Court reinstates "black ice" case, pointing to inconsistency in witness testimony

Edward Stokes slipped on ice and fell after putting gas in his car.  He fell in an area where gas station employees had recently dumped water on a previous customer's gas spill.  There was divergent testimony with regard to the current and  immediately prior weather conditions and widely divergent testimony about the visibility of the icy condition where Stokes fell.  The Court of Appeals rejected the trial judge's conclusion that the black ice was, as a matter of law, an "open and obvious" hazard which the gas station owed no duty to alleviate.  The judges agreed that there was a genuine issue of material fact which should have been presented to the jury for decision.