Background
In April 2018, Kimberly Blackwell entered a Holiday Oil Company convenience store in Utah to buy a soda. As she was leaving, she stepped sideways to make way for a child and her foot landed on the corner of an unsecured entryway floor mat. The mat curled beneath her foot and she fell forward, landing on her right hand. A pressure-washing of the exterior sidewalk the night before had allowed water to seep under the entrance doors and pool beneath the mat. Blackwell sustained a wrist injury requiring surgery—three pins were inserted into her wrist—and shortly before cast removal she developed complex regional pain syndrome, described at trial as “one of the most painful” chronic pain disorders.
In 2021, Blackwell sued Holiday Oil for negligence. At the June 2024 jury trial, both sides offered expert testimony on whether the mat breached the applicable standard of care. Blackwell’s premises liability expert testified that the mat violated safety standards issued by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) as well as certain provisions of the International Building Code (IBC). Holiday Oil’s biomechanics expert countered that neither ANSI nor ASTM standards had been codified into Utah law, and that the IBC provisions Blackwell relied upon were likewise not among the sections formally adopted by Utah statute. The jury returned a verdict finding Holiday Oil not at fault.
Before submission to the jury, Blackwell requested Model Utah Jury Instruction 2d CV212 (MUJI CV212), which directs that “[v]iolation of a safety law is evidence of negligence unless the violation is excused.” Her proposed instruction listed the ANSI, ASTM, and IBC standards as the “safety laws” in question. The trial court declined to give the instruction, reasoning that if the cited standards had not been codified as law in Utah, Holiday Oil could not be held accountable for violating them as “safety laws.” Blackwell appealed, arguing that the instruction’s reference to “statute, ordinance or rule” encompassed voluntary industry consensus standards.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeals affirmed. Writing for the panel, Judge Orme held that the trial court correctly declined to give MUJI CV212 because uncodified advisory standards do not qualify as “safety laws” within the instruction’s meaning.
The court’s analysis centered on the word “rule” in the phrase “statute, ordinance or rule” in MUJI CV212. Blackwell argued that “rule” encompasses voluntary consensus standards because one dictionary definition of “rule” includes “a prescribed guide for conduct or action” or “an accepted procedure, custom, or habit.” The court rejected this reading by applying the noscitur a sociis interpretive canon—the principle that an uncertain term is interpreted by reference to the words grouped alongside it. A “statute” is a law enacted by a legislative body; an “ordinance” is a municipal regulation enacted by a governmental authority. Both are formally codified, legally binding enactments. Under noscitur a sociis, “rule” must share this characteristic and therefore means an administrative rule—“[a]n officially promulgated agency regulation that has the force of law”—not a private consensus standard voluntarily adopted by an industry body.
The court further noted that this construction aligns with Section 288B of the Restatement (Second) of Torts, which Utah has adopted, and which limits evidence-of-negligence treatment to violations of “legislative enactments” or “administrative regulations.” Because the ANSI and ASTM standards and the relevant IBC provisions had not been codified by the Utah Legislature, any municipal authority, or an administrative agency, they remained uncodified advisory standards outside MUJI CV212’s definition of “safety law.” The trial court had therefore correctly withheld the instruction. The court also clarified that MUJI CV212—which tells the jury a violation “may” be considered as evidence of negligence—reflects Restatement § 288B(2) (non-adopted legislative standards), not negligence per se or prima facie evidence of negligence, which would require formal adoption by the court.
Key Takeaways
- Under MUJI CV212, “safety law” means a formally codified government enactment—a statute, municipal ordinance, or administrative rule with the force of law; voluntary consensus standards such as ANSI guidelines, ASTM testing standards, or non-adopted IBC provisions do not qualify no matter how widely accepted they are within an industry.
- The noscitur a sociis canon, applied without requiring a prior finding of textual ambiguity, resolves the meaning of “rule” in MUJI CV212 by reference to its statutory and ordinance companions, each of which is a formally codified legal enactment.
- Restatement (Second) of Torts § 288B, adopted in Utah, draws the same line: only formally codified standards can serve as evidence of negligence under that framework; uncodified standards at most bear on the reasonableness of the defendant’s conduct under an ordinary negligence analysis.
- Plaintiffs who rely at trial on industry standards not adopted into Utah law cannot invoke MUJI CV212, but those standards remain admissible through expert testimony on the general reasonable-care standard.
Why It Matters
Premises liability litigants and defense counsel in Utah now have clear appellate guidance on the MUJI CV212 threshold. Plaintiffs who intend to rely on industry standards—ANSI mat-stability guidelines, ASTM floor-surface standards, or IBC provisions not expressly adopted by Utah statute—cannot use MUJI CV212 to frame those standards as statutory violations in front of a jury. The rhetorical advantage of a jury instruction that treats a violation as “evidence of negligence” is reserved for formally codified law. The ordinary reasonable-care analysis remains available, but plaintiff’s counsel will need to rely on expert opinion alone rather than the elevated framing the instruction provides.
For defense counsel, Blackwell v. Holiday Oil underscores the importance of identifying at trial whether each referenced safety standard has been formally codified. Even universal, industry-wide acceptance of an ANSI or ASTM standard does not elevate it to “safety law” status under MUJI CV212. Practitioners advising on premises design and maintenance should also be aware that their clients bear no MUJI-CV212-level obligation to comply with uncodified standards—though compliance with such standards can still be relevant as evidence of general reasonableness. The opinion also offers useful guidance on the noscitur a sociis canon, which Utah courts have invoked with increasing frequency as a plain-language tool applicable without a prior ambiguity finding.