Court Opinion

ID: 9385161
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-04-06 00:00:27.935035+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:17:59.288877
License: Public Domain

Case: 22-40479        Document: 00516702487             Page: 1       Date Filed: 04/05/2023

             United States Court of Appeals
                  for the Fifth Circuit
                                     ____________                   United States Court of Appeals
                                                                             Fifth Circuit

                                      No. 22-40479                         FILED
                                    Summary Calendar                    April 5, 2023
                                    ____________                      Lyle W. Cayce
                                                                           Clerk
   Jill Trahan Dougay,

                                                                      Plaintiff—Appellee,

                                            versus

   Dolgencorp of Texas, Incorporated, doing business as Dollar
   General,

                                              Defendant—Appellant.
                     ______________________________

                     Appeal from the United States District Court
                          for the Eastern District of Texas
                               USDC No. 1:19-CV-419
                     ______________________________

   Before Davis, Duncan, and Engelhardt, Circuit Judges.
   Per Curiam:*
         In this premises-liability suit, Defendant-Appellant Dolgencorp of
   Texas, Inc. (“Dollar General”) appeals the district court’s denials of its
   motion for judgment as a matter of law and renewed motion for judgment as

         _____________________
         *
             This opinion is not designated for publication. See 5th Cir. R. 47.5.
Case: 22-40479         Document: 00516702487       Page: 2    Date Filed: 04/05/2023

                                    No. 22-40479

   a matter of law following a jury verdict in favor of Plaintiff-Appellee Jill
   Trahan Dougay. Finding no error, we AFFIRM.
                                             I.
          On April 28, 2019, Dougay was shopping at a Dollar General store in
   Bridge City, Texas. While Dougay was walking down an aisle towards a store
   employee to ask a question, she tripped on a metal platform cart holding blue
   plastic swimming pools and sustained injuries to her foot and ankle. Dougay
   filed a premises liability suit against Dollar General in Texas state court for
   damages she sustained as a result of the fall. Dollar General removed the case
   to federal court.
          The case proceeded to trial, and at the close of Plaintiff’s evidence,
   Dollar General moved for judgment as a matter of law under Federal Rule of
   Civil Procedure 50(a). Dollar General argued that the placement of the pool
   display did not pose an unreasonable risk of harm, and even if it did, the harm
   was open and obvious. The district court denied the motion.
          At the conclusion of the trial, the jury returned a verdict on liability,
   finding that Dougay was thirty-two percent at fault and Dollar General was
   sixty-eight percent at fault. Consistent with the jury’s verdict, the district
   court entered a final judgment awarding Dougay $357,110.14. Following the
   verdict, Dollar General filed a renewed motion for judgment as a matter of
   law under Rule 50(b). It again asserted that the evidence was legally
   insufficient to support the jury’s verdict because the pool display was open
   and obvious and, therefore, it did not owe Dougay a duty to warn.
          The district court denied Dollar General’s renewed motion, finding
   that there was “ample evidence” that supports the jury’s verdict. The
   district court found this evidence included a video of the incident and
   Dougay’s testimony that she could not see the front part of the cart that she
   tripped on. It additionally rejected Dollar General’s assertion that because

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Case: 22-40479           Document: 00516702487              Page: 3       Date Filed: 04/05/2023

                                            No. 22-40479

   Dougay knew the pools were raised off the ground that “she necessarily knew
   of the presence and location of the supports on which the display rested.”
   Specifically, the district court refused to “indulge” the inference that
   because Dougay knew the pools rested on a cart, she therefore knew about
   the location of any protrusions from the cart. Dollar General timely appealed.
                                                      II.
           “A motion for judgment as a matter of law . . . in an action tried by
   jury is a challenge to the legal sufficiency of the evidence supporting the
   jury’s verdict.”1 We review a district court’s denial of a Rule 50 motion for
   judgment as a matter of law de novo, using the same legal standard as the
   district court.2 Although our review is de novo, “we recognize that our
   standard of review with respect to a jury verdict is especially deferential.”3
   Accordingly, a “litigant cannot obtain judgment as a matter of law unless the
   facts and inferences point so strongly and overwhelmingly in the movant’s
   favor that reasonable jurors could not reach a contrary conclusion.”4
                                                     III.
           Dollar General asserts that the swimming pool display was open and
   obvious as a matter of law and therefore Dougay failed to establish that it
   owed her a duty to warn. Under Texas law,5 a property owner “generally has

