Michael S. Takacs (Partner-Philadelphia) secured a complete dismissal of a commercial property owner client on a contested Motion for Summary Judgment. The ruling proves once again that while difficult, obtaining summary judgment in plaintiff-friendly Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, is not impossible. Under the facts presented, the plaintiff, a schoolteacher who often frequented a delicatessen in the client’s building, parked her vehicle in a “no parking zone” outside the building on the day in question. When she left the delicatessen, rather than walking on the sidewalk to reach her vehicle, she took a shortcut across a “wooden landscape box” comprised of four railroad ties formed into a square and enclosing a street sign. When she stepped on one of the wood ties, her foot slipped and she suffered a ruptured quadriceps tendon requiring surgery.

Takacs moved for summary judgment asserting that the client neither owed nor breached a legal duty of care to protect the plaintiff from the alleged dangerous condition and therefore could not set forth a prima facie case of negligence. Relying on existing case law involving slip and falls on snow and ice emanating from the Pennsylvania Superior Court and other lower court cases that followed it, Takacs crafted a persuasive argument that the underlying basis for the courts’ decisions in those cases – that no duty was owed where a plaintiff voluntarily chose a path of travel not meant to be traversed out of convenience rather than taking the safer alternative route available to her – should apply to the facts of the case. While plaintiff attempted to assert that numerous genuine issues of material fact existed, the court disagreed, entering summary judgment on behalf of the client, dismissing all claims and crossclaims.