Plaintiff Shirley Reid allegedly slipped and fell in the vestibule area of appellee/defendant/third-party plaintiff The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, Inc.’s “A&P” supermarket located in Conyers, Georgia. She and her husband, Manchester Reid, thereafter sued A&P in the State Court of Cobb County seeking special and general damages for personal injuries and loss of consortium, respectively. In discovery, A&P learned that its Conyers landlord, appellant/third-party defendant F. S. Associates, L. P. “F. S. Associates” had made repairs to the roof of its Conyers store—this purportedly to prevent the accumulation of water on the vestibule floor and approximately six months before Mrs. Reid’s fall. A&P, without objection, obtained leave of court to file a third-party complaint1 against F. S. Associates seeking contribution and indemnification for breach of its duty to repair the roof under the lease agreement. The plaintiffs later amended their complaint, this time seeking punitive damages upon the claim that, knowing of the roof leak over the vestibule to its Conyers store, A&P negligently failed to make repairs to the roof or warn of the hazardous condition; A&P amended its third-party complaint, averring negligence in F. S. Associates for the repairs made to the roof; and Mr. Reid individually dismissed his claims against A&P without prejudice.
A&P now appeals from the state court’s grant of summary judgment to F. S. Associates, contending the grant of summary judgment was error as a matter of law in that: 1 the lease was void under OCGA § 13-8-2 b2 as a promise purporting to indemnify the promisee since it required A&P to furnish F. S. Associates liability insurance on the store premises while also requiring the parties to hold each other harmless as to claims and liabilities covered by their respective insurance policies on the property, and 2 even if not in violation of OCGA § 13-8-2 b, the question of whether F. S. Associates waived its duty to provide F. S. Associates with liability insurance was for the jury. Finding these claims of error to be without merit, we affirm. Held:
