Plaintiff Vito Collucci fell on ice and snow while walking towards a restaurant in the parking lot of a multi-tenant strip mall. He sued the owner of the shopping center, the restaurant, as well as other tenant stores located in the strip mall. The issue in Collucci v. Cosima Cassese, 2025 N.J. Super. Unpub. LEXIS 186 (App. Div. Feb. 5, 2025) was whether the commercial tenants could be liable for his fall in the parking lot in front of the building.
The strip mall was owned by defendant Cassese Enterprises, Inc. (“Cassese”). The mall contained a restaurant (Amore Restaurant) and other tenants. Plaintiff had been eating dinner at the Amore Restaurant with his family. He parked in the parking lot in front of the building. After dinner, he went to his car to retrieve a cake he brought for dessert. He did not re-enter the restaurant through the front door but instead walked past the restaurant to the end of the building around the corner and toward the back where he intended to enter Amore’s kitchen through a back door. Plaintiff Collucci slipped on ice while walking in the parking lot as he was near the back door of Amore bringing the cake to the kitchen.
Defendant Amore, along with other named commercial tenants, had lease agreements with the owner Cassese. According to the lease, the common areas were subject to the exclusive control and management of the owner lessor. The owner’s representative admitted that Cassese was responsible to ensure that no dangerous snow or ice conditions existed in the parking lot of the strip mall. Cassese hired PL Landscaping to clear snow and ice at the shopping center. Further, the owner’s representative admitted that she did not expect the defendant tenants to clear snow and ice from the sidewalk in front of their respective premises.
At the trial court level, the defendant tenants filed for a summary judgment, arguing that they did not owe plaintiff a contractual or common law duty regarding the strip mall, that the parking lot fell under the definition of a common area, and that the owner/landlord Cassese was responsible for the maintenance of the common areas. This responsibility included snow or ice removal in the parking lot.
The trial court found that the lease agreement contained plain and unambiguous language requiring the tenants to maintain the areas in front of their stores and nothing more. Based upon this lease, the landlord intended to exercise control over common areas, such as parking lots.
Further, the court cited to the prior case of Kandrac v. Marrazzo’s Market in which the court had ruled that tenants in a multi-tenant shopping center, sharing a common area parking lot, were under no contractual duty to maintain the common areas, and were not responsible for a fall in the parking lot.
Further, the trial court found that the plaintiff fell in an area of the parking lot that was not on the leased premises of any tenant nor on the sidewalk that abutted their store fronts. Rather, Plaintiff was going to the rear of the restaurant, which was not a defined route to any of the tenants’ premises. Accordingly, the trial court granted the tenant’s motions for summary judgment, dismissing the lawsuit.
The plaintiff appealed this order to the Appellate Division, arguing that the tenants did have a contractual and common law duty to clear the snow and ice in the area of plaintiff’s fall.
The Appellate Division began its analysis by reviewing the lease agreement. It noted that the area where plaintiff fell was not a sidewalk or a walkway but rather the parking lot blacktop on the side of the building, which did fall under the definition of a common area under the lease and which was under the exclusive control of the landlord. Further, the Court pointed out that the landlord’s representative had agreed that it was the landlord’s obligation to remove snow and ice from the parking lot and the sidewalk and, in fact, hired a contractor to fulfill that obligation. The Appellate Division found that the defendant tenants did not have a contractual duty to remove snow and ice from the area of plaintiff’s fall.
The Appellate Division ruled that the Kandrac case did apply, which case had similar facts – the tenants were in a multi-tenant shopping center, sharing a common area parking lot with a lease that did not impose any contractual duty on the tenants to maintain the common areas. According to that case, the Court had found that the landlord was responsible for any negligence in maintaining the parking lot.
Thus, the Appellate Division found that Kandrac was the controlling law in these circumstances and reiterated that “as a general rule, when a commercial tenant in a multi-tenant shopping center has no control or contractual obligation to maintain a parking lot shared with other tenants, the common law does not impose a duty upon the tenant to do so.” Hence, the Court agreed with the trial court decision and affirmed the summary judgment order, dismissing the complaint as to the tenant defendants.
