NOT DESIGNATED FOR PUBLICATION

HIGGINBOTHