Minor v. Red River Par. Police Jury

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CLAUDEIDRA MINOR Plaintiff-Appellant v. RED RIVER PARISH POLICE JURY AND ABC INSURANCE COMPANY Defendants-Appellees

No. 54, 182-CA

Court of Appeals of Louisiana, Second Circuit

January 12, 2022

Appealed from the Thirty-Ninth Judicial District Court for the Parish of Red River, Louisiana Trial Court No. 36, 838 Honorable Eric R. Harrington, Judge Ad Hoc

BREITHAUPT, DUBOS, & WOLLESON, LLC By: Michael L. DuBos Adam R. Karamanis Counsel for Appellant

MARICLE & ASSOCIATES By: Gregory A. Grefer Counsel for Appellees, Red River Parish Police Jury and Travelers Indemnity Company

Before PITMAN, STEPHENS, and HUNTER, JJ.

PITMAN, J.

Plaintiff Claudeidra Minor appeals a summary judgment granted in favor of Defendant Red River Parish Police Jury (the "Police Jury"). For the following reasons, we reverse and remand.

FACTS

On November 2, 2015, Plaintiff, an attorney for the Louisiana Workforce Commission, was leaving the Red River Parish Courthouse when her shoe heel caught on a torn piece of outdoor carpet that covered the concrete stairs. Plaintiff fell from the top of the staircase to the bottom, tumbling and hitting various parts of her body, including her head, on the way down. She suffered injuries to her neck, back, head legs, hands, arms, feet, knees and other parts of her body, as well as cuts and bruises. She looked up at the stairs from the bottom and noticed a tear in the carpet on the edge of the top stair. She did not take pictures of the carpet or the stairs on the day of the fall, but returned to the courthouse a month later and photographed the alleged defect in the carpet, which she claimed caused her fall.

Plaintiff filed suit against the Police Jury and its fictitious insurer^[1] and alleged that her injuries were caused by its negligence and that of its employees and that this negligence was the cause in fact of her accident. She claimed it failed to provide a safe entrance to, and exit from, the courthouse; failed to properly inspect and supervise the tidiness of the steps around the courthouse; failed to timely inspect and supervise the premises to avoid the accident; failed to properly instruct the maintenance crew to keep the premises free and clear of defects and obstructions; and failed to warn of the defect. Plaintiff also alleged that she had a claim based in strict liability because the Police Jury knew or should have known of the dangerous defect of the carpet on the stairs, which was under its control and over which it had custody.

Discovery ensued, and on December 17, 2020, the Police Jury filed a motion for summary judgment on the grounds that Plaintiff could not prove essential elements of her claim against it, i.e., that it had knowledge of the allegedly defective condition or that the condition caused the fall. In support of its motion, it attached the petition; Plaintiff's original and supplemental depositions; and the deposition and affidavit of Jessie Davis, Parish Manager for the Courthouse of Red River Parish.

The Police Jury contended that Plaintiff was unable to meet her burden of showing there were genuine issues of material fact regarding its constructive notice of the alleged defect on the stairs. In support of this assertion, it pointed out that at her deposition, Plaintiff testified that the first time she noticed the defect in the carpet was after her accident. She did not notice it on her way into the courthouse or before her accident. She knew of no witnesses who could testify why she fell and was not aware of any other complaints about the carpet before her fall. She did not know if there were any changes in the carpet between her first and second visit to the courthouse, and she was unable to prove that the condition existed for a significant period of time prior to her fall. There was no evidence to establish when the condition existed and nothing from which to infer notice. The Police Jury further asserted that its witness, Mr. Davis, who was in charge of inspecting the building, did not recognize that the condition of the carpet created a hazard. In fact, he testified that he was not even aware Plaintiff had fallen until almost a year after the accident. He had no prior knowledge or report of any issue with the carpet and does not know when the tear in the carpet appeared.

