The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has ruled that a homeowner "owed a duty of reasonable care to the plaintiff relative to the storage of firearms kept in her home, to which a mentally unstable and violent person was given unsupervised access." Accordindly, the Court reversed a grant of summary judgment…
Here is the latest premises case involving freshly fallen snow. In Clifford v. Crye-Lieke Commercial, Inc., No. M2005-00376-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. App. M.S. July 11, 2006), Judge Koch and his colleagues affirmed a grant of summary judgment in favor of the defendant in a slip and fall case involving freshly fallen snow.…
Here is a great opinion out of California that does a nice job of handling the “causation” issue in a case against a security guard company that is alleged to have failed to provide proper protection to a c-store employee. The case is Mukthar v. Latin American Security Company, B183968…
You have undoubtedly heard about the claim against a Benihana restaurant where a man allegedly died because he was hit in the face by a shrimp. The jury did not hold the restaurant liable. These were the facts according to the article at www.law.com: “On Jan. 27, 2001, Mr. Colaitis,…
When a employee is working on the property of another and is injured there is always a fight over whether the employee can sue the property owner who hired the injured person’s employer to perform the work. Here is a case out of California that the issue this way: “when,…
The Vioxx litigation is heating up in a public way again. There is a trial in state court in Texas involving the death of a 71 year old man – he allegedly took 25 mg of Vioxx daily for seven days sometime in the last 30 days before he had…
“If you have to go to the bathroom, you have to go, water on the floor or not.” That comes to us from Judge Susano, writing a concurring opinion in a new slip and fall case out of East Tennessee. The incarcerated plaintiff got up at 1:00 A.M. to use…
The New Jersey Supreme Court has held that a plaintiff is entitled to a res ipsa instruction in an case in which an automatic door unexpectantly closed and caused injury. Because of that determination, the plaintiff was entitled to get by a summary judgment motion and have a jury decide…
There has been a lot of talk about the decision of the Tennessee Supreme Court in the case of West v. East Tennessee Pioneer Oil Co.; even the Tennessesan has weighed in with an editorial. The Court held that convenience store employees owe a duty of reasonable care to persons…
This opinion by Judge Koch does a great job summarizing the “slip and fall” law as it exists in Tennessee. This decision does not include a discussion of the so-called “method of operation” theory; that particular topic is addressed in a recent decision of the Tennessee Supreme Court. If you…