Key Points

  • The Second District reversed summary judgment for John B. Sanfilippo & Son Inc. in a suit by a roofer who fell 30 feet through a skylight at its Elgin factory.
  • The court held that the skylight was a dangerous condition whose danger was open and obvious, but that an open and obvious danger is not a per se bar to a landowner's duty of reasonable care.
  • Applying the four-factor duty test and the Third District's decision in Ward v. Mid-American Energy Co., the court held that JBSS had a duty to warn the contractor's workers that the skylight lacked protection underneath, which made it more dangerous than it appeared.
  • The court held that the distraction exception applied because the plaintiff was distracted while trying to avoid another hazard, his tangled pressure-washer hose.
  • The court held that proximate cause and contributory fault presented questions of fact for the trier of fact, and it remanded for further proceedings.

An Illinois appeals court on Oct. 14 revived a roofer's lawsuit against the owner of a Fisher Nuts factory in Elgin, holding that a skylight's obvious danger did not excuse the company from warning contract workers that the skylight had no fall protection underneath.

A three-justice panel of the Appellate Court of Illinois, Second District, reversed a Kane County judge's grant of summary judgment to John B. Sanfilippo & Son Inc., known as JBSS. Justice Schostok wrote the opinion, and Justices Birkett and Mullen joined it. The ruling sends the injured worker's negligence and premises-liability claims back to the trial court.

The decision addresses the open-and-obvious doctrine, which generally relieves landowners of a duty to protect visitors from dangers the visitors know about or can plainly see. The panel held that an owner can still owe a duty to warn when it knows a visible hazard is more dangerous than it looks. The panel also applied the doctrine's distraction exception to a worker who was trying to free himself from another hazard.

Cody Kraeplin, a foreman for RMM Chicago LLC, fell through the skylight on June 9, 2018, the second day of a job cleaning the factory roof. He dropped 30 feet to the factory floor and suffered severe injuries, the opinion said. The skylight had no screen on top that could hold a person's weight and no fall protection beneath it.

JBSS's chief engineer, John Schafer, never told anyone that the skylight lacked a bottom screen. Joseph Arway, RMM's safety director, testified that OSHA rules required workers within six feet of a skylight to be tied off. He said his crew would have worn fall protection on both days had JBSS disclosed the missing screen.

On the first day, the crew wore harnesses while cleaning a six-foot perimeter around the skylight. On the second day, Kraeplin and another foreman decided the crew did not need fall protection. Kraeplin was 10 to 12 feet from the skylight when he paused for a phone call. When he restarted his pressure washer, the hose tangled around his feet. He kicked to free himself, slipped and fell arm-first through the skylight.

Brian Hess, JBSS's safety director, testified that shortly after he was hired in 2017, he urged the company to make skylight guards a top priority. The company's controller, Mike Finn, acknowledged a $20,000 request for "skylight safety" that year. Finn testified that, given 2017 gross sales of $980 million, JBSS's finances would not have prevented the spending. In September 2018, after the fall, JBSS installed 10 rooftop screens for $44,000.

Judge Mark A. Pheanis of the Kane County circuit court granted JBSS summary judgment on Oct. 2, 2025. He found that the skylight was an open and obvious danger and that JBSS had no duty to protect Kraeplin from it.

The appellate panel agreed that the skylight was dangerous and that its danger was open and obvious. It rejected JBSS's argument that the skylight posed no danger to workers 10 feet away. Justice Schostok wrote that "just because one is not next to a dangerous condition does not cause that condition to lose its inherent dangerousness."

But the court held that "the existence of an open and obvious danger is not a per se bar to finding that a landowner has a duty to exercise reasonable care." It applied the Illinois Supreme Court's four-factor duty test, which weighs the likelihood of injury, its foreseeability, the burden of guarding against it and the consequences of placing that burden on the defendant.

The panel relied on a 2000 Third District decision, Ward v. Mid-American Energy Co., in which two teenagers drowned in hidden man-made currents below a dam. "Just as the treacherous, man-made undercurrents made the water more dangerous in Ward, the lack of protective netting under the Skylight made it more dangerous," Justice Schostok wrote.

JBSS argued that the fall resulted from unforeseeable "freakish" circumstances, citing a 2019 Second District case in which a man climbed two ladders tied together and cut the tree limb that the ladders leaned against. "Here, it was not 'bizarre' that plaintiff would slip and fall while cleaning a dirty roof," the court wrote.

JBSS also contended that recognizing a duty "would effectively require all landowners and possessors of land (commercial and residential) to install fall arrest protective covers or barriers on all skylights." The court held that "a verbal warning to RMM regarding the Skylight's lack of internal protection would have been sufficient: a warning that JBSS acknowledged it never gave."

The panel next took up the distraction exception, which applies when a landowner should expect a visitor's attention to be diverted from an obvious hazard. JBSS cited cases, including the Illinois Supreme Court's 2014 decision in Bruns v. City of Centralia, for the rule that distractions a plaintiff creates himself do not qualify. The panel read Bruns to mean that "the distraction exception may apply if the plaintiff was distracted by another hazard or another task at hand."

"Here, plaintiff was distracted after trying to avoid another hazard—tripping over the power washer," the court wrote.

The court also rejected JBSS's argument that Kraeplin's own negligence caused his injuries. The panel said contributory fault is rarely resolved on summary judgment. "Arway's testimony ultimately raises a question of fact which is to be resolved by the trier of fact—not this court," Justice Schostok wrote.

Lawyers for Kraeplin included Jeffrey M. Brown of Leonard Law Group LLC. JBSS was represented by Lori Vanderlaan and Wade T. Shimer of Best, Vanderlaan & Harrington.

The appellate court remanded the case to the Circuit Court of Kane County for further proceedings. Two claims for negligent spoliation of evidence in Kraeplin's complaint were not at issue on appeal.