Golden Corral Corporation D/B/A Golden Corral and Corral Group, Incorporated v. Cynthia Trigg , 2014 Tex. App. LEXIS 10595 ( 2014 )


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  •                                       In The
    Court of Appeals
    Ninth District of Texas at Beaumont
    ____________________
    NO. 09-13-00088-CV
    ____________________
    GOLDEN CORRAL CORPORATION D/B/A GOLDEN CORRAL
    AND CORRAL GROUP, INCORPORATED, Appellant
    V.
    CYNTHIA TRIGG, Appellee
    _______________________________________________________            ______________
    On Appeal from the 60th District Court
    Jefferson County, Texas
    Trial Cause No. B-183,123
    ________________________________________________________             _____________
    OPINION
    In this appeal, Golden Corral Corporation d/b/a Golden Corral and Corral
    Group, Incorporated (collectively, Golden Corral) contend the warning they
    provided to their customers concerning the presence of liquid on the floor in their
    restaurant discharged the duty they owed their invitees as a matter of law.
    Following a jury trial, the jury found Golden Corral negligent in a slip and fall
    case. Subsequently, the trial court rendered judgment for the plaintiff on the jury’s
    verdict. Because Golden Corral conclusively established that their warning of the
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    hazard was adequate, the evidence is legally insufficient to support the jury’s
    verdict. We reverse and render judgment that the plaintiff recover nothing from
    Golden Corral.
    Background
    While carrying a tray to one of the buffet stations at Golden Corral, a buffet-
    style restaurant, Cynthia Trigg stepped forward from a carpeted area onto a tiled
    area. As Cynthia stepped onto the tile, her left foot slipped toward a yellow sign
    that contained language warning of a wet floor. Cynthia’s left foot hit the sign
    before she hit the floor. At trial, Cynthia testified that she did not see the warning
    before she fell. Nonetheless, a surveillance video admitted into evidence during the
    trial shows that before Cynthia fell, a yellow sign with a warning on each of its
    four sides, and approximately three feet tall, had been placed on the tile floor in
    front of the food station where Cynthia fell. A sign, like the one in the surveillance
    video, was admitted as an exhibit during the trial. The sign present the day Cynthia
    fell contained these words in large print on each side:
    CAUTION
    CUIDADO
    WET
    FLOOR
    PISO
    MOJADO[.]
    2
    During the trial, Golden Corral’s assistant manager, Torrae Davis, explained
    that approximately twenty minutes before Cynthia fell, he noticed that the floor in
    the area was wet. According to Davis, he instructed an associate manager to place
    a wet floor sign in the area and to clean the floor. Davis then left the area
    unattended; subsequently, the yellow sign was placed in front of the buffet to warn
    customers that the floor in the area was wet. The evidence in the trial also showed
    that Golden Corral’s policies required mats to be placed in high risk areas where
    employees entered and exited a door to the dishwasher room. The area where
    Cynthia fell was near the dishwasher room, and no mats were present near the door
    to the dishwasher room when Cynthia fell. Davis admitted that it was possible that
    water from the dishwasher room had been tracked into the area where Cynthia fell
    by employees as they entered the serving area from the dishwasher room. The jury
    found that Golden Corral was negligent and that Cynthia was not.
    Issues
    In nine issues, Golden Corral argues that the trial court’s judgment should
    be reversed. Eight of Golden Corral’s issues are legal sufficiency complaints; in
    them, Golden Corral argues the evidence does not support the jury’s finding that
    Golden Corral was negligent, and that its negligence proximately caused Cynthia’s
    injuries. In Golden Corral’s remaining issue, Golden Corral argues the evidence is
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    legally insufficient to support the jury’s finding on the amount Cynthia will incur
    in future medical expenses.
    Standard of Review
    In reviewing Golden Corral’s legal sufficiency issues, we view the evidence
    admitted at trial in the light most favorable to the party that prevailed at trial;
    consequently, we credit favorable evidence if reasonable jurors could, and
    disregard contrary evidence unless reasonable jurors could not. See City of Keller
    v. Wilson, 
    168 S.W.3d 802
    , 807, 827 (Tex. 2005). Since Cynthia prevailed at trial,
    we view the evidence in reviewing the issues Golden Corral has raised on appeal in
    the light most favorable to her. See 
    id. The evidence
    that supports a jury’s finding
    is legally sufficient if it enables “reasonable and fair-minded people to reach the
    verdict under review.” 
