The wet-floor sign was a minute away - the customer was not
A dealership employee mopped the floor, skipped the sign, and walked away. His coworker then called a customer right to the wet spot.
Maryland's Supreme Court ruled on September 25 that DARCARS Toyota of Silver Spring could not escape a slip-and-fall lawsuit by arguing its staff ran out of time to post a warning.
The customer was in for a routine oil change, waiting in the lounge while her car was serviced. She could not see the service desk from her seat. While she waited, a service advisor spotted dirty footprints near the desk and asked a lot attendant to mop them up.
The attendant mopped the floor. He did not put out a wet-floor sign before, during, or after. Once done, he left the area to fetch one - stored roughly a minute's walk away.
He never made it back in time. The advisor, who had watched the whole thing, called the customer to the desk to pick up her car. She walked over, slipped on the wet floor, and fell.
She sued DARCARS on two counts: premises liability, and negligent hiring, training, and supervision. The circuit court sided with the dealership on both, ruling it did not have enough time to post a sign. The Appellate Court of Maryland reversed on the premises liability count, and DARCARS took the fight to the state's top court.
The dealership leaned on a 2003 case where a restaurant dodged liability after a patron spilled drinks in a food court and someone else slipped before staff could react. But that involved a hazard created by a third party - no one on the restaurant's payroll saw it coming.
The Supreme Court was not persuaded. The lot attendant created the wet floor himself, as part of an assigned task. A jury could reasonably find that the dealership had options - put the sign out before mopping, warn the customer on her way over, or not call her to the freshly mopped area.
When a business's own employee creates a foreseeable hazard during assigned work, the employer cannot claim it did not know about the danger. Whether it responded reasonably is for the jury.
The court affirmed the Appellate Court's judgment. The premises liability claim heads back to the circuit court for trial, with costs to the dealership.
For any employer running a customer-facing site, the gap between "mop first, sign later" and "sign first, mop second" is the gap between a jury trial and a dismissed claim.
