Under the traditional rule, store owners must be shown to be negligent with respect to the specific hazard.

Under the traditional rules governing slip and fall cases, a store owner is not liable just because its clean-up practices are sloppy. A sloppy store owner will more often be liable, but only because the plaintiff will be more likely to show that the hazard was there long enough for the owner to discover it and to remove it.

We simply do not know how long the green bean was on the floor before Rusty slipped on it. Nor is it likely that either of the parties knows how long it was. The evidence indicates that it was probably not there for more than 30 minutes, but it might have been as short a time as a few seconds.

Link back to assignment 4.