Lacroix, M. v. Tri-State Properties LLC

CourtSuperior Court of Pennsylvania
DecidedMay 11, 2021
Docket1265 MDA 2020
StatusUnpublished

This text of Lacroix, M. v. Tri-State Properties LLC (Lacroix, M. v. Tri-State Properties LLC) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Superior Court of Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Lacroix, M. v. Tri-State Properties LLC, (Pa. Ct. App. 2021).

Opinion

J-A07018-21

NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37

MAXINE LACROIX : IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF : PENNSYLVANIA Appellant : : : v. : : : TRI-STATE PROPERTIES LLC, : No. 1265 MDA 2020 WAFFLE HOUSE, AND EAST COAST : WAFFLES INC. :

Appeal from the Order Entered September 14, 2020 In the Court of Common Pleas of Franklin County Civil Division at No(s): 2019-01980

BEFORE: BOWES, J., DUBOW, J., and STEVENS, P.J.E.*

MEMORANDUM BY DUBOW, J.: FILED: MAY 11, 2021

Appellant, Maxine LaCroix, appeals from the September 14, 2020 Order

entering summary judgment in favor of East Coast Waffles, Inc. (“ECW”), and

dismissing her Complaint with prejudice in this slip-and-fall negligence action.

She challenges, inter alia, the trial court’s application of the doctrine of hills

and ridges. After careful review, we affirm.

The relevant facts and procedural history are as follows. On November

24, 2018, at 8:55 AM, Appellant and her friend Maynard Burt entered the

Chambersburg Waffle House (“Waffle House”) owned by ECW. Appellant and

Mr. Burt left Waffle House approximately 25 minutes later, at 9:18 AM. After

stepping off the sidewalk and into the parking lot, Appellant slipped and fell. ____________________________________________

* Former Justice specially assigned to the Superior Court. J-A07018-21

As a result of her fall, Appellant sustained a left knee sprain and right rotator

cuff tear.

On May 17, 2019, Appellant filed a Complaint against ECW1 alleging

negligence. Appellant asserted that, on the morning of her fall, the weather

conditions were icy and the sidewalk by the entrance to Waffle House had not

been properly treated. Appellant noted the absence of signage alerting

patrons to possible slippery conditions. Appellant claimed that Waffle House

had breached its duty to her to ensure that its property was safe and suitable

for its intended purpose because it was foreseeable that icy weather conditions

were occurring and because it was aware that the ice on the sidewalk was a

hazard.

On June 18, 2019, ECW filed an Answer, and the matter proceeded

through discovery. On August 21, 2019, Appellant served her first set of

Interrogatories and Request for Production. On October 10, 2019, prior to

serving a formal response to the discovery request, ECW provided to Appellant

a surveillance video of Waffle House premises from the time of the fall. On

October 31, 2019, ECW served its formal Answers to Appellant’s discovery

request. In its Answers, ECW identified five employees it believed were

working at Waffle House at the time of the incident.

____________________________________________

1 Appellant originally named Tri State Properties, LLC, and Waffle House as defendants in the Complaint. By stipulation of the parties, on July 25, 2020, the trial court entered an Order permitting Appellant to amend the case caption to substitute East Coast Waffles as the defendant.

-2- J-A07018-21

On November 4, 2019, Appellant filed a Motion to Compel complete

discovery responses from ECW asserting that ECW’s Answers to

Interrogatories were insufficient. ECW filed a Response to the Motion to

Compel, and a Supplemental Response to Appellant’s First Set of

Interrogatories and Request for Production of Documents. Relevantly, in the

Supplemental Responses, ECW informed Appellant that, inter alia, it did not

possess any witness, employee, agent, and/or party statements. ECW also

provided additional information regarding Waffle House employees who were

working at the time of Appellant’s fall.

On January 24, 2020, Appellant deposed ECW employees Danielle

Manning and Michael Reed. That same day, ECW deposed Appellant.

On February 3, 2020, Appellant filed a Motion for Sanctions asserting,

relevant to the instant appeal, that, through the depositions, she discovered

that the Waffle House employees present at the time of Appellant’s fall each

prepared a report of the incident. Appellant alleged that the employees

presented the incident reports to ECW, that ECW retained the reports, and

that ECW had failed to produce these reports to her in discovery. Appellant

sought the immediate production of the reports, the payment of attorney’s

fees and punitive sanctions, and a jury instruction adverse to ECW.

On February 14, 2020, ECW filed a Response to Appellant’s Motion for

Sanctions. Although ECW conceded that Danielle Manning had testified that

she remembered completing a document or incident report and remembered

other employees also doing so and that Mike Reed had testified that

-3- J-A07018-21

employees, including him, may have completed incident reports, which could

have been sent on to Waffle House’s division manager, Matthew Kretsch, ECW

was unable to independently confirm the existence of any incident reports or

employee statements prepared following Appellant’s fall. In addition, ECW

denied that it failed to preserve such incident reports or employee statements,

if they had ever existed.2

ECW also included in its Response affidavits from: (1) Matthew Kretsch,

a Waffle House division manager; (2) Craig Knight, a representative of Waffle

House’s general liability department; and (3) Teresa Jenkins, the general

liability supervisor at Brentwood Services, the third-party administrator

responsible for administering general liability claims filed against ECW, each

of whom testified regarding the non-existence of employee reports or

statements pertaining to Appellant’s slip-and-fall incident.

Mr. Kretsch attested that he searched his records for the employee

statements referred to by Mike Reed and found no evidence of any incident

reports, statements, or any other documents related to Appellant’s fall. He

further attested that he did not destroy or dispose of any such statements,

and that he could not produce any such statements.

2 ECW also asserted that, even if the incident reports or statements had existed, Appellant was not prejudiced by ECW’s failure to produce them because Appellant had the opportunity to speak with every person who had been present when Appellant fell and because it produced surveillance video of Appellant’s fall.

-4- J-A07018-21

In his affidavit, Mr. Knight described Waffle House’s policy of gathering

handwritten statements from employees working at the time of an alleged slip

and fall. He affirmed that Waffle House’s general liability department

conducted an extensive search for incident reports from Appellant’s fall but

could not locate any.

Ms. Jenkins attested that, when Brentwood receives notice of a general

liability claim against ECW, it prepares an electronic claim file into which it

places documents related to the claim, including employee and witness

statements. She further attested that, upon receiving a discovery request in

this case for employee statements or incident reports, she conducted an

extensive search of Brentwood’s electronic claims files and could not locate

any evidence of any incident reports, statements, or other investigative

documents related to Appellant’s fall that predated the service of Appellant’s

Complaint. Ms. Jenkins noted that if such documents had existed, they would

have been saved to Brentwood’s electronic claims investigation files and could

not be destroyed, altered, or lost without a record, and no such record exists.

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Lacroix, M. v. Tri-State Properties LLC, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/lacroix-m-v-tri-state-properties-llc-pasuperct-2021.