Jefferson County v. Akins

487 S.W.3d 216, 2016 Tex. App. LEXIS 1935, 2016 WL 747477
CourtCourt of Criminal Appeals of Texas
DecidedFebruary 25, 2016
DocketNO. 09-14-00017-CV
StatusPublished
Cited by12 cases

This text of 487 S.W.3d 216 (Jefferson County v. Akins) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Jefferson County v. Akins, 487 S.W.3d 216, 2016 Tex. App. LEXIS 1935, 2016 WL 747477 (Tex. 2016).

Opinions

OPINION

CHARLES KREGER, Justice

Noryour Akins sued Jefferson County for injuries she sustained when she slipped and fell while in a common hallway of the Jefferson County Jail. A jury found in Akins’s favor, awarded damages, and the trial court signed a judgment based on the jury’s verdict. Jefferson County appeals from the final judgment and in three issues, contends there was insufficient evidence to support the jury’s findings and thus, the trial court erred by denying its [221]*221motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict and motion for new trial. We affirm the trial court’s judgment.

I. Background

On March 16, 2010, Akins, a Mid-State Services, Inc. employee working at the Jefferson County Jail, slipped and fell while leaving the jail after her shift ended. At trial, Akins testified that at the time of her accident, she was in control of the kitchen area of the County jail and supervised between eight and twenty-two inmates in food preparation for the facility. On the day of the accident, Akins’s shift began at 1 a.m. She supervised her crew that morning in the preparation and service of breakfast to the officers, which was served at 4:30 a.m. in the officers’ dining room. Akins and her crew were also responsible for preparing and delivering breakfast trays to prisoners being booked into the inmate population.- That morning they delivered all of the book-in trays before 4:30 a.m. Akins explained that her crew prepares the book-in trays and then places the trays on rolling carts, which they then roll out of the kitchen, through the officers’ diniiig room, and down the hallway to the book-in area. The following diagram was admitted into evidence.

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Akins admitted that when there was water on the trays,. the water would drip from the trays, down the cart, and onto the floor. She testified the kitchen usually needed two or three carts each morning to deliver the book-in meal orders.

After serving breakfast, Akins supervised her. crew in preparing for other meals until her shift ended. In preparing to leave for the day, Akins picked up her backpack and exited the kitchen through the officers’ dining room, passing in front of the steam table. As she crossed the [222]*222threshold exiting from the officers’ dining room to the hallway, Akins noticed Yvonne Scott, a Jefferson County employee, to her left approximately fifteen to twenty feet down the hallway from the doorway. Akins testified that she saw Scott supervising her crew mopping the hallway floor. Akins testified that she spoke to Scott as she walked through the doorway and then her foot hit something slippery on the floor. The “next thing [she knew, she] was on the floor.” Her feet had slipped out from under her. After she had fallen, she noticed that her back was wet, but did not know what substance was on the floor that caused her back to become wet. Akins recalled seeing something “shiny” on the floor by Scott’s crew. Scott came over and advised her not to move, and then Scott called for help.

Lori Siddle was Akins’s direct supervisor on the day of the accident and worked the shift immediately after Akins the day of the accident. Siddle was present that morning and was approximately three to five seconds behind Akins and saw Akins fall. It was Siddle’s opinion that Scott had mopped the area in which Akins had fallen because when Siddle looked down at the floor, it was damp and appeared to have been mopped. According to Siddle, the only other people in the immediate area were Scott and her crew.

Yvonne Scott testified that on the day of the accident, her crew was working in the book-in area. Her crew mopped that area of the facility multiple times each day. She testified that there was a “slippery floor” sign on the mop bucket her crew was using. It was her practice to dry-mop each area after it was mopped because she did not want to leave the floor wet for safety concerns.

Contrary to Akins’s testimony, Scott recalled that she was standing close to the doorway leading into the officers’ dining room, approximately one foot away from where Akins fell. She explained that she was standing in that location so she could warn people to be careful when they entered the book-in area of the hallway while her crew was mopping. It was her testimony that her crew had mopped up to the point in the hallway where she was standing. Scott denied though, that her crew had mopped the area where Akins fell. According to Scott, the area in which she was standing was not damp or wet.

According to Scott, she did not immediately noticé any water on the floor where Akins fell. Despite this claim, Scott admitted that she scolded her crew immediately after Akins fell because she thought they had mopped the area and left it wet, causing Akins to fall. Scott explained that Akins’s fall had been traumatic and she knew that Akins had fallen for a reason, so she assumed her crew was at fault and scolded them. In a written statement Scott prepared after the incident, she stated that her “trusties were drying the area again when [she] noticed drops of water on the floor in the doorway of [the officers’ dining room], as well as inside of [the officers’ dining room].”

In a second typewritten statement made almost nine months after the incident, Scott explained that after Akins fell, Scott looked to see if the area was wet and discovered only droplets of water leading from the kitchen door, through the officers’ dining room, down the book-in hallway, and up to the book-in desk. However, on cross-examination, Scott admitted that she had not included this detail in her first handwritten statement made on the day of the incident. Scott opined that the water came from the kitchen carts. She explained that it was common knowledge that the trays placed on the carts were dripping wet, which caused the carts to drip water from the kitchen, through the [223]*223officers’ dining room, and down the hall to the book-in area. She testified that it would have been the kitchen staffs responsibility to take care of the water from the carts.

Scott identified an additional circumstance that could cause the floors in the area to become slippery. Scott explained that the kitchen floor stayed wet.' Scott’s office was located near the kitchen and in order for her to visit the different areas in the jail from her office, she had to walk through the kitchen, táking the same path Akins took the day she fell. Scott explained that every time she walked through the kitchen, the bottom of her feet got wet so that when she crossed the threshold from the kitchen into the officers’ dining room, her feet remained wet. However, she denied seeing a skid mark of water on the floor on the day of the accident.

Akins acknowledged that the kitchen floor stays wet and occasionally has standing water. Akins admitted that when she exited the kitchen, her feet were always wet and there was nothing, between the kitchen and the officers’ dining.room for people to dry the bottom of their feet. Because the floor in the kitchen was always wet, Akins’s employer required all kitchen staff to wear either rubber boots or non-skid shoes. Akins recalled that on the day of the accident, she wore non-skid tennis shoes because she knew she had to walk on wet floors during her shift.

Akins admitted that part of her job was to identify slippery floors and to take steps to make the floors safe.

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Bluebook (online)
487 S.W.3d 216, 2016 Tex. App. LEXIS 1935, 2016 WL 747477, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/jefferson-county-v-akins-texcrimapp-2016.