The plaintiff, Logan, is obligated to prove her negligence claim against Defendant Rios with a preponderance of the evidence. As the supplemental commentary notes to the Franklin Supreme Court Approved Jury instructions note, it is necessary that Logan persuade a jury considering the evidence, that her proposition is more probable than not. A jury will evaluate the evidence, including witness testimony, and the weight to be given to it, and make a determination as to whether it is more probable than not that Rios’s negligence, through her employees at the store she owns, Trina’s Toys, was the direct and proximate cause of Logan’s injuries. Further, a jury will have to decide Rios’s affirmative defense of contributory negligence. There …show more content…
Logan cannot assert that Rios or her employees knew of the risk. The depositions in this matter lead to the conclusion that no one knew of the puddle until after Logan had already fallen. However, here are a number of arguments that would support Logan’s claim under element two that Ritos and her employees should have known of the condition. According to the commentary to the Franklin Supreme Court Approved Jury Instructions, one factor that will be determine whether ordinary care was exercised was the length of time that the unsafe condition existed. There are arguments that certainly cut in favor of Logan in this regard. First, the standard of Trina’s Toys is that employees do aisle checks every hour. In his deposition, Patel concedes that an aisle check was not done in the hour immediately preceding Logan’s fall. He admits that he was talking to his girlfriend and forgot to do the 11am aisle check. Therefore, the puddle could have existed for as long as an hour and a half. But for Patel failing to do his assigned aisle check at 11am, there is a chance he would have discovered the puddle and cleaned it up, thereby preventing Logan’s fall. However, this is not an ironclad argument, as neither party knows exactly when the puddle actually came to exist. It could have happen after Patel’s aisle check, meaning that he would have never had a chance to clean it