           _____________________
           1
            Flowers v. S. Reg’l Physician Servs., Inc., 247 F.3d 229, 235 (5th Cir. 2001) (internal
   quotation marks and citation omitted).
           2
               Nobach v. Woodland Vill. Nursing Ctr., Inc., 799 F.3d 374, 377 (5th Cir. 2015).
           3
               Flowers, 247 F.3d at 235 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).
           4
             OneBeacon Ins. Co. v. T. Wade Welch & Assocs., 841 F.3d 669, 675 (5th Cir. 2016)
   (internal quotation marks and citations omitted).
           5
             We apply Texas substantive law to this diversity case. See Austin v. Kroger Tex.
   L.P., 746 F.3d 191, 196 (5th Cir. 2014) (per curiam).

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                                           No. 22-40479

   no duty to warn of hazards that are open and obvious or known to the
   invitee.”6 A hazard is considered open and obvious “when the evidence
   conclusively establishes that an invitee would have knowledge and full
   appreciation of the nature and extent of danger, such that knowledge and
   appreciation of the danger are considered as proved as a matter of law.”7
   This is an objective inquiry that asks “what a reasonably prudent person
   would have known under similar circumstances.”8 Finally, in applying this
   objective test, courts must consider the “totality of the particular
   circumstances the plaintiff faced.”9
          On appeal, the parties dispute whether Dougay established that Dollar
   General owed her a duty to warn. Dollar General contends that the evidence
   presented at trial “firmly established the claimed premises defect was open
   and obvious” and the only evidence to the contrary was Dougay’s conclusory
   and unsupported testimony that she could not see the front of the cart. It
   specifically argues that a reasonably prudent person “who saw the swimming
   pools when approaching the display, deduced there was something
   underneath to support the pools, and navigated around the pools, all of which
   Dougay did, would have been able to see the front of the cart if [he/she] had
   merely looked.”
          Having reviewed the briefings, evidence presented at trial, and the
   closed-circuit video, we cannot say that “the facts and inferences point so
   strongly and overwhelmingly in [Dollar General’s] favor that reasonable

          _____________________
          6
              Austin v. Kroger Tex., L.P., 465 S.W.3d 193, 204 (Tex. 2015).
          7
             Los Compadres Pescadores, L.L.C. v. Valdez, 622 S.W.3d 771, 788 (Tex. 2021)
   (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).
          8
              Id. (citing Tex. Dep’t of Hum. Servs. v. Okoli, 440 S.W.3d 611, 614 (Tex. 2014)).
          9
              Id. at 788-89 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).

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                                          No. 22-40479

   jurors could not reach a contrary conclusion.”10 Despite Dollar General’s
   assertions to the contrary, there was evidence presented at trial, including
   Dougay’s testimony, video footage, and testimony from Dollar General’s
   corporate representative,11 which provide a legally sufficient evidentiary basis
   for the jury’s verdict that the front of the cart was not open and obvious.12
   And although Dollar General points to conflicting evidence in the record,
   “we are not free to reweigh the evidence or to re-evaluate credibility of
   witnesses” and cannot “substitute for the jury’s reasonable factual
   inferences other inferences that we may regard as more reasonable.”13
           We therefore conclude that the district court did not err in denying
   Dollar General’s motions for judgment as a matter of law under Rules 50(a)
   and 50(b). For these reasons, and those given by the district court, we
   AFFIRM.

           _____________________
           10
            Coffel v. Stryker Corp., 284 F.3d 625, 630 (5th Cir. 2002) (internal quotation
   marks and citation omitted).
           11
              Dollar General’s corporate representative testified that she could see the front of
   the cart as “somebody who has been around these for a while” but that “[d]epending on
   the angle that” a customer was coming from, they may not be able to see the front of the
   cart.
           12
              Plaintiffs’ reliance on Reeves v. Home Depot, U.S.A., Inc., No. 16-CA-615, 2018
   WL 405120 (W.D. Tex. Jan. 12, 2018) is inapposite. Unlike the situation in Reeves where
   the court found “there was nothing obscuring the platform . . . from view,” Dougay
   presented evidence to the jury that the front of the cart was obscured from view at the angle
   she was walking down the aisle. See id. at *4 (holding that “[a]ny person walking down the
   aisle should have seen the stationary and openly visible order picker and walked around it,
   as Reeves did twice before ultimately tripping over its protruding platform”).
           13
              McBeth v. Carpenter, 565 F.3d 171, 176 (5th Cir. 2009) (internal quotation marks
   and citation omitted).

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