant actually knew of it. Neither of
these questions tracked the usual invitee liability question, which
incorporates both actual and constructive knowledge.
      In addition to splitting the knowledge elements, the charge made
the actual-knowledge question contingent on a pro-plaintiff answer to
the constructive-knowledge question. Thus, because the jury answered
a question exclusively focused on constructive knowledge against
Mohammadi, the jury was never asked about Randalls’s actual
knowledge—as it would have been under the typical invitee jury charge,
which incorporates both actual and constructive knowledge.
      The parties disagree about the legitimacy of this unusual jury
charge, but we need not resolve that dispute. Even if Mohammadi and
the court of appeals are correct that the charge was erroneous, reversal
of the judgment is not available unless the error probably caused the
rendition of an improper judgment.        See TEX. R. APP. P. 44.1(a);
Columbia Rio Grande Healthcare, L.P. v. Hawley, 284 S.W.3d 851, 856
(Tex. 2009). If that standard is not met, then the error is considered
harmless, and reversal is inappropriate. The question, therefore, is
whether the jury’s inability to consider actual knowledge probably
caused the rendition of an improper take-nothing judgment for
Randalls. For the following reasons, it did not.

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       As the charge reflects, the parties tried the case with both a
constructive-knowledge theory of liability and an actual-knowledge
theory of liability in mind.        If a verdict for Mohammadi on the
actual-knowledge question would have been properly discarded for
legally insufficient evidence, then there is no harm in having not asked
the question, because even a pro-Mohammadi answer to the question
would not have resulted in judgment for Mohammadi. See, e.g., 4Front
Engineered Sols., Inc. v. Rosales, 505 S.W.3d 905, 908-09 (Tex. 2016).
We must therefore ask whether the jury heard evidence that was legally
sufficient to support a finding that “Randall’s knew of the danger” that
caused Mohammadi’s accident. See supra Question 2.2
       To answer that question, we must first correctly identify the
“danger” or “condition” at issue. If the relevant danger is the wet floor,
then—as the court of appeals observed—there was no evidence before
the jury that any Randalls employee actually knew of the danger prior
to Mohammadi’s fall. 656 S.W.3d at 863. If, however, the danger was
the presence of leaking items in the shopping cart, then there was
evidence that employees knew of the danger.
       Our precedent dictates that the wet floor, not the antecedent
situation that produced it, is the relevant danger or condition about
which the defendant’s knowledge is relevant.               An “unreasonably

       2 The legal-sufficiency standard is familiar. “When determining
whether legally sufficient evidence supports a jury finding, we must consider
evidence favorable to the finding if a reasonable factfinder could and disregard
evidence contrary to the finding unless a reasonable factfinder could not. The
evidence is legally sufficient if [there] is more than a scintilla of evidence on
which a reasonable juror could find the fact to be true.” 4Front, 505 S.W.3d at
908-09 (citations omitted).

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dangerous condition for which a premises owner may be liable is the
condition at the time and place injury occurs, not some antecedent
situation that produced the condition.” Brookshire Grocery Co. v. Taylor,
222 S.W.3d 406, 407 (Tex. 2006).
      In Brookshire, we held that the ice on the floor, not the grocery
store’s drink dispenser from which “ice fell to the floor . . . on a daily
basis,” was the dangerous condition about which the defendant’s
knowledge mattered. Id. at 406-09. Prior to Brookshire, we had already
followed this approach on multiple occasions. For example, “water on
the floor of a basketball court could be an unreasonably dangerous
condition, but not the leaky roof that would eventually allow water to
drip.” Id. at 408 (summarizing City of San Antonio v. Rodriguez, 931
S.W.2d 535, 536 (Tex. 1996)). Similarly, “stairs were [not] unreasonably
dangerous merely because the premises owner knew they would
eventually become unstable with use.” Id. at 407 (summarizing CMH
Homes, 15 S.W.3d at 100-01).
      Under Brookshire and similar cases, the court of appeals in this
case should have stopped after concluding that “[t]here was no evidence
that a Randalls employee observed any liquid on the floor where
Mohammadi slipped and fell.” 656 S.W.3d at 863. The court of appeals
instead relied on our decision in Corbin v. Safeway Stores to hold that
the defendant’s knowledge of the antecedent situation—a leaking bag in
a wire shopping cart—could amount to actual knowledge of the danger
for purposes of premises liability. 656 S.W.3d at 864.
      In Corbin, another grocery store case, the plaintiff slipped on
grapes that had fallen out of a self-service bin. 648 S.W.2d at 294. The

