A low-quality security camera video that failed to show the plaintiff walking anywhere obviously covered with snow, or show that the parking lot was definitively safe, was not enough to support the trial court’s grant of summary judgment or finding of comparative fault by plaintiff in this snow and ice premises liability case.
In Jones v. Kroger Limited Partnership I, No. M2024-01417-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Jan. 6, 2026), the plaintiff slipped and fell in the parking lot at defendant grocery store after a snow storm. The area had received heavy accumulations of snow and ice a couple of days prior to the incident, but no snow or ice had fallen on the morning of the plaintiff’s injury. Portions of the parking lot and sidewalk had been cleared, but areas of snow and ice remained. Plaintiff entered the store without incident, but when returning to his car by a slightly different route, he fell and was injured. This premises liability suit followed.
The defendants moved for summary judgment, arguing that the plaintiff could not prove that they breached a duty because the “parking lot had been scraped to provide a safe path to enter and exit the store.” In support of this motion, they submitted a low-quality security video that showed the plaintiff walking from his car into the store without issue. They also argued that the plaintiff was 50% or more at fault for his injuries because, rather than taking the exact same route back to his car, the plaintiff walked a different route when exiting the store. The plaintiff responded with expert testimony regarding how much de-icing material should have been used on the parking lot, which was significantly more than was actually used by the defendants.
The trial court agreed with the defendants and granted summary judgment based on both a lack of breach of duty and the plaintiff’s comparative fault. The Court of Appeals, however, found that genuine issues of material fact existed and overturned the ruling for the defendants.
The parties agreed that the defendants owed a duty of care here—the issue was whether that duty had been breached. The plaintiff argued on appeal that the trial court “mischaracterized the law when it determined that the Defendants did not breach a duty of care owed to [the plaintiff] because the duty of the property owner is to provide a safe means of ingress and egress, which the defendants did in this instance.” The Court of Appeals agreed. The Court wrote:
The trial court’s determination of this issue should have considered whether the actions taken by the Defendants to remove accumulated snow and ice from the parking lot were reasonable and whether they took those actions within a reasonable time after the snow and ice accumulated. Whether such actions are reasonable depends upon, among other things, (1) the length of time the accumulation has been present, (2) the amount of the accumulation, (3) whether the accumulation could be, as a practical matter, removed, (4) the cost of removal, and (5) the foreseeability of injury.
(internal citation and quotations omitted).
The plaintiff argued that while portions of the parking lot had been scraped, the defendants were nonetheless negligent in how they applied necessary de-icing material. The plaintiff’s expert opined that significantly more de-icing material should have been used by the defendants to treat the parking lot. Further, the evidence showed that all snow and ice treatment was done at night when visibility was reduced, and that no employee went into the parking lot on foot to check the area. Based on the evidence, the Court of Appeals ruled that whether a proper amount of de-icing material was used was a material fact, and that genuine issues of material fact existed regarding whether the defendants took reasonable steps to remove snow and ice within a reasonable time after the winter storm.
Regarding comparative fault, the Court of Appeals began by noting that “the task of comparing and allocating fault may be taken from the jury only when it can be determined beyond question…that the plaintiff’s fault is equal to or greater than the defendant’s.” (internal citation omitted). Here, the video showed that the plaintiff took a slightly different route into and out of the store. The video, however, was low quality. More importantly, the video did not show whether patches of ice existed on the ground. The plaintiff walked at a slow, steady pace when both entering and exiting the store. There was “no discernible difference in the appearance of the path he took to enter the store and the path slightly to the left of it that he used to exit the store.” The Court concluded that a reasonable juror could conclude that the path he took upon exiting was no more dangerous than his previous path, and summary judgment based on comparative fault was thus not appropriate.
Because genuine issues of material fact existed as to whether the defendants took reasonable steps to remove the snow and ice, and because it was not “beyond question” that the plaintiff took a more dangerous path when exiting the store, summary judgment was overturned.
This opinion contains a fairly through analysis of the security video used by the defendants. Litigants planning to use a security video as evidence might gain important insight into issues that could be raised by the opposing party or the court from this case.
This opinion was released 6.5 months after oral arguments in this case.