Plaintiff Denean Davis was gambling at defendant’s casino in Atlantic City. After gambling for about an hour, plaintiff left the building to take a phone call. When she exited the building, the mat in front of the door was flush against the ground. Forty-two seconds later when she reentered the building, the rug was “buckled,” causing her to fall on the rug and suffer serious injuries. The issue in Davis v. DGMB Casino, LLC, d/b/a Resorts Casino Hotel, 2021 N.J. Super. Unpub. LEXIS 1003 (App. Div. May 25, 2021) was whether the defendant casino had a sufficient amount of notice of the alleged dangerous condition of its property to be liable for the plaintiff’s injury.
During the time period that the plaintiff had exited the building, no other patrons had exited or entered through that door in those forty-two seconds. When plaintiff fell, she suffered serious injuries to her back and right leg. She sued the defendant casino alleging negligence caused her injuries.
At the trial court level, the defendant filed a motion for summary judgment which was granted by the trial court judge. The judge “determined that defendant had no opportunity to discover and correct the condition of the mat in the forty-two second period between the time plaintiff exited and reentered through the same door.”
This dismissal was appealed to the Appellate Division. The Court noted that to establish defendant’s liability, plaintiff needed to show “(1) a duty of care, (2) a breach of that duty, (3) actual and proximate causation, and (4) damages.” As a business invitee, the defendant owed plaintiff “a duty of reasonable care to guard against any dangerous condition on [its] property that the owner either knows about or should have discovered.” The Appellate Division pointed out that the plaintiff must prove though that the defendant had actual or constructive notice of the dangerous condition that caused the accident. Without proof of notice, that would be fatal to the plaintiff’s claim of liability. Under the facts in this case, it was clear that the defendant casino did not have actual notice of the buckled rug upon which plaintiff fell.
To establish constructive notice, the plaintiff must be able to show that “the condition existed for such a length of time as reasonably to have resulted in knowledge and correction had the defendant been reasonably diligent.” It is well-settled law that the mere existence of an alleged dangerous condition is not constructive notice of it.
The Appellate Division noted that the rug became bucked in the forty-two seconds between the time plaintiff exited and then reentered the same door. The Court agreed with the motion judge that the forty-two seconds during which the rug buckled was insufficient to support a finding of constructive notice. Hence, the Appellate Division affirmed the trial court’s decision to dismiss the complaint.
