Dougay v. Dolgencorp of TX ( 2023 )

Case: 22-40479 Document: 00516702487 Page: 1 Date Filed: 04/05/2023
United States Court of Appeals
for the Fifth Circuit
____________ United States Court of Appeals
Fifth Circuit
No. 22-40479 FILED
Summary Calendar April 5, 2023
____________ Lyle W. Cayce
Clerk
Jill Trahan Dougay,
Plaintiff—Appellee,
versus
Dolgencorp of Texas, Incorporated, doing business as Dollar
General,
Defendant—Appellant.
______________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of Texas
USDC No. 1:19-CV-419
______________________________
Before Davis, Duncan, and Engelhardt, Circuit Judges.
Per Curiam:*
In this premises-liability suit, Defendant-Appellant Dolgencorp of
Texas, Inc. (“Dollar General”) appeals the district court’s denials of its
motion for judgment as a matter of law and renewed motion for judgment as
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*
This opinion is not designated for publication. See 5th Cir. R. 47.5.
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No. 22-40479
a matter of law following a jury verdict in favor of Plaintiff-Appellee Jill
Trahan Dougay. Finding no error, we AFFIRM.
I.
On April 28, 2019, Dougay was shopping at a Dollar General store in
Bridge City, Texas. While Dougay was walking down an aisle towards a store
employee to ask a question, she tripped on a metal platform cart holding blue
plastic swimming pools and sustained injuries to her foot and ankle. Dougay
filed a premises liability suit against Dollar General in Texas state court for
damages she sustained as a result of the fall. Dollar General removed the case
to federal court.
The case proceeded to trial, and at the close of Plaintiff’s evidence,
Dollar General moved for judgment as a matter of law under Federal Rule of
Civil Procedure 50(a). Dollar General argued that the placement of the pool
display did not pose an unreasonable risk of harm, and even if it did, the harm
was open and obvious. The district court denied the motion.
At the conclusion of the trial, the jury returned a verdict on liability,
finding that Dougay was thirty-two percent at fault and Dollar General was
sixty-eight percent at fault. Consistent with the jury’s verdict, the district
court entered a final judgment awarding Dougay $357,110.14. Following the
verdict, Dollar General filed a renewed motion for judgment as a matter of
law under Rule 50(b). It again asserted that the evidence was legally
insufficient to support the jury’s verdict because the pool display was open
and obvious and, therefore, it did not owe Dougay a duty to warn.
The district court denied Dollar General’s renewed motion, finding
that there was “ample evidence” that supports the jury’s verdict. The
district court found this evidence included a video of the incident and
Dougay’s testimony that she could not see the front part of the cart that she
tripped on. It additionally rejected Dollar General’s assertion that because
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Dougay knew the pools were raised off the ground that “she necessarily knew
of the presence and location of the supports on which the display rested.”
Specifically, the district court refused to “indulge” the inference that
because Dougay knew the pools rested on a cart, she therefore knew about
the location of any protrusions from the cart. Dollar General timely appealed.
II.
“A motion for judgment as a matter of law . . . in an action tried by
jury is a challenge to the legal sufficiency of the evidence supporting the
jury’s verdict.”1 We review a district court’s denial of a Rule 50 motion for
judgment as a matter of law de novo, using the same legal standard as the
district court.2 Although our review is de novo, “we recognize that our
standard of review with respect to a jury verdict is especially deferential.”3
Accordingly, a “litigant cannot obtain judgment as a matter of law unless the
facts and inferences point so strongly and overwhelmingly in the movant’s
favor that reasonable jurors could not reach a contrary conclusion.”4
III.
Dollar General asserts that the swimming pool display was open and
obvious as a matter of law and therefore Dougay failed to establish that it
owed her a duty to warn. Under Texas law,5 a property owner “generally has
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1
Flowers v. S. Reg’l Physician Servs., Inc., 247 F.3d 229, 235 (5th Cir. 2001) (internal
quotation marks and citation omitted).
2
Nobach v. Woodland Vill. Nursing Ctr., Inc., 799 F.3d 374, 377 (5th Cir. 2015).
