Legal News

Court OKs Case Over 'Dangerous' Toilet Roll Dispenser

By Matthew Heller, Editor

A bizarre restroom accident has taken personal injury law in a novel direction, with a divided Michigan Supreme Court ruling that a woman can sue a restaurant where she allegedly broke her hand while using a toilet roll dispenser.

It's hard to imagine a more innocuous appliance but Sandra Schooley alleges that the cover on a plastic toilet-paper dispenser at a Texas Roadhouse restaurant in Taylor, Mich., fell onto her because it was not in the ?locked? position. In a Dec. 3 decision, a 4-3 majority of the Michigan Supreme Court said the case should go to trial.

?It would be improper for this Court to rule that an ordinary instrument like a toilet paper dispenser could never cause compensable harm for the mere reason that it is used in people?s day-to-day lives,? Chief Justice Marilyn Kelly wrote.

Justice Stephen J. Markman ?strongly? dissented, warning that ?if the majority continues to abide by the understanding of premises liability reflected in this case, the effect will be severely damaging upon even the most responsible business and private landowners in this state.?

In July, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out a similar case over a restroom mishap at a Wal-Mart store in Mississippi. Catherine Pickle claimed a toilet roll dispenser cover fell onto her, injuring her neck and shoulder, after a store employee left it unlocked.

?Pickle?s speculative arguments ... are insufficient to show that Wal-Mart failed to 'exercise reasonable care to keep the premises in a reasonably safe condition,'? the opinion said.

Schooley, of South Rockwood, Mich., suffered her alleged injury on New Year's Eve 2007. ?I reached and the cover of the toilet paper dispenser fell down on my hand,? she has said. ?It looked like the dispenser was up but it wasn?t latched. At first I thought I was all right. I thought it was just bruised.?

Texas Roadhouse has argued that Schooley's suit should be summarily dismissed because it had no notice of any dispenser defects and its staff regularly inspected the bathrooms at 15-30 minute intervals. After both a trial judge and the Michigan Court of Appeals disagreed, it appealed to the Supreme Court.

In denying the appeal for a second time, Justice Kelly said it was

undisputed that checking whether the dispensers were in the ?locked? position was not part of defendant?s routine restroom inspections. Thus, if a jury concluded that the dispensers constituted a ?dangerous condition,? it could certainly conclude that defendant?s inspections were insufficient to satisfy its duty to inspect the premises.

Justice Markman, however, found it ?hard to understand the actions of the majority as anything other than the imposition of strict liability upon a business for an accident occurring on its property.?

?If the toilet paper dispenser at issue here serves to impose liability on a landowner,? he continued, ?the number  of ordinary and innocuous things that will do the same is limitless.?

He also quarreled with Kelly's view of the evidence, saying, ?Common sense would seem to dictate that these employees had their eyes open when they performed the restroom inspections, and therefore that they would have seen if a toilet paper dispenser had been in an improper and 'hazardous' position.?

At trial, Schooley will have to show that Texas Roadhouse either knew or should have known the dispenser was a dangerous condition. She has said the restaurant manager admitted that the dispensers were not inspected even though he was aware that customers tampered with them.

In the Pickle case, the plaintiff testified she saw a maintenance cart in between the men's and women's restrooms. But the trial judge said ?the record is void of evidence that the alleged dangerous condition existed for such a length of time that Wal-Mart should have known it existed through the exercise of reasonable care.? Pickle v. Wal-Mart Stores.

By Matthew Heller
On Point

Full post as published by On Point News on December 13, 2010 (boomark / email).