Background
On December 10, 2019, Ashley Moore was a customer at a CVS pharmacy store on South Salisbury Boulevard in Salisbury, Maryland. As she was leaving the store, another customer, Maria Belfort, failed to apply the brakes on her SUV while pulling into an unreserved parking space near the entrance. The vehicle overran a six-inch wheel stop, crossed the pedestrian walkway, and crashed through the glass sliding entrance doors, striking Moore. She lost consciousness and sustained multiple fractures requiring surgery.
The parking lot configuration placed head-in parking spaces directed toward the store entrance at a 45-degree angle. Bollards stood in front of each accessible parking space reserved for persons with disabilities, but the unreserved spaces near the entrance had only wheel stops — devices designed to alert a driver at the edge of a space, not to impede a moving vehicle. Moore sued the alleged owners and operators of the store, including CVS Pharmacy, Inc. (the corporate parent), Maryland CVS Pharmacy, LLC (which admitted it leased and operated the store), and the property owner Clairmont Center, LLC. Moore retained a civil engineer who opined the layout violated standard design principles, and a safety consultant who maintained a national database of vehicle-into-storefront crashes and opined that the history of such incidents at CVS stores nationwide should have placed CVS on notice of the risk.
The Circuit Court for Wicomico County granted summary judgment to both CVS Pharmacy and Maryland CVS. As to Maryland CVS, the court found no evidence of actual or constructive notice of a dangerous condition because no prior vehicle-into-entrance incidents had occurred at the Salisbury store or nearby district stores. As to CVS Pharmacy, the court found insufficient facts to support a cause of action against the parent corporation. Moore appealed both rulings.
The Court’s Holding
The Appellate Court of Maryland reversed summary judgment as to both defendants and remanded for further proceedings. On the notice issue as to Maryland CVS, the court held that expert testimony — that the parking layout violated standard engineering principles by directing head-in spaces at a pedestrian storefront without bollards or barriers — was sufficient to create a genuine dispute of material fact on whether Maryland CVS knew or should have known the configuration presented an unreasonable risk of harm. The court reaffirmed that a storekeeper may be liable for the negligent acts of other invitees when a reasonably prudent person should have anticipated the possible occurrence and probable results of those acts, and that questions of foreseeability and proximate cause are ordinarily for the trier of fact. The absence of prior incidents at the Salisbury store or district stores did not entitle Maryland CVS to summary judgment as a matter of law.
On the corporate parent issue, the court held that the evidence generated a genuine dispute about whether CVS Pharmacy, Inc. operated, managed, or controlled the Salisbury store. The district leader designated as Maryland CVS’s corporate deponent identified his employer as CVS Health, synonymous with CVS Pharmacy, Inc., and testified that his employer owned, operated, and managed all its retail pharmacy locations, including the Salisbury store. A Moffatt affidavit submitted by CVS Pharmacy acknowledged an agency agreement under which CVS Pharmacy performed field management, human resources, payroll processing, maintenance-request oversight, and other management functions for Maryland CVS — but CVS Pharmacy never produced the agency agreement itself. The court held that CVS Pharmacy failed to carry its summary judgment burden by relying on an executive affidavit whose factual foundation, the agency agreement, it withheld from the record.
Key Takeaways
- A retail store proprietor can face premises liability for vehicle-into-storefront crashes even when no prior incident occurred at that specific store, if expert evidence establishes the parking configuration created a foreseeable and unreasonable risk of harm to pedestrian invitees.
- Wheel stops and bollards are legally distinct: bollards can impede vehicles moving faster than 20 mph, while wheel stops merely alert a driver at the edge of a space and are not designed to stop a moving vehicle — a distinction that may bear directly on notice and breach.
- A corporate parent that performs management, maintenance-oversight, and field-management functions under an agency agreement with a store-operating subsidiary may owe a duty to invitees; failing to produce the agency agreement while moving for summary judgment is fatal to that motion.
- On summary judgment, a corporate designee’s deposition testimony binds the designating party; the designating party cannot later disclaim that testimony through a contradicting executive affidavit without explaining the evidentiary foundation.
- Foreseeability of harm and proximate cause are ordinarily jury questions; a court may not resolve them on summary judgment where the evidence supports reasonable competing inferences.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces that retail premises liability for vehicle-intrusion hazards extends beyond slip-and-fall scenarios and can arise from deliberate — if negligent — design choices in parking layout. Store operators in Maryland cannot defeat a premises liability claim simply by pointing to the absence of prior incidents at the same location when credible expert testimony establishes that the physical configuration foreseeably endangered pedestrians. The ruling will be closely watched by retailers and their insurers as they assess the adequacy of perimeter-protection measures, including bollard placement at non-accessible parking spaces.
The opinion also carries significant implications for multi-entity retail structures. By holding that a parent corporation’s summary judgment motion fails when the parent withholds the very agency agreement it relies upon to disclaim control, the court signals that courts will scrutinize attempts by corporate parents to avoid premises liability through selective disclosure. Plaintiffs injured at stores operated through subsidiary structures should pursue discovery directly from the parent and press hard for production of management and agency agreements before any dispositive motions are resolved.