Plaintiff Rosalie Soiro claimed that, while walking down an aisle, she slipped and fell on a clothes hanger on the floor of a Family Dollar Store in Orange Township. She further claimed that she hit her head on a shelf, landed on the floor, and suffered permanent injuries as a result of the fall. The issue in Soiro v. Family Dollar, 2025 N.J. Super. Unpub. LEXIS 2504 (App. Div. Dec. 3, 2025) was whether the plaintiff had been able to establish actual or constructive notice as to the hanger on the floor and, in the alternative, whether the mode of operation doctrine applied.
Plaintiff alleged that she suffered injuries to her neck, back, left shoulder and left knee due to her fall. She testified in her deposition that she was unaware of any hangers on the floor before she fell and did not see what caused her to fall. However, it was her testimony that two young boys in the store told her the hangers caused her to fall. She only saw the hangers on the floor after she fell.
During discovery, plaintiff did not depose any Family Dollar store employees or a corporate designee. She also failed to produce any medical records or expert reports establishing a causal connection between her fall and her claimed injuries.
After discovery concluded, the defendant store filed for a summary judgment. The defendant argued that plaintiff was unable to establish that it had actual or constructive notice of this alleged dangerous condition, the mode of operation doctrine did not apply, and plaintiff lacked medical proof of any injury causally related to the incident. In opposition, plaintiff argued that she was not required to establish that defendant had notice of the hangers on the floor because the mode of operation doctrine applied.
After hearing argument, the trial court granted defendant’s motion and dismissed the lawsuit. The trial court found that the defendant had failed to present evidence that defendant had either actual or constructive notice of the hanger and that this was not a mode of operation case.
This decision was appealed. The Appellate Division noted that for plaintiff to pursue a negligence claim against the store, she must demonstrate that the defendant had actual or constructive knowledge of the dangerous condition that caused her accident. The Court noted that the record was “devoid of any competent evidence to show or suggest actual or constructive notice to hold a defendant liable.” Plaintiff failed to present the incident report or deposition testimony from a store employee to demonstrate defendant had notice of the hanger on the floor.
Further, the Court noted that even if it were to accept plaintiff’s testimony as true, that a hanger was on the floor before her fall, there was no evidence defendant had the constructive knowledge the hanger was on the floor “for such a length of time as reasonably to have resulted in knowledge and correction had the defendant been reasonably diligent.” Hence, the Appellate Division found that the absence of actual or constructive notice of the dangerous condition was fatal to her claim of premises liability.
It also disagreed with the plaintiff that the mode of operation doctrine applied, which would have relieved her of demonstrating defendant’s actual or constructive notice of the alleged dangerous condition. The Appellate Division pointed out that the mode of operation rule was not a general rule of premises liability, “but a special application of foreseeability principles in recognition of the extraordinary risks that arise when a defendant chooses a customer’s self-service model.”
Thus, the Court noted that for a plaintiff to invoke the mode of operation doctrine, the plaintiff must demonstrate the dangerous condition arose as a result of the business’s self-service mode of operation.
Here, the Appellate Division found that her argument suffered from a fatal flaw. She had not established that the defendant operated a self-service business, although both parties described the business as a retail establishment. The Court found that without factual evidence regarding the nature of the merchandise for sale and the actual method of defendant’s business operations, plaintiff had not satisfied the requisite elements to invoke the mode of operation doctrine.
Even after giving all reasonable inferences to plaintiff, she had not established a dangerous condition existed on defendant’s property and that defendant was on notice of the condition. The Appellate Division found that “[t]o hold otherwise would impermissibly permit a jury to engage in conjecture about notice because it would have to speculate whether a hanger was on the floor, how the hanger came to be on the floor, and the duration of its existence on the floor.” Accordingly, the Appellate Division found that the defendant was entitled to summary judgment as a matter of law and affirmed the trial court’s decision.
