Nemeth v. RREEF Am. LLC

Richard Nemeth appeals the trial court’s grant of summary judgment to RREEF America, LLC, RREEF America REIT Corp. G, and RREEF Management Company collectively, “RREEF” on his claim for premises liability, nuisance, attorney fees, and punitive damages. Because we agree with the trial court that RREEF is entitled to judgment as a matter of law, we affirm. We review a grant of summary judgment de novo and view the evidence in a light most favorable to the non-moving party.1 Summary judgment should be granted when no genuine issue of material fact exists and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.2 If there is no evidence to support at least one essential element of the plaintiff’s case, the defendant is entitled to summary judgment.3

Viewed favorably to Nemeth, the evidence shows that on January 9, 2002, he fell when he went outside his office building one afternoon to take a smoking break on a patio. It was his practice to go to the patio “a couple of times a week” to smoke. Nemeth walked across the patio to speak to someone and, after speaking, turned, walked away, and fell. He estimates that the patio is three hundred to five hundred square feet; while he normally smoked on a different side of the patio, he admitted that he had been to the area where he fell a few times before that day.