Court Holds Weather Data Doesn’t Prove Notice

Marcus Hargrave v Oak Park Partners LLC, unpublished per curiam opinion of the Court of Appeals, issued May 19, 2025 (Docket No. 366643), affirmed a plaintiff’s burden in a premises liability action to produce evidence of the defendant’s notice of the dangerous condition (“knew or should have known”) to survive a motion for summary disposition. In doing so, the Court again demonstrated the viability of “lack of notice” as a complete defense to premises liability claims.

The Court of Appeals also rejected Plaintiff’s use of weather reports to suggest that the ice Plaintiff slipped on may have existed for three days prior to Plaintiff’s fall, but such an inference was ultimately just conjecture. The Court held that “weather data is insufficient to establish actual or constructive knowledge of a dangerous condition.”