Premises liability; Slip & fall in the parking lot; Whether defendant was a premises owner or “in possession & control of” the premises; Duty; “Control”; Ordinary negligence; Duty under contract; Meridian Mall Limited Partnership (MMLP)

The court held that plaintiffs failed to identify any duty defendant-ERMC (doing business as Meridian Mall (the Mall)) owed plaintiff-Sharron at the time of her fall. Also, “plaintiffs, as non-contracting third parties, could not maintain a claim in tort against ERMC.” Thus, the court reversed the trial court’s order denying ERMC’s motion for summary disposition. Sharron allegedly slipped and fell in the parking lot of the Mall. ERMC argued it was neither the premises owner nor in possession and control of the premises where she fell. ERMC argued there was “no genuine issue of fact that ERMC owed Sharron no legal duty when she fell in the parking lot.” The evidence tended “to establish that ERMC was not the owner of the premises, and that the owner was MMLP.” The court concluded there was “no evidence that the contract between MMLP and ERMC allowed ERMC to exercise direction over, dominate, regulate, or command in relation to the parking lot. Instead, under the terms of the contract, ERMC was merely to maintain the parking lot in a reasonably prudent manner by doing things like repairing potholes or parking spaces when necessary.” In sum, nothing in ERMC’s contract with MMLP suggested that “ERMC possessed and controlled the parking lot such that ERMC could be liable for failing to keep the parking lot reasonably safe under a theory of premises liability. Plaintiffs, for their part, [did] not offer any additional evidence to suggest that ERMC possessed and controlled the parking lot, but instead merely point to the contract provided by ERMC and assert that ERMC was ‘responsible for parking lot maintenance.’” Plaintiffs did not provide “caselaw or other authority to support their apparent assertion that this would expose ERMC to liability under a theory of premises liability. Indeed, . . . this contract did not ‘loan’ sufficient possession and control to ERMC such that ERMC could be liable under a theory of premises liability.”