CHICAGO - A federal appeals panel has ruled a federal judge was right to reject a lawsuit brought against home improvement chain Menard's, saying the man tripped over a sign that was an "open and obvious hazard."
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in the matter on May 20, reaffirming the district court’s judgment that conditions at one of their stores that led to injuries sustained by the plaintiff were forewarned to customers.
In the original lawsuit, Robert McCarty claimed that in February 2017, while he and a business associate were shopping at the location to purchase materials for a work project, he tripped over a piece of wood connected to a display sign for a stack of lumber. He argued the sign's location on the floor served as a hazardous environment.
Judges David Hamilton, Amy Barrett, and Amy St. Eve ruled in favor of Menard’s in a unanimous decision, rejecting McCarty’s claim that the sign within the store he had tripped and fell over was unclear and out of sight, concluding that it was in fact an “open and obvious hazard.”
St. Eve, who authored opinion, agreed with the district court’s conclusion that “a reasonable person in Mr. McCarty’s position, who saw that there were signs, and chose the stack [of lumber] that he wanted by looking at the signs… would have noticed the large sign and legs as a tripping hazard.”
Further, she found the plaintiff's own testimony revealed he was aware of the signs, given that that they specified the size of lumber that he was seeking.
St. Eve concluded further that the rules set in place within Menard’s internal working policy, specifically one that “requires safety inspections to fix tripping hazards,” had been in effect at the time of the incident, and that any further burden on Menard’s to remedy such situations would be “unreasonably onerous.”