    Id. Nevertheless, with
    respect to claims “supported only by
    meager circumstantial evidence, the evidence does not rise above a scintilla (and
    thus is legally insufficient) if jurors would have to guess whether a vital fact
    exists.” 
    Id. at 813.
    Also, evidence may be conclusive, and thus may become legally
    insufficient to prove a matter in dispute, if the evidence “concerns physical facts
    that cannot be denied.” 
    Id. at 815.
    Analysis
    Because it is dispositive of the appeal, we address Golden Corral’s fifth
    issue first. In issue five, Golden Corral argues that the jury’s conclusion that
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    Golden Corral failed to provide an adequate warning to Cynthia of the hazard, a
    wet floor, is not supported by legally sufficient evidence. Cynthia does not dispute
    that a yellow sign, three feet tall, was present in the area where she fell. Instead,
    she argues that the evidence before the jury allowed it to conclude that Golden
    Corral’s warning of the hazard was inadequate.
    “Premises owners and occupiers owe a duty to keep their premises safe for
    invitees against known conditions that pose unreasonable risks of harm.” TXI
    Operations, L.P. v. Perry, 
    278 S.W.3d 763
    , 764 (Tex. 2009). “This duty is
    discharged by warning the invitee of unreasonable risks of harm either known to
    the owner or which would be known to him by reasonable inspection or by making
    the premises reasonably safe.” Bill’s Dollar Store, Inc. v. Bean, 
    77 S.W.3d 367
    ,
    369 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 2002, pet. denied); see also State v.
    Williams, 
    940 S.W.2d 583
    , 584 (Tex. 1996). Whether a warning is adequate turns
    on what is reasonably prudent under the circumstances. See TXI 
    Operations, 278 S.W.3d at 764-65
    .
    “If the evidence conclusively established that the owner adequately warned
    the plaintiff of the condition, the owner cannot be found negligent as a matter of
    law.” Brooks v. PRH Invs., Inc., 
    303 S.W.3d 920
    , 925 (Tex. App.—Texarkana
    2010, no pet.) (citing 
    Williams, 940 S.W.2d at 584
    ); see also Bill’s Dollar 
    Store, 77 S.W.3d at 369
    . In this case, there is no dispute that Golden Corral warned of the
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    condition, as the surveillance video conclusively establishes that a tall yellow sign
    was present in the area when Cynthia fell. Cynthia also testified that had she seen
    the sign, “[i]t would have warned [her] that there was a problem in the area where
    the cone was located.” The evidence at trial did not show that the risk was extreme,
    as the evidence did not show that before Cynthia fell, other Golden Corral
    customers or employees had fallen in the same area, and there was no evidence
    showing that the floor was more slippery than might be expected from a wet floor.
    Also, the surveillance videos admitted into evidence during the trial show a
    significant number of the restaurant’s customers walking in the area near the sign
    without incident during a twenty minute period before Cynthia fell.
    While Cynthia does not contest that the sign was present, she contends that
    based on the evidence, the sign should have been placed where her foot slipped,
    and that the placement of the sign several feet from where she fell allowed the jury
    to reasonably conclude that Golden Corral’s warning was inadequate. Cynthia
    argues that the warning Golden Corral provided was inadequate because the sign’s
    location failed to alert her before her foot contacted the wet spot where she slipped.
    However, the evidence before the jury was that Cynthia never saw the sign before
    she fell although the surveillance video shows the sign was plainly visible. There is
    no reason to believe that Cynthia might have seen the sign had it been placed
    exactly where she slipped. See Gen. Motors Corp. v. Saenz, 
    873 S.W.2d 353
    , 360
    6
    (Tex. 1993) (“Plaintiffs’ argument that the warning could have been more
    prominent does not prove that it was not prominent enough. Every warning can
    always be made bigger, brighter and more obvious.”).
    In support of her argument, Cynthia relies in large part on the testimony of
    Dr. Harvey Cohen, a safety and human factors expert, who she called as a witness
    during the trial. According to Dr. Cohen, the sign did not provide an effective
    warning due to its placement. Dr. Cohen estimated the distance between the sign
    and the spot that Cynthia slipped at four feet. But, Dr. Cohen also testified that the
    sign was capable of being seen thirty feet from where Cynthia fell. To adequately
    warn, according to Dr. Cohen, the sign should have been placed either on or in
    front of the moisture on the floor. Additionally, Cynthia and Dr. Cohen suggested
    to the jury that other means—better flooring, carpet, or mats—could have been
    used to make the area safe, and suggested that Golden Corral could have followed
    its policies by cleaning the spill immediately or guarding the spill until it was
    cleaned up.
