First Cmtys. Mgmt., Inc. v. Holmes
| Decision Date | 09 January 2020 |
| Docket Number | A19A1829 |
| Citation | 837 S.E.2d 717 |
| Parties | FIRST COMMUNITIES MANAGEMENT, INC. v. HOLMES. |
| Court | Georgia Court of Appeals |
Brian Wade Johnson, Atlanta, for Appellant.
Alfreda LaBelle Williams, Decatur, for Appellee.
The defendant in this slip-and-fall case contests the denial of its motion for summary judgment. Because there is no evidence of a hazardous condition on the premises in question, we reverse.
On appeal from the grant or denial of a motion for summary judgment, we construe the evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party. Lakeshore Contracting v. Lopez-Hernandez , 351 Ga. App. 232, 830 S.E.2d 561 (2019). So construed, the evidence shows that Karyn Holmes lived in an apartment complex in Smyrna, Georgia. On October 23, 2015, Holmes and her daughter took the daughter’s car to a car cleaning area in the complex to vacuum out the car. Holmes got out of the car and stepped from the paved parking lot up to a landscaped area with embedded rocks surrounding the vacuum. Holmes reached for the vacuum, fell backwards, and was injured.
On October 19, 2017, Holmes filed a negligence action against First Communities Management, Inc., alleging that she had slipped on a foreign substance. Holmes was deposed, and during questioning by defense counsel she testified that she did not know what caused her to fall.
When Holmes’ own attorney later asked her opinion about why she fell, Holmes responded: Holmes further testified that there was no water on the rocks and that she did not encounter any type of liquid or hazardous condition on the ground.
First Communities moved for summary judgment, asserting, among other things, that there was no evidence of any hazardous condition. The trial court denied the motion, finding that there was evidence from which a jury could find that the rocks had been "made slippery by water from the car wash facility." The trial court issued a certificate of immediate review, and this court granted First Communities application for interlocutory review. This appeal followed.
First Communities contends that the trial court erred in denying its motion for summary judgment because there is no evidence of the essential element of Holmes’ claim that there was a hazardous condition on the premises. We agree.
[T]he threshold point of our inquiry in a slip-and-fall case is the existence of a hazardous condition on the premises. And it is well established that proof of a fall, without more, does not create liability on the part of a proprietor or landowner, because it is common knowledge that people fall on the best of sidewalks and floors. Thus, when the plaintiff cannot show the existence of a hazardous condition, she cannot prove the cause of her injuries and there can be no recovery because an essential element of negligence cannot be proven.
Taylor v. Thunderbird Lanes , 324 Ga. App. 167, 169-170 (1), 748 S.E.2d 308 (2013) (citations and punctuation omitted).
In this case, Holmes "had to prove that the condition of the [rocks] constituted an unreasonable hazard[.]" H. J. Wings & Things v. Goodman , 320 Ga. App. 54, 56 (1), 739 S.E.2d 64 (2013) (citation and punctuation omitted). But she has failed to offer any evidence that the embedded rocks in the landscaped area near the vacuum were wet and constituted a hazardous condition. Although Holmes speculates on appeal that there was water on the rocks from the car wash area, and the trial court made the same inference in denying summary judgment, Holmes has cited no evidence supporting such an...
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