AUSTIN - A Texas jury thought Roel Canales deserved $6 million for tripping over a pallet holding watermelons at the Pay and Save grocery store, but the Texas Supreme Court wasn’t buying it.
Even if a jury thinks the openings in the pallet presented an unreasonable risk of harm, there’s no evidence to support their conclusion, the state high court ruled in a June 14 decision. No one had ever reported an injury from a watermelon display at any of Pay and Save’s 150 stores, the court observed, and there was a “complete absence” of reports from other large chains in Texas.
“Common or innocuous hazards are not unreasonably dangerous as a matter of law,” the court ruled. “Without this doctrine, a grocery store and everything in and around it could be characterized as unreasonably dangerous.”
Canales acknowledged he wasn’t looking down when he says he inserted the toe of a work boot into the open end of a pallet holding watermelons. He fell and broke his elbow, and a Duval County jury thought that was worth $6 million in damages.
An appeals court in San Antonio threw out Canales’ gross negligence claim but sent the premises liability claim back for a new trial. Both sides appealed, and the Texas Supreme Court said neither claim could survive legal review.
“To ensure that hindsight does not become an occasion for imposing limitless liability, we have said that landowners are neither insurers of a visitor’s safety nor required to make a premises foolproof,” the court said.
The appeals court erroneously concluded a jury could have inferred the pallet was unreasonably dangerous because a customer could conceivably get a foot stuck in it and fall. That error, the Supreme Court ruled, because the court didn’t have to credit the jury’s inference based on the evidence presented.
“The wooden pallet was not unreasonably dangerous,” the court concluded. “It was a common condition, a type of hazard that we encounter — and avoid — every day by exercising a modicum of common sense, prudence and caution."