On Christmas Day, 2003, a woman named Nancy Sue Brown took her daughter and grandchildren to see a movie at an AMC theater. When the movie was over, the crowd made for the exits. A theater employee had just finished mopping the hallway and dutifully placed the "wet floor" sign in the slippery area. No one slipped due to the wet conditions, but someone did manage to knock over the sign. And by the time Ms. Brown got to the area, the sign was lying on the floor. And shortly thereafter, so was she. Her foot got caught in the sign, in a bad way, and she fell. Unfortunately Ms. Brown had undergone a back operation, and the fall caused more damage than it otherwise would have. So she and her husband sued (提起诉讼).
AMC argued that the entire point of the "wet floor" sign above was to warn of danger, and therefore, courts should encourage the use by not allowing Brown's case to proceed(继续进行). AMC referred to a case about a December, 1998 incident, where a "wet floor" sign, not in use, fell to the floor causing another trip-and- fall. In that case, Georgia's Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the store, but didn't go so far as to say that "wet floor' signs couldn't give rise to legal liability (责任) in trip-and-fall accidents. In the Brown case, the Supreme Court therefore rejected AMC's argument that the former case applied
But the Browns argued something surprising that the "wet floor" sign was, itself, dangerous, because "using this type of sign in areas passed by lots of customers creates an unreasonable risk of foreseeable harm to the public in the form of tripping hazards(危险)." That's right—the safety sign, used in the way it was designed, was itself dangerous. The court thankfully didn't accept that argument, at least not entirely. But it did conclude that Brown's case could continue to a jury(陪审团)— "a merchant's selection and use of equipment designed to warn customers of one danger that have the potential to expose them to a different one."
