In Lee v. K&N Management, Inc., the plaintiff sued a store and barbecue after tripping on ground cover near the store entrance. Before going to the store to pick up dessert, she’d been eating dinner with her mother and brother, and she drank a single margarita. At the store, her mother pulled the car up to the sidewalk instead of parking, and the woman got out of the car, wearing flip flops.
After leaving the car and stepping forward, the plaintiff slipped on ground cover, which she later claimed had grown out of the flowerbed and onto the sidewalk. A store employee who was also a friend of the family later spotted her fall from 25 feet away. After the fall, he saw that plants had grown 10 inches out of the flowerbed and onto the sidewalk. The plaintiff suffered a fractured ankle, which necessitated two surgeries.
The plaintiff sued under theories of negligence and premises liability. The store moved for summary judgment. It argued that the overgrowth wasn’t dangerous as a matter of law under premises liability law, that the store neither knew nor should have known of the defect, and that there wasn’t evidence of either of these elements. The plaintiff argued that it was reasonable to infer that the plant grew slowly in growing over the edge of the flowerbed, which raised a factual issue about whether the store should have known about the defect. She didn’t address the argument that a plant overgrowth was not dangerous as a matter of law.