Sounds like a good rule

Although it sounds like the 2nd Cir. Court was talking more about proxiamte cause, which requires the type of harm should be foreseeable to support the proximate cause. I may have to dig up the case and take a look. To me it is always tricky because it is hard to prove whether the birdseed was there for quite some time. Back to the Oldtown Buffet case, the Appeal Court decided that the time of the ketchup on the floor was not long enough so that the employees could take care of it. Their idea was that if it was long and nobody took action, they were negligent. If the spill just happened then they may or may not be negligent. The evidence showed that the ketchup was still brightly red and was not even brownish yet. That supported the defense to deny recovery. Now I understand why the tort lawyers are very unhappy.

Regarding sign, both the Wal-mart case and the Gap case. It is actually a bad idea for the business to erect a warning sign. The idea behind is that if you know it is dangerous then fix it. Preventive action will be viewed by court such that you know it is dangerous but refuse to fix it. Take a baseball game for example. One time a guy was hit by a foul ball on the head and got completely paralyzed. His recovery was denied because by going to the baseball game he assumed risk associated with the game. A foul ball was certainly within the regultion of the game. In another case the stadium erected a fense but the fense had a hole so that a ball went straight in the hit a guy. Now the fense is evidence that the stadium knew the danger but negligent in maintaining it.