    But, the surveillance video shows that the sign was placed in a location
    where it could be seen by customers, such as Cynthia, warning of the hazard posed
    by the wet floor. See City of 
    Keller, 168 S.W.3d at 814-17
    . Dr. Cohen did not cite
    any articles or treatises to support his theory that wet floor signs, like the one at
    issue in this case, were inadequate to warn of a hazard within approximately a four
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    foot area around the sign. While Dr. Cohen stated that a wet floor sign could
    constitute an adequate warning “[i]f it’s properly placed and in conjunction with
    other better measures, such as floor matting[,]” that standard is not the one that
    applies to a premise owner under Texas law. See 
    Williams, 940 S.W.2d at 584
    (holding that a premises owner can discharge its duty by making the property safe
    or by warning). A reasonably prudent person, approaching the sign at Golden
    Corral on the date the fall occurred, would have understood that the sign warned of
    the presence of a wet floor in the vicinity around the sign, including the spot where
    Cynthia put her foot when she slipped.
    The testimony in the record that the sign could have been made more
    prominent is simply unsupported opinion. Opinion testimony that is wholly
    conclusory or speculative amounts to no evidence “‘because it does not tend to
    make the existence of a material fact more probable or less probable.’” City of San
    Antonio v. Pollock, 
    284 S.W.3d 809
    , 816 (Tex. 2009) (quoting Coastal Transp. Co.
    v. Crown Cent. Petroleum Corp., 
    136 S.W.3d 227
    , 232 (Tex. 2004) (internal
    citations omitted)). Thus, “[b]are, baseless opinions will not support a judgment
    even if there is no objection to their admission in evidence.” 
    Id. Given evidence
    that conclusively established the sign warned of a hazard in an area, including the
    spot where Cynthia slipped, the judgment cannot stand on Dr. Cohen’s mere
    conclusion that the sign’s placement made the warning inadequate. Because the
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    sign indicated that the floor was wet in the area where Cynthia fell, it adequately
    warned Cynthia of the presence of moisture on the floor. See generally 
    Brooks, 303 S.W.3d at 925-26
    ; Bill’s Dollar 
    Store, 77 S.W.3d at 370
    . Although Cynthia
    testified she did not see the sign, there was no evidence to show that she was
    visually impaired. And, the video conclusively shows that the sign was displayed
    in a location that gave Cynthia reasonable notice of the hazard where she slipped.
    While Golden Corral could have provided a warning that was inescapably obvious,
    it had no duty to do so. See 
    Saenz, 873 S.W.2d at 361
    .
    The remaining testimony in the record, including Dr. Cohen’s, concerned
    several ways that Golden Corral could have remedied the hazard to make it safe.
    But, with respect to hazards about which a property owner has actual or
    constructive knowledge, the owner’s duty is to reduce or eliminate the risk. CMH
    Homes, Inc. v. Daenen, 
    15 S.W.3d 97
    , 99 (Tex. 2000). In this case, consistent with
    Texas law, the jury was asked to determine whether Golden Corral failed to
    exercise ordinary care by both failing to adequately warn Cynthia of the condition
    and by failing to make that condition reasonably safe. And, we have determined
    that the evidence conclusively established that Golden Corral discharged its duty
    by providing an adequate warning that the floor was wet. See 
    Williams, 940 S.W.2d at 584
    (holding that the defendant who owned the premises could
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    discharge its duty by “either warning the plaintiff or making the premises
    reasonably safe”).
    After carefully reviewing the record, and under the circumstances shown by
    the evidence admitted during the trial, we conclude that the evidence conclusively
    established that Golden Corral warned of the wet floor and that the warning was
    adequate. We sustain issue five, we reverse and render the judgment the trial court
    was required to render, and we order that Cynthia recover nothing. Tex. R. App. P.
    43.2(c). Because Golden Corral’s remaining issues do not request any additional
    relief, they need not be addressed on appeal. Tex. R. App. P. 47.1.
    REVERSED AND RENDERED.
    _________________________
    HOLLIS HORTON
    Justice
    Submitted on December 5, 2013
    Opinion Delivered September 4, 2014
    Before McKeithen, C.J., Kreger and Horton, JJ.
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