Ramsey v. Lowe's Home Ctrs.

1

WILLIAM RAMSEY, Plaintiff, v. LOWE'S HOME CENTERS, LLC, Defendant.

Civil Action No. 6:24-CV-001-CHB-HAI

United States District Court, E.D. Kentucky, Southern Division

May 14, 2024

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

CLARIA HORN BOOM, UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT JUDGE

This matter is before the Court on the Motion to Dismiss filed by Lowe's Home Centers, LLC.^[1]See [R. 6]. Plaintiff William Ramsey responded to the motion, and Lowe's replied. See [R. 8]; [R. 12]. For the following reasons, the Motion to Dismiss will be denied.

I. Background

The following facts are drawn from Ramsey's Complaint. See [R. 1-2]. Ramsey is a resident of Pulaski County, Kentucky. See id. at ¶ 1. On December 7, 2022, Ramsey was shopping at a Lowe's store located at 2001 S. Hwy 21, Somerset, Kentucky. See id. at ¶ 4. On that day, Ramsey was injured while pulling plywood from a stack of plywood on a shelf. See id. at ¶ 5. Ramsey alleges that he had “requested assistance from agents, servants or employees of Defendant to pull plywood from the rack that was stacked so high that the Plaintiff could barely reach the top.” Id. at ¶ 6. Ramsey had located a group of three agents servants, or employees of Lowe's and asked them for help to pull the plywood, and those individuals indicated that they would come to help. See id. at ¶¶ 7-8. Ramsey waited by the stack, but no employee ever came to help. See id. at ¶ 9. Ramsey then again motioned to the employees for assistance with the plywood, but was ignored. See id. Ramsey proceeded to attempt to pull the plywood from the stack himself. See id. at ¶ 10. While pulling the plywood, “it came down onto his hand hard and in the process the force dislocated his right shoulder.” Id.

Ramsey went to the front of the store to find help for his injury and, at that time, he spoke to a female agent, servant, or employee of Lowe's and informed her of his injury and asked her to call a manager. See id. at ¶ 11. Ramsey was informed that there was no manager in the store at that time. See id. The incident with the plywood resulted in injury to Ramsey, including a “large traumatic right rotator cuff tear which required multiple surgeries.” See id. at ¶ 13.

Based on these facts, Ramsey alleges that the agents, servants, or employees of Lowe's failed to exercise ordinary care for the safety of the business invitees of Lowe's. See id. at ¶ 12. His Complaint alleges one count of negligence against Lowe's. See id. at ¶¶ 12-15. Ramsey initiated this action through the filing of his Complaint in Pulaski Circuit Court on December 6, 2023. See id. at 2. Lowe's removed the action to this Court on the basis of diversity jurisdiction on January 3, 2024. See [R. 1]. On January 6, 2024, Lowe's filed the instant Motion to Dismiss. See [R. 6]; see supra n.1. Ramsey responded to the motion, and Lowe's replied. See [R. 8]; [R. 12]. The motion stands submitted for review.

II. Legal Standard

Lowe's bases its Motion to Dismiss on Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6).^[2]To survive a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), “a complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.'” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007)). A claim is “plausible on its face” if the factual content in the complaint “allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.” Id. (citing Twombly, 550 U.S. at 556). This standard “is not akin to a ‘probability requirement,' but it asks for more than a sheer possibility that a defendant has acted unlawfully.” Id. (citing Twombly, 550 U.S. at 556). “Where a complaint pleads facts that are ‘merely consistent with' a defendant's liability, it ‘stops short of the line between possibility and plausibility of entitlement to relief.'” Id. (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 557) (internal quotation marks omitted). “Threadbare recitals of the elements of a cause of action, supported by mere conclusory statements, do not suffice.” Id. (citing Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555).

Determining if a complaint sufficiently alleges a plausible claim for relief is “a contextspecific task that requires the reviewing court to draw on its judicial experience and common sense.” Id. at 679. Further, the Complaint is viewed in the light most favorable to Ramsey, the allegations in the Complaint are accepted as true, and all reasonable inferences are drawn in Ramsey's favor. See Gavitt v. Born, 835 F.3d 623, 639-40 (6th Cir. 2016) (citing Jelovsek v. Bredesen, 545 F.3d 431, 434 (6th Cir. 2008)).

