Premises liability; Notice; Lowrey v LMPS & LMPJ, Inc; Premises owners’ duty to inspect for dangers on behalf of invitees; Price v Kroger Co of MI

While the court concluded that the trial court erred in finding “Lowrey abolished a premises owner’s duty to inspect for hazardous conditions on the property[,]” it affirmed summary disposition for defendant-casino based on lack of notice. Plaintiff alleged injuries after falling from a chair in the casino. The court noted that he was correct premises owners’ duty “to inspect for dangers on behalf of invitees is a longstanding principle of Michigan law.” In addition, “Lowrey explicitly affirmed this duty to inspect.” That case simply clarified how the duty operates at the summary disposition stage. The appeal depended on whether plaintiff presented “sufficient evidence to establish a genuine issue of fact concerning the element of constructive notice.” Defendant was correct that there was no evidence proving “the defect had ‘existed [for] a sufficient length of time that [defendant] should have know[n] of it.’” Rather, the evidence arguably indicated the contrary. Plaintiff relied on defendant’s safety manager’s testimony about “defendant’s use of 24-hour surveillance and employees regularly patrolling the casino floor to imply some failure in defendant’s duty to reasonably inspect the premises.” But without evidence “the defect existed for some significant amount of time before plaintiff’s fall or of some other negligent action, this testimony merely affirms that defendant had proper practices in place for detecting potential hazards. And defendant’s safety manager specifically recognized that no employees were made aware of any issue with the chair, either through prior incidents, customer complaints, or their own inspection practices. From this evidence, the more reasonable explanation is that the defect either had not existed for an amount of time that it should have been detected and fixed, or that the nature of the defect itself made it undiscoverable regardless of when it arose.” Next, the court agreed with the trial court that the surveillance video showed “no significant underlying defect that should have been discovered—giving rise to constructive notice of a dangerous condition. Even” if the chair back leaned backward a bit further than those of adjacent chairs, it was not “of such a character that ‘reasonable minds might differ’ on the issue of constructive notice.” Without more, this did not show that defendant should have known “the chair back was going to collapse.”