HARRISBURG – A Pennsylvania appeals court has reinstated a lawsuit by a woman who claimed she slipped and fell on a produce spill in a grocery store.
Jeanette Gumby sued Karns Prime and Fancy Food, Ltd., claiming she fell and hurt her shoulder, neck and back in 2015 after slipping on liquid that had spilled on the grocery store floor.
The trial court dismissed the case last June on the grounds that Gumby “did not know how the grape or grape liquid got to the floor” and never established that the store employees were aware of the spill.
But the store’s general manager and an employee testified in depositions that bags of grapes would “routinely” come open and spill to the floor. The employee also said she never received any training on floor maintenance or safety. There was also testimony that the store "had no written policies or procedures for checking the produce section or any aisle for debris or hazards."
“Given this evidence, we find that there was a genuine issue of material fact as to whether [the store] exercised reasonable care to discover and to protect against the dangerous condition of fallen grapes and their juice, and this genuine issue should have been submitted to the jury, as fact-finder,” the Superior Court of Pennsylvania ruled Dec. 30.
Superior Court of Pennsylvania case number 1030 MDA 2019