Plaintiff opposed the motion for summary judgment with her deposition, an affidavit and Mr. Davis's deposition. She stated that although she did not see the defect in the carpet prior to her fall because she was looking straight ahead and not down at her feet, she is sure the defect existed at the time of the fall because her heel caught on the stair and her foot was immobilized, causing the fall. She claimed that there is no other explanation for the sensation she experienced when the fall occurred and that the defect in the carpet had to have been the catalyst for her fall. She testified that the carpet showed signs of having been frayed, torn, degraded and discolored. The Police Jury provided information that the carpet had been installed in November 2010, and her accident occurred in November 2015. It had been exposed to weather of all kinds in those five years. Although Plaintiff admitted she did not take pictures of the stair with the gaping hole between the carpet and the stair until a month after her accident, she claimed that the carpet looked the same a month later as it did on the day of the accident. She also stated that the defective condition was one that only occurs over a long period of time.

Plaintiff asserted that the Police Jury had constructive notice of the defect because the condition of the frayed and torn carpet indicated it had been that way for some time. She stated that had the Police Jury used reasonable diligence in inspecting the property within its control, it would have discovered the defect and repaired it. She contended that she only needed to show that there were genuine issues of material fact concerning constructive notice of the defect to defeat the Police Jury's motion for summary judgment.

The motion for summary judgment was heard on February 3, 2021, and the trial court granted it in favor of the Police Jury and dismissed Plaintiff's suit against it. The trial court's oral reasons for judgment addressed both causation and constructive notice issues, stating as follows:

Plaintiff alleges that her shoe heel caught on something in the area of the carpet separation. . . . [S]he didn't actually see what caused the heel to catch as it occurred. After falling and looking at the area where she felt her heel get caught, she saw the carpet separation. She doesn't know whether the separation existed before she fell, but, quote, reasonably infers, closed quote, that it existed because it was the only observable flaw in her line of travel that could explain the mechanism of her fall. . . I'm of the opinion that this rises above the level of speculation and constitutes factual support sufficient to create a genuine issue of material fact as to whether there was a defect that created an unreasonable risk of harm.

As to the issue of notice, the trial court reviewed Mr. Davis's deposition and determined that in 2015, Mr. Davis and the maintenance crew performed daily inspections of the area around the courthouse, cleaned up cigarette butts and noted any hazardous defects. Mr. Davis used the entrances to the courthouse frequently. While the Police Jury did not have a formal safety or hazard inspection plan that required periodic inspection, the daily inspections and clean-up would have alerted them to any hazardous defects.

The trial court found that the burden was on Plaintiff to show that the Police Jury had constructive knowledge of the defect and that Plaintiff had failed to meet her burden of proof on this issue. For these reasons, the trial court found there was no genuine issue of material fact as to actual or constructive knowledge of any defect. The summary judgment was granted on that issue alone.

Plaintiff appeals.

DISCUSSION

Plaintiff argues that the trial court erred in concluding that she failed to show that a genuine issue of material fact existed as to whether the Police Jury had actual or constructive knowledge of the defect in the carpet. She argues that a genuine issue of material fact exists when reasonable persons could reach different conclusions regarding the state of the evidence.

Plaintiff also argues that public entities are responsible for damages caused by the condition of buildings within their care and custody. She points out that she has to prove custody, that the thing was defective because of a condition which creates an unreasonable risk of harm, that the public entity had actual or constructive notice of the defect and failed to take corrective measures within a reasonable time and that the defect was the cause in fact of her harm.

Plaintiff further argues that courts have routinely permitted reasonable inferences to be drawn from circumstantial evidence, and she asserts that her testimony regarding her failure to see the tear in the carpet before her heel got caught in it can be mitigated by the fact that the carpet installed five years before her fall, showed obvious signs of degradation. It is frayed in multiple locations and is noticeably discolored. She claims that this is a reasonable inference which any lay person can make that can be relied upon. The carpet was located outdoors and has been continuously exposed to the elements for five years. Thus, she argues, it matters not that Mr. Davis claims he was not aware that the carpet was worn when he knew or should have known it was, since it was his job to discover and address the issue.

Plaintiff claims that Mr. Davis's statement that he did not have actual or...