Anyone who has ever gone shopping knows it’s easy to be distracted — and that sometimes leads to bumping into something, or someone — or worse.
Maryland’s Court of Special Appeals has weighed in on one such shopping accident.
In September 2016, Jacqueline Cador of Hyattsville, Maryland, her husband and daughter were shopping at YES Organic Market shortly before the grocery store closed for the evening.
She slipped on a wet floor that had been recently mopped — and eventually needed a partial knee replacement.
Cador filed a lawsuit in Prince George’s County Circuit Court, claiming contributory negligence on the part of the market.
In October 2020, before the case went to trial, the judge ruled in favor of the market, saying there was a “Caution: Wet floor” sign and a yellow mop bucket nearby.
However, Maryland’s Court of Special Appeals overturned the judge’s ruling for summary judgment and sent the case back for trial.
In its ruling, Maryland’s second-highest appeals court said it was the jury’s job — not the judge’s — to determine whether the woman saw or should have seen the “Caution: Wet floor” sign and the bucket and mop.
Cador’s attorneys had argued the floor sign was near the store entrance rather than near the freshly-mopped floor several aisles away. The yellow bucket and mop were located near the wet floor, but Cador’s suit said she never saw the sign or the bucket, or realized the floor was wet.
The three-judge panel said in cases where what happened is in dispute, jurors are the fact-finders, and the judge’s role is one of refereeing.
“We are not suggesting for a moment that this case, at trial, would be a ‘slam dunk’ for the plaintiff,” the panel concluded. “We have no idea what fact-finders may do with many of the possible disputes. We only know that the plaintiff did not deserve to lose by default before the burden of persuasion and the risk of non-persuasion had even begun.”
