Chadwick v. Foodmax of Georgia, Inc.
Chadwick v. Foodmax of Georgia, Inc.
Opinion of the Court
Janet Chadwick brought this action against Foodmax of Georgia, Inc., and D. & T. Services, Inc., a cleaning contractor, alleging that she suffered personal injuries in a fall in Foodmax’s grocery store. Appellees filed a joint motion for summary judgment, which was
Chadwick was shopping in Foodmax’s grocery at 1:00 in the morning. As she walked around the store, she encountered an employee of D. & T. operating a large floor cleaning machine that “rides like a lawnmower.” She observed soapsuds on the brushes underneath the machine, and realized that the machine was cleaning a border or perimeter area of the store floor that was covered with wood-grain flooring. Upon seeing the cleaning machine, she turned to walk in the opposite direction; she testified she did this with the intention of avoiding it. After walking a short distance, she stepped onto the wood-grain flooring behind the machine, slipped, and fell. After she fell, she saw that she had slipped on the soapsuds left by the machine’s passage. She acknowledged that nothing obstructed her view of the floor, that she was looking at the shelves, not at the floor, and that had she looked down she would have seen the soapsuds on the floor. She realized the floor machine operator had just cleaned that area, but “figured it could have been dry, you know. I didn’t know it would have still been wet, you know.” She also testified she had intended to avoid the wood part of the floor: “I didn’t get on the wood I didn’t think, but I did, you know. I wasn’t meaning to.”
In order to recover for a slip and fall resulting from a “foreign substance,” such as soapsuds, “not only must the plaintiff show that the defendant had knowledge of the presence of the foreign substance, but the plaintiff must also show that he was without knowledge of its presence. [Cit.] ‘The customer must exercise ordinary care for his own safety, and must by the same degree of care avoid the effect of the merchant’s negligence after it becomes apparent to him or in the exercise of ordinary care he should have learned of it. He must make use of all his senses in a reasonable measure amounting to ordinary care in discovering and avoiding those things that might cause hurt to him.’ [Cits.]” Alterman Foods v. Ligon, 246 Ga. 620, 623 (272 SE2d 327) (1980).
We need not reach the question of whether the knowledge of Foodmax’s independent contractor can be imputed to Foodmax without evidence of ratification of the contractor’s acts, see Wilmock, Inc. v. French, 185 Ga. App. 259, 261 (1) (363 SE2d 789) (1987), because the undisputed evidence shows that Chadwick failed to exercise ordinary care for her own safety.
First, Chadwick acknowledged that she saw soapsuds emanating from the floor cleaning machine, and she departed from her original path with the intention of avoiding it. While she contends she did not have knowledge of the soapsuds at the exact point of her fall, she nevertheless “was aware of the prevailing wet [and soapy] conditions. Under these circumstances it appears that appellant herself was not in the exercise of due care. Accordingly, it was not error to grant
Judgment affirmed.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.