Marissa Peterson slipped on a clear liquid puddle while shopping in the toy aisle of an H-E-B grocery store and sued the grocer for premises liability. Peterson had arrived at the store within two or three minutes before her fall, according to her shopping companion John Wayne, who estimated the puddle was about two feet across. After Peterson fell and passed out, she noticed water dripping from a ceiling rafter above the puddle, though the store manager who responded saw only a 'small spot of water' and no active leak.
The Supreme Court held that Peterson failed to present evidence showing how long the puddle existed before her fall, a requirement for proving H-E-B had constructive knowledge of the dangerous condition. As Justice Bland wrote, 'a party responding to a no-evidence motion for summary judgment must adduce some evidence showing the duration an unreasonably dangerous condition existed to raise a fact issue as to whether the premises owner had constructive notice of the condition at the time and place of the plaintiff's injury.' The court found the record 'lacks such evidence.'
The court delivered particularly strong language about Peterson's attempt to use evidence of prior roof leaks elsewhere in the store, stating that 'older, repaired leaks at other locations in the store are not probative of HEB's constructive knowledge of a puddle on the toy aisle floor at the time and place injury occurred.' Justice Bland emphasized that 'the knowledge inquiry—whether actual or constructive—concerns knowledge of the dangerous condition at the time and place injury occurs, not some antecedent situation that produced the condition.'
The case had a complicated procedural history, with the court of appeals reversing and remanding once before. The trial court initially granted H-E-B's motion for traditional and no-evidence summary judgment after excluding Peterson's expert testimony. The Thirteenth Court of Appeals then reversed, concluding that earlier roof leaks elsewhere in the store created a fact issue about H-E-B's constructive knowledge of the toy aisle puddle. The appeals court also partially reinstated Peterson's expert testimony about H-E-B's alleged failure to maintain the premises and inspect adequately.
Peterson argued that multiple factors beyond the prior leaks supported her case, including the puddle's size, her observation of dripping water, and evidence that no H-E-B employee had walked down the toy aisle in the two hours between when rain stopped and her fall. The Supreme Court systematically rejected each argument, finding that 'rain speaks to a possible cause of the condition, but not to the condition itself or when it arose inside the store' and that 'the size of the puddle, without more, also does not allow a jury to infer duration.'
The court reaffirmed the difficulty of proving slip-and-fall cases involving transient conditions, noting that 'proving constructive knowledge of transient dangerous conditions like water puddles is difficult.' Justice Bland wrote that the Supreme Court 'repeatedly has rejected calls for a relaxed burden of proof in slip-and-fall cases when the evidence is scant,' reinforcing that premises owners are not insurers of customer safety.
The ruling reinstates the trial court's summary judgment for H-E-B and underscores the strict temporal evidence requirements for constructive notice claims in Texas premises liability cases. As Justice Bland concluded, 'constructive knowledge of a dangerous condition requires evidence that the condition existed for a sufficient duration before the time and place of the injury for a premises owner to have discovered it.'