Premises liability; Constructive notice; Lowrey v LMPS & LMPJ, Inc; Open & obvious doctrine; Kandil-Elsayed v F & E Oil, Inc; Causation; Snow-removal practices; MCL 554.139(1)(a); Common areas; Allison v AEW Capital Mgmt, LLP

The court held that defendants were entitled to summary disposition on plaintiff’s common-law premises-liability and MCL 554.139 claims arising from her fall on ice in a townhome parking lot. Plaintiff alleged she slipped on ice near her vehicle, but she acknowledged that she did not know how long the ice had been present and that “it could have formed shortly before her fall.” On appeal, the court first held that plaintiff failed to establish constructive notice because “without evidence concerning how long the specific icy condition existed,” a jury could only speculate whether defendants had a reasonable opportunity to discover and remedy it. The court explained that “[g]eneral awareness that freezing temperatures were possible is not the same as notice of the particular patch of ice on which plaintiff fell.” The court next rejected plaintiff’s theory that defendants’ snow-removal practices created the hazard through runoff and refreezing because she offered no evidence connecting “those alleged runoff patterns to the precise location where she fell,” and speculation that the ice “could have resulted from defendants’ snow-removal practices” was insufficient to establish causation. Finally, the court found that plaintiff’s statutory claim failed because the evidence showed only “a localized patch of ice,” not that the parking lot was unusable for parking or ordinary access. The court emphasized that MCL 554.139(1)(a) does not require common areas to be “free from all snow or ice,” and plaintiff did not show the condition made the lot’s intended use “unavailable or effectively impossible[.]” Affirmed.