                                    9
Court determined that the store’s self-service method of displaying
grapes “posed an unreasonable risk” of customers slipping on the grapes
that would inevitably fall to the floor. Id. at 297. The Court concluded
that a jury could find the store liable because the store was aware of the
antecedent condition—grapes available for customer access above a
linoleum floor—that posed this unreasonable risk, even in the “absence
of evidence showing the storeowner’s actual or constructive knowledge
of the presence on the floor of the specific object causing the fall.” Id. at
295.
       We have since distanced ourselves from this “exceptional case.”
See Brookshire, 222 S.W.3d at 408. Over the years, this Court has had
several opportunities to apply Corbin but has declined to do so. See, e.g.,
CMH Homes, 15 S.W.3d at 101 (“[T]he facts of this case are not
congruent with those in Corbin.”); Brookshire, 222 S.W.3d at 408 (“This
case is not like Corbin.”); Christ v. Tex. Dep’t of Transp., 664 S.W.3d 82,
90 (Tex. 2023) (“As in those cases [in which the Court distinguished
Corbin], nothing here suggests the use of stripes and buttons was any
more dangerous than their use on other roads.”).
       Corbin does not control this case. More recent precedent points
definitively in the opposite direction. See Brookshire, 222 S.W.3d at 408.
To the extent Corbin’s approach could ever be employed after our more
recent cases, it would only be in a situation where—as in Corbin—the
defendant had a policy or practice that it knew routinely created an
unreasonable risk of harm. In Corbin, the store “admitted that at the
time of [the plaintiff’s] fall it knew of this unusually high risk associated
with its grape display.” 648 S.W.2d at 296. In this case, by contrast,

                                     10
“[t]here is no evidence that employees knew that putting returned goods
in a wire shopping cart led to spills on the floor.” 656 S.W.3d at 867
(Christopher, C.J., dissenting). Unlike the grape display in Corbin, the
method that Randalls used to store damaged and returned goods did not
“constitute[] a dangerous condition from the moment it was used,” nor
did it “inherently present[] an unreasonable risk of harm.” See CMH
Homes, 15 S.W.3d at 101-02. The evidence may have shown that a
Randalls employee knowingly placed a leaking bag in the cart on the
day of Mohammadi’s fall, but there was no evidence that Randalls had
a policy or practice of leaving leaky bags in shopping carts or that
Randalls knew the problem routinely recurred.
         These distinctions prevent application of Corbin to this case.
Instead, we again apply the rule from Brookshire: the “unreasonably
dangerous condition for which a premises owner may be liable is the
condition at the time and place injury occurs, not some antecedent
situation that produced the condition.” 222 S.W.3d at 407. Under this
standard, evidence that an employee knew a leaking bag was placed in
a shopping cart cannot demonstrate Randalls’s actual knowledge of the
wet floor on which Mohammadi slipped. Perhaps Randalls should have
known of the wet floor because a wet floor is a highly likely consequence
of   a   leaking   bag,   but   the   jury   has   already   answered   the
constructive-knowledge question in favor of Randalls.
         For these reasons, no reasonable juror could have found that
Randalls had actual knowledge of the danger that caused Mohammadi’s
accident.    Thus, even if the jury charge had looked just the way
Mohammadi urges, the result would have been the same—a

                                      11
take-nothing judgment for Randalls. Because any charge error was
harmless, the court of appeals erred by reversing the district court’s
judgment. See TEX. R. APP. P. 44.1(a). As a result, without hearing oral
argument, we grant the petition for review, reverse the court of appeals’
judgment, and reinstate the district court’s judgment. See TEX. R. APP.
P. 59.1.

OPINION DELIVERED: April 5, 2024

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