The plaintiff Veronica Gilmore was bowling with her friends on New Year’s Eve 2009 when she fractured her wrist as a result of a slip and fall after she released her ball and stepped back. She did not notice anything on the floor before she approached the lane, but noticed her clothes were “slimy damp” from an unknown substance after she got up from her fall. She sued the defendant bowling alley for her injuries in Gilmore v. Nationwide Bowling Corp., 2015 N.J. Super. Unpub. LEXIS 710 (April 2, 2015 App. Div.) The trial court dismissed her case and she appealed, claiming that the trial court erred in its decision.
Gilmore claimed that the trial court had erred in ruling that no rational fact-finder could find that she had slipped and fell due to a foreign substance on the floor because the bowling alley allowed beverages in the area of the accident. Further, in this appeal, she claimed that she had offered evidence that the defendant had actual or constructive notice of the foreign substance and failed to remove it to prevent her accident.
As a business invitee, the bowling alley owed the plaintiff a duty to keep the bowling lane free of foreign substances in the lane where she bowled. However, she presented no facts to support her argument that she fell on a foreign substance that was spilled on the floor by one or more messy patrons drinking or carrying beverages in the prohibited area of the bowling alley. She offered no proof as to what she fell on, except her assertion that it was a liquid.
Further, the plaintiff failed to link another bowler’s spilled drink, which was cleaned up one hour before her accident, as the cause of her accident. She likewise failed to offer any evidence that the spill of ice was the cause of her fall.
The Appellate Division noted that the mere occurrence of prior spills does not prove that the defendant was negligent in allowing a foreign substance on plaintiff’ bowling lane and such negligence was a proximate cause of plaintiff’s fall. Plaintiff was not able to offer any proof that the defendant had a reasonable opportunity to discover and clean up the substance that caused her fall. The appeals court found that the plaintiff was speculating as to how the foreign substance got on the floor, that the defendant should have known of its existence, and that the defendant had a reasonable opportunity to clean it up prior to her fall. Thus, the Appellate Division affirmed the trial court’s order, dismissing the complaint.