3
Flowers, 247 F.3d at 235 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).
4
OneBeacon Ins. Co. v. T. Wade Welch & Assocs., 841 F.3d 669, 675 (5th Cir. 2016)
(internal quotation marks and citations omitted).
5
We apply Texas substantive law to this diversity case. See Austin v. Kroger Tex.
L.P., 746 F.3d 191, 196 (5th Cir. 2014) (per curiam).
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no duty to warn of hazards that are open and obvious or known to the
invitee.”6 A hazard is considered open and obvious “when the evidence
conclusively establishes that an invitee would have knowledge and full
appreciation of the nature and extent of danger, such that knowledge and
appreciation of the danger are considered as proved as a matter of law.”7
This is an objective inquiry that asks “what a reasonably prudent person
would have known under similar circumstances.”8 Finally, in applying this
objective test, courts must consider the “totality of the particular
circumstances the plaintiff faced.”9
On appeal, the parties dispute whether Dougay established that Dollar
General owed her a duty to warn. Dollar General contends that the evidence
presented at trial “firmly established the claimed premises defect was open
and obvious” and the only evidence to the contrary was Dougay’s conclusory
and unsupported testimony that she could not see the front of the cart. It
specifically argues that a reasonably prudent person “who saw the swimming
pools when approaching the display, deduced there was something
underneath to support the pools, and navigated around the pools, all of which
Dougay did, would have been able to see the front of the cart if [he/she] had
merely looked.”
Having reviewed the briefings, evidence presented at trial, and the
closed-circuit video, we cannot say that “the facts and inferences point so
strongly and overwhelmingly in [Dollar General’s] favor that reasonable
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6
Austin v. Kroger Tex., L.P., 465 S.W.3d 193, 204 (Tex. 2015).
7
Los Compadres Pescadores, L.L.C. v. Valdez, 622 S.W.3d 771, 788 (Tex. 2021)
(internal quotation marks and citation omitted).
8
Id. (citing Tex. Dep’t of Hum. Servs. v. Okoli, 440 S.W.3d 611, 614 (Tex. 2014)).
9
Id. at 788-89 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).
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jurors could not reach a contrary conclusion.”10 Despite Dollar General’s
assertions to the contrary, there was evidence presented at trial, including
Dougay’s testimony, video footage, and testimony from Dollar General’s
corporate representative,11 which provide a legally sufficient evidentiary basis
for the jury’s verdict that the front of the cart was not open and obvious.12
And although Dollar General points to conflicting evidence in the record,
“we are not free to reweigh the evidence or to re-evaluate credibility of
witnesses” and cannot “substitute for the jury’s reasonable factual
inferences other inferences that we may regard as more reasonable.”13
We therefore conclude that the district court did not err in denying
Dollar General’s motions for judgment as a matter of law under Rules 50(a)
and 50(b). For these reasons, and those given by the district court, we
AFFIRM.
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10
Coffel v. Stryker Corp., 284 F.3d 625, 630 (5th Cir. 2002) (internal quotation
marks and citation omitted).
11
Dollar General’s corporate representative testified that she could see the front of
the cart as “somebody who has been around these for a while” but that “[d]epending on
the angle that” a customer was coming from, they may not be able to see the front of the
cart.
12
Plaintiffs’ reliance on Reeves v. Home Depot, U.S.A., Inc., No. 16-CA-615, 2018
WL 405120 (W.D. Tex. Jan. 12, 2018) is inapposite. Unlike the situation in Reeves where
the court found “there was nothing obscuring the platform . . . from view,” Dougay
presented evidence to the jury that the front of the cart was obscured from view at the angle
she was walking down the aisle. See id. at *4 (holding that “[a]ny person walking down the
aisle should have seen the stationary and openly visible order picker and walked around it,
as Reeves did twice before ultimately tripping over its protruding platform”).
13
McBeth v. Carpenter, 565 F.3d 171, 176 (5th Cir. 2009) (internal quotation marks
and citation omitted).
5