## Facts

- Ruth Ann Wright, a customer at a Wal-Mart in Carmel, Indiana, slipped on a puddle of water in the store’s open-air “Outdoor Lawn and Garden Corral” and alleged negligent premises maintenance and inspection.
- Wal-Mart denied negligence and asserted Wright’s contributory/comparative fault.
- The parties stipulated to admission of Wal-Mart employee materials compiled as a “Store Manual,” including procedures addressing spills and floor hazards.
- At trial, witnesses gave conflicting testimony about whether the manual’s spill-and-hazard procedures applied in the outdoor garden corral.
- A former employee and safety-team member testified she would sweep or squeegee water in the corral “as required” (often after rainfall or plant watering) and that the puddle where Wright fell was the type she would normally address.

## Issues

1. Whether a negligence jury instruction improperly changed the objective ordinary-care standard by permitting the jury to use Wal-Mart’s internal rules and manuals as evidence of the standard of ordinary care.
2. Whether any error in giving that instruction was cured by other instructions or was harmless.

## Decision

- The Indiana Supreme Court held the challenged instruction was an incorrect statement of law because it allowed Wal-Mart’s internal rules to be treated as evidence defining the ordinary-care standard, shifting from an objective to a defendant-specific standard.
- The Court concluded the error was not cured by other instructions and was not harmless given the prominence of the manual evidence and the disputed applicability of the policies to the accident location.
- The Court reversed the judgment and remanded for a new trial.

## Legal Principles

- Negligence is measured by an objective standard: what a reasonably careful and ordinarily prudent person would do under like circumstances.
- A defendant’s internal policies may reflect a higher degree of care than the law requires and therefore do not establish the legal standard of reasonable care.
- Internal rules and manuals may be admissible as evidence relevant to negligence, but the jury must not be instructed in a way that lets those rules define or substitute for the objective reasonable-care standard.
- An erroneous instruction warrants a new trial when there is a reasonable probability it affected the verdict and no other instruction corrects the misstatement.

## Conclusion

Because the jury was instructed in a manner that could treat Wal-Mart’s internal safety procedures as the measure of ordinary care, the Indiana Supreme Court reversed and remanded for a new trial under the objective reasonable-person standard.


Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Wright, 774 N.E.2d 891 (Ind. 2002)