Dileo v. Meijer Stores Ltd. P'ship
| Decision Date | 27 November 2019 |
| Docket Number | No. 17 C 3680,17 C 3680 |
| Parties | Pamela DILEO, Plaintiff, v. MEIJER STORES LIMITED PARTNERSHIP, Meijer Great Lakes Limited Partnership, Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois |
Mark Gerard Patricoski, Patricoski Law Offices, Gregory Andrew Patricoski, Mark G. Patricoski PC, Wheaton, IL, for Plaintiff.
Amy Joan Thompson, Chad Michael Skarpiak, Cunningham, Meyer & Vedrine, P.C., Joseph C. Sheahan, Tressler LLP, Chicago, IL, for Defendants.
Plaintiff Pamela DiLeo claims that she suffered serious injuries after slipping and falling in a puddle of dirty water, which she alleges accumulated on the floor of a Meijer retail store as a result of defendants' negligence. Specifically, plaintiff claims that defendants were negligent in their placement and maintenance of a floral display within the store and in the training and supervision of employees. Plaintiff's Third Amended Complaint asserts four counts--one for "negligence" and one for "negligent supervision and training"--against each of the two defendants, Meijer Stores Limited Partnership and Meijer Great Lakes Limited Partnership. The negligence claims allege that defendants or their agents breached their duty of care by, among other things, placing the display in an area of the store that lacked slip-resistant flooring; over-watering plants in the display; and failing to place trays underneath the plants to prevent water from leaking onto the floor. Plaintiff's negligent supervision and training counts challenge the manner in which defendants instructed and supervised their employees to ensure the use of "proper techniques" to water and maintain the floral displays. Before me is defendants' motion for summary judgment on the negligent supervision and training claims.
I previously denied defendants' motion for summary judgment on plaintiff's negligence claims. I concluded that unlike in Zuppardi v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. , 770 F.3d 644 (7th Cir. 2014), and Barrios v. Fashion Gallery , 255 F. Supp. 3d 728 (N.D. Ill. 2017), for example, where the plaintiffs had offered no evidence at all to establish the origin of the hazardous conditions, a reasonable jury could conclude on the record here that the water in which plaintiff slipped had leaked from a nearby floral display.1 Defendants argued in their first summary judgment motion that because Masterpiece Flower Company—whom defendants described as a "third-party vendor"—employed the individuals responsible for installing and maintaining the floral display, defendants were not liable for the alleged negligence. It is true that under Illinois law, if a "third person" is responsible for creating a dangerous condition on a landowner's premises, the plaintiff must show that the landowner had actual or constructive notice of the condition. In the classic case, however, including those defendants cite, the "third person" is a customer over whom the defendant exercises no control. See, e.g., Donoho v. O'Connell's, Inc. , 13 Ill.2d 113, 148 N.E. 2d 434, 439 (1958) ; Nieves v. U.S. , 980 F. Supp. 1295 (N.D. Ill. 1997). Defendants have offered neither argument nor authority to establish that the same notice analysis obtains when the "third person" is an entity such as Masterpiece, which was providing services on defendants' premises for defendants' benefit. To the contrary, Baker v. Costco Wholesale Corp. , 2016 IL App (1st) 152736-U, 2016 WL 3202117, at *5 (Ill. App. Ct. Jun. 9, 2016), confirms that a store owner may be liable to its customers for injuries caused by a third-party vendor's in-store activities. Accordingly, I remain unpersuaded that defendants are shielded from liability for plaintiff's injury simply because the employees who watered the plants were not defendants' own employees.2
And while plaintiff's claims for negligent supervision and training are indeed more tenuous, they are not so implausible or speculative as to warrant summary judgment in toto. Defendants reprise the argument that Masterpiece, not Meijer, was responsible for the floral display, then insist on that basis that they owed no duty to train or supervise the employee responsible for creating the puddle. In this connection, defendants point generally to the "Master Vendor Agreement" between Masterpiece and defendants to argue that defendants "had no contractual right to control Masterpiece." But the Master Vendor Agreement does not address the issue of control over defendants' premises, and I am not persuaded that Masterpiece's contractual obligation to care for and maintain the products it placed in Meijer stores cabins defendants' liability to its customers for torts committed in the performance of that agreement.3
At the end of the day, defend...
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