Plaintiff Karimah Sharif slipped and fell, allegedly on ice, while walking down the exterior steps of the rear entrance of defendant’s commercial building. On the morning of the accident, plaintiff had visited her son who had an office in the building and did not notice any ice on the steps. The issue in Sharif v. Dominant Domain, LLC, 2023 N.J. Super. Unpub. LEXIS 368 (App. Div. Mar. 14, 2023) was whether the plaintiff was entitled to pursue a personal injury lawsuit against the defendant commercial property owner when she did not recall seeing ice, nor was plaintiff able to prove that the defendant property owner had actual or constructive notice of the ice on the steps.
While the plaintiff did not notice any ice while walking up the steps upon her arrival, when she left the building, she started going down the steps and ended up on the ground. She testified at her deposition that she saw ice on the bottom steps but could not recall exactly how many of the five steps she traversed had ice. Plaintiff could not recall seeing ice on the top couple of steps, which she claimed she slipped upon.
It did not snow or rain on the day of the accident and plaintiff could not recall the last time it had snowed. The owner of the building testified at a deposition that there was no precipitation on the steps, although there were leftover piles of snow from the previous storm. Based upon the owner’s observation immediately after the accident, she did not observe any ice on the steps.
Further, the owner and her operations manager examined the steps each time they entered or exited the building. The stairs were inspected up to 20 times a day. However, on the day of the incident, the owner had entered the building only once before plaintiff’s fall.
The defendant property owner filed for a summary judgment, claiming that there was no evidence to demonstrate that it possessed actual or constructive notice of the alleged dangerous condition on the stairs. The trial court judge rejected plaintiff’s claim and found that plaintiff had failed to prove that the defendant had actual or constructive notice of the dangerous condition. Further, the trial court noted that the plaintiff failed to present an expert liability report to establish a standard of care regarding snow removal protocols and noted that the stairs were inspected several times a day.
Upon appeal, the Appellate Division agreed that the plaintiff was required to prove that the defendant had actual or constructive notice of an alleged dangerous condition to pursue a negligence claim. Further, the Appellate Division noted that “[a] defendant may counter with evidence it conducted regular inspections of the site where the injury occurred.” To prove constructive notice, the plaintiff had to prove 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.”
The Appellate Division agreed with the trial court’s conclusion that there were no facts to support that the defendant proprietor had actual or constructive notice of an icy condition prior to plaintiff’s fall. The Court noted the plaintiff’s lack of recall of seeing ice on the steps she fell upon either prior or after her fall. She failed to offer evidence of weather conditions that could have proven ice accumulated on the steps between the time she went into the building in the morning and at the time she exited in the afternoon. Further, she could not recall the last time it had snow or precipitated.
The Appellate Division noted the undisputed testimony that the proprietor and her staff frequently checked the exterior pathways around the building. Further, it pointed out that the proprietor did not see any ice or precipitation in this area before or after the accident. Thus, plaintiff was unable to demonstrate that the defendant proprietor had actual or constructive notice of an icy condition on the steps.
Finally, the Court noted that to the extent plaintiff attempted to claim a structural defect of an adjacent gutter which may have dripped and caused a patch of ice, she was required to proffer an expert report “about the construction, design, condition, or maintenance of the gutter or its placement in relation to the stairs.” Hence, the Appellate Division found that plaintiff failed to establish a prima facie case of negligence and held that the defendants were entitled to a summary judgment as a matter of law. Thus, the Court affirmed the trial court’s decision to dismiss the case.