Negri v. Stop and Shop, Inc., 65 N.Y.2d 625, 480 N.E.2d 740, 491 N.Y.S.2d 151 (N.Y. 1985)
Negri v. Stop and Shop is a leading New York premises liability decision on constructive notice in slip-and-fall cases.
Whether circumstantial evidence that broken jars of baby food were on the supermarket floor for at least 15–20 minutes before the plaintiff's fall is sufficient to permit a jury to find that the store had constructive notice of the dangerous condition.
A property owner may be liable for a slip-and-fall hazard if it created the dangerous condition, had actual notice of it, or had constructive notice of it. Constructive notice exists when the condition was visible and apparent and existed for a sufficient length of time prior to the accident to permit the defendant's employees to discover and remedy it. Constructive notice may be established by competent circumstantial evidence; direct evidence of the exact time the condition arose is not required.
Yes. The circumstantial evidence that the broken jars had been on the floor for at least 15–20 minutes before the fall was sufficient to create a jury question on constructive notice; therefore, dismissal was improper. The Court of Appeals reversed the Appellate Division and reinstated the jury's verdict for the plaintiff.
Negri is a cornerstone New York case demonstrating that constructive notice can be proven through circumstantial evidence about the duration of a hazard. It teaches that the key inquiry is whether the condition was visible and apparent for long enough that reasonable inspections would have discovered it. For law students, Negri provides a practical template for building—or attacking—a prima facie premises liability case: plaintiffs marshal time-and-opportunity facts (e.g., duration, location, lack of recent inspection), and defendants counter with evidence of reasonable inspection protocols and timing. The case is often contrasted with Gordon, where the Court found the evidence too speculative to show how long a hazard existed.