III. Analysis

In its motion, Lowe's argues that Ramsey has failed to state a claim for negligence under Kentucky law. See [R. 6-1, pp. 6-13]. In Kentucky, “[t]he elements of a negligence claim are (1) a legally-cognizable duty, (2) a breach of that duty, (3) causation linking the breach to an injury, and (4) damages.” Patton v. Bickford, 529 S.W.3d 717, 729 (Ky. 2016); see also City of Barbourville v. Hoskins, 655 S.W.3d 137, 140-41 (Ky. 2022) (“In any negligence case, the plaintiff must prove the following elements in order to prevail over the defendant: (1) the defendant owed the plaintiff a duty of care, (2) the defendant breached the standard by which his or her duty is measured, and (3) consequent injury.”) (internal quotation marks omitted). “Duty presents a question of law, whereas breach and injury are questions of fact for a jury to decide.” Patton, 529 S.W.3d at 729. “Causation presents a mixed question of law and fact.” Id.

Premises liability claims, like the one Ramsey asserts in this action, are a particular subset of Kentucky negligence law.^[3]See Littleton v. Lowe's Home Centers, LLC, No. 21-5033, 2021 WL 4058004, at *2 (6th Cir. Sept. 7, 2021) (“This is a case about premises liability, an offshoot of negligence.”); cf. Grubb, 523 S.W.3d at 416 (opinion of Hughes, J.) (“To begin at the beginning, this is a premises liability case involving the long-recognized subclass of ‘business premises' and the duties a possessor of such premises owes to ‘business invitees.'”).^[4] “A negligence claim brought under a theory of premises liability asserts that a land possessor has violated his duty to maintain his premises in a reasonably safe manner.” Hoskins, 655 S.W.3d at 141. “Historically, the scope of the duty owed by a land possessor was dependent upon the status of one claiming injury as either a trespasser, a licensee, or an invitee.” Id.

In this case, Ramsey was an invitee, as he was “an individual present on the premises at the explicit or implicit invitation of the property owner to do business or otherwise benefit the property owner.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Hayes v. D.C.I. Properties-D KY, LLC, 563 S.W.3d 619, 621 (Ky. 2018) (defining “invitee” as one who visits a property “with the possessor's consent as a member of the public for whom the property is held open or for the possessor's business”). “As a general rule, land possessors owe a duty to invitees to discover unreasonably dangerous conditions on the land and to either correct them or warn of them.” McIntosh, 319 S.W.3d at 388; see also Hoskins, 655 S.W.3d at 141.^[5]

“Conversely, conditions on the land that are not unreasonably dangerous do not implicate the land possessor's duty of care, and thus injuries arising from such conditions cannot give rise to the possessor's liability.” Grubb, 523 S.W.3d at 417. But “an obvious risk-posing condition on the property can be unreasonable if, despite the obviousness, the property possessor can still anticipate someone's being injured by it.” Id. at 419. Kentucky courts have explained that:

an unreasonably dangerous condition is one that is recognized by a reasonable person in similar circumstances as a risk that should be avoided or minimized or one that is in fact recognized as such by the particular defendant. One indication that a risk is not unreasonable is that a reasonable person in the defendant's shoes would not take action to minimize or avoid the risk.

Hoskins, 655 S.W.3d at 141 (cleaned up). “It is generally a question of fact to be presented to the jury whether an unreasonably dangerous condition existed on the land possessor's premises sufficient to trigger the duty to warn or ameliorate.” Id.

It is against this backdrop of law that the Court considers the parties' arguments. Lowe's first argues that it did not owe Ramsey a legal duty of care. See [R. 6-1, pp. 7-12]. In this context, Lowe's submits that “Kentucky courts have not imposed any duty on retailers to stop patrons from retrieving and loading merchandise or retrieving and loading merchandise unsafely onto a shopping cart” and that “[o]ther state and federal courts have, however, held that retailers do not owe a duty to patrons retrieving and loading merchandise in analogous circumstances.” Id. at 8. Lowe's cites various cases from other states and districts and argues that such “cases recognize the principle articulated by the Kentucky Supreme Court in Lanier v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., that a store owner is not an insurer of its customers' safety, and it is not absolutely liable to his customers.” Id. at 8-11. Second, and third, Lowe's argues that Ramsey has also not adequately pled the elements of breach or causation for his negligence claim.^[6]See id. at 12-13.

For his part, Ramsey argues that, through its motion, Lowe's “actually recognizes that there is a duty owed to retail business invitees” but then “poses a false dilemma by asserting there is no duty to assist customers and thus no cognizable claim.” [R. 8, p. 3]. Ramsey submits that his claim does not rest solely on the failure of Lowe's to provide assistance, but rather that “the plain...