Trial lawyers specializing in personal injury and civil litigation
Court dismisses case arising out of fall on ice in theater parking lot
Cinema Hollywood, LLC, secured the dismissal of Phillip Hopkins' injury claim in the Court of Appeals this week. Hopkins dropped his wife at the theater door, parked his car, and fell on black ice while getting out. He had not noticed any precipitation that day and claimed he had no warning of ice in the lot. The trial ruled that it would be unreasonable to expect a commercial establishment "to inspect every inch of its parking lot" and the Court of Appeals upheld that ruling. It concluded that a small patch of hardly visible ice in a large parking lot was not adequate to give notice to the Defendant of its duty to cure the hazard.