There are two ways for an appellate court to deal with a precedent it no longer wishes to follow—overrule the precedent, or distinguish the precedent away to the point that the precedent essentially dies. Over a period of several decades, the Texas Supreme Court chose the latter approach in dealing with its own 1983 premises law precedent in Corbin v. Safeway Stores. Last year in Albertsons, LLC v. Mohammadi, the Texas Supreme Court put the final nail in Corbin’s coffin, while still declining explicitly to overrule Corbin.

Corbin was a straight-forward case, and the Texas Supreme Court’s holding appeared in 1983 to be relatively unambiguous. A customer slipped on grapes directly in front of a self-service bin in the produce aisle of a Safeway grocery store. While the customer was on the floor, he noticed several ruptured and discolored grapes on the floor near him. He saw no mat and no floor covering on the floor in the area where he fell. At trial, two Safeway managers testified store policy required stores to keep large non-skid mats in front of grape displays. The managers testified: 1. the requirement existed because Safeway knew that customers frequently either knock grapes off the displays or drop grapes on the floor, thereby creating a great risk that a customer will later step on a slippery grape and fall, 2. Safeway required mats in front of grape displays because it knew from experience that grape displays were an unusually hazardous and continual source of grapes upon which customers could slip and fall, and 3. the mats were necessary because store employees were unable adequately to oversee the floor areas in the vicinity of the displays to ensure they remained free of grapes.