Court Opinion

ID: 9583141
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:35:11.84805+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:38:51.723135
License: Public Domain

Blackburn, Judge.
Wanda McCullough appeals from the trial court’s order which granted summary judgment to the Kroger Company (Kroger) on her claim for damages resulting from her fall on a grape in the produce aisle of Kroger.
In accordance with Lau’s Corp. v. Haskins, 261 Ga. 491, 495 (405 SE2d 474) (1991), the facts, and all reasonable inferences from the facts, must be viewed and considered in the light most favorable to the plaintiff herein. Furthermore, our Supreme Court took action in Robinson v. Kroger Co., 268 Ga. 735 (493 SE2d 403) (1997), to “remind members of the judiciary that the ‘routine’ issues of premises liability, i.e., the negligence of the defendant and the plaintiff, and the plaintiff’s lack of ordinary care for personal safety are generally not susceptible of summary adjudication, and that summary judgment is granted only when the evidence is plain, palpable and undisputed.” Id. It is plain and palpable, and should be undisputed, that the case now before us is one for the jury.
Viewing the facts in a light most favorable to the nonmovant, plaintiff herein, McCullough slipped on a grape lying on the floor of an aisle down which a Kroger employee, Bridges, had pushed a cart loaded with crates of grapes up to the level of his nose. Later, while he was still stacking bunches of grapes on a produce display island approximately ten to fifteen feet from McCullough, Bridges saw McCullough pass by on the opposite side of the cart and fall. Although Bridges testified that his view of the floor where McCullough fell was apparently blocked by the cart of grapes, McCullough testified that she believed that Bridges could have seen the area *454where she fell from where he was standing. No other customers were in the area where McCullough fell. Bridges admitted that, during stocking, grapes “were always falling off” the bunch, although on the day in question he contends no grapes fell onto the floor. When Bridges later told the produce manager about McCullough’s fall, the produce manager told him “to watch out for stuff like that because it’s hard to keep grapes off the floor.” Furthermore, according to Brower, Kroger’s manager, there would have been other employees, including customer service representatives, in the store at the time of the fall who could have seen the area in which it occurred. Finally, although Brower did testify that Kroger has a courtesy clerk whose duties include cleaning the store’s floors, she further testified that such clerks do not log in the times that they perform their various tasks. As such, there was no evidence establishing when or if Kroger’s courtesy clerk inspected the floor where McCullough fell. Kroger produced no affidavit from any courtesy clerk establishing that the floor had been swept, when it was swept, or that no grape was on the floor. The burden was on Kroger to produce such evidence, and it has failed to do so.
As an initial matter, simply because McCullough was pushing her cart straight ahead and looking in front of her, not at the floor, does not make this a case appropriate for summary adjudication. In Robinson, our Supreme Court disapproved of the “appellate decisions which hold as a matter of law that an invitee’s failure to see before falling the hazard which caused the invitee to fall constitutes a failure to exercise ordinary care.” Id. at 743. This Court is not authorized to ignore the holdings of our Supreme Court..
Summary adjudication is also inappropriate in this case because the evidence authorizes a finding that the defendant had superior knowledge of the object which caused the plaintiff’s fall. McCullough presented sufficient evidence here to show that Kroger, through Bridges, had constructive knowledge of the fallen grape. “Constructive knowledge of a foreign substance may be shown by evidence that the foreign substance had been on the floor for a sufficient period of time that in the exercise of ordinary care, the defendant should have noticed and removed the hazard or by evidence that the defendant had an employee in the immediate area of the hazard who could have easily seen and removed the hazard before the plaintiff’s fall” (Emphasis supplied.) Haskins v. Piggly Wiggly Southern, 230 Ga. App. 350, 351 (496 SE2d 471) (1998).
Based on the facts set out above, it is a reasonable inference that the dropped grape which caused McCullough’s fall came from the cart of grapes Bridges had pushed down the aisle. As a matter of straightforward logic, the grape had to have come from somewhere. There was no other customer in the aisle. The cart piled high with *455bunches of grapes being pushed by Bridges is the most likely source of the errant grape. The fact that Bridges may not have seen the grape because he was on the far side of the cart in no way refutes the reasonable inference to be drawn. At a minimum, there is a factual issue for jury determination. It is the duty of this Court to follow the mandate of our Supreme Court to leave generally to juries questions of the negligence of the parties. Therefore, the trial court erred in granting Kroger’s motion for summary judgment.

Judgment reversed.

McMurray, P. J., Pope, P. J., Beasley, Johnson and Smith, JJ, concur. Andrews, C. J., dissents.