On July 16, 2024, Jacksonville Partner, Deana N. Dunham obtained an order granting Defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment in a trip and fall case involving a pallet in Plaintiff v. Defendant Retail Store Pallot Fall. The plaintiff filed suit against defendant alleging that Defendant Retail Store failed to maintain its premises in a reasonably safe condition and failed to warn her of a hazardous condition.  

Plaintiff tripped and fell on a pallet outside of Defendant Retail Store.  Plaintiff was a truck driver whose truck had broken down in the parking lot, where she remained for a majority of the day. She had gone into the store once during the day and went back out to her truck. While she remained at the store, she observed a row of merchandise stacked on pallets in the front of the store, with bags of soil stacked about waist or rib height. The row of stacked merchandise was adjacent to a fence such that there was a narrow walkway between the row of stacked merchandise and the fence to the garden department. Plaintiff testified that she observed other customers walking through the narrow pathway, and decided to do the same when her foot caught on the edge of the pallet and she fell to the ground. After the incident, she observed that the pallet was missing a board on the top.

The court noted that the First DCA case, Brookie v. Winn Dixie is instructive in this matter. The Brookie case involved a customer who tripped on a pallet in a retail store. The court found that the pallet was open and obvious, and that some conditions are so open and obvious that a landowner can reasonably assume that invitees will perceive them upon ordinary use of their senses, and are not hazardous as a matter of law. The court held that the undisputed evidence showed that the pallet, as described by Plaintiff was open and obvious, and the missing board did not make it less so. There was no evidence to indicate that the pallet was obscured, hidden or camouflaged.