Premises liability; Slip on water on a bathroom floor; Duty; Failure to warn about a wet floor; Causation

The court concluded there was “a question of fact whether there were signs warning about the wet floor in defendant’s bathroom, and” as a result, there was a question of fact whether it “breached its duty to plaintiff.” Further, a question of fact existed as to whether its failure to warn her “about the dangerous condition on defendant’s land (i.e., the breach of defendant’s duty) was a cause in fact of” her injuries. Thus, the court reversed summary disposition for defendant and remanded. The primary issue was “whether defendant breached its duty to plaintiff by failing to warn her about this danger.” Defendant presented the affidavit of its employee (J), in which J “attested that she was mopping the bathroom’s floor when plaintiff entered the bathroom, and had placed ‘three wet floor signs prior to mopping the floor,’ so the signs were present when plaintiff fell. This evidence was sufficient to establish that defendant warned invitees like plaintiff about the dangerous condition on [its] land—the wet floor. This shifted the burden to plaintiff to establish a question of fact whether defendant had breached its duty to warn invitees like [her] about the wet floor. To do so, [she] relied on her deposition testimony in which she testified that she did not recall seeing any wet-floor signs on the ground or posted on the walls of the restroom before she fell. This established a question of fact” as to whether such signs were present. The “trial court reasoned that ‘[w]hether the Plaintiff saw the signs does not go to whether they were there.’ It is not apparent how this distinction makes a difference in this context. If [she] testified that ‘there were no wet-floor signs’ when she walked into the bathroom and someone asked [her] how she knew that, plaintiff would inevitably have to say that the basis for her belief was that she did not see any such signs. So, while the trial court’s distinction may be significant in other contexts, it is a distinction without a difference in the context of whether plaintiff’s testimony that she did not see any wet-floor signs established a question of fact as to whether such signs were placed.” As to the trial court’s alternative reasoning “that [her] testimony was ‘too tentative’ and ‘too equivocal[,]’” the court noted that she “clearly testified that she did not see any signs warning about the water on the floor of the bathroom. Whether testimony is equivocal or tentative generally goes to” its weight and evidence is not to be weighed at the summary-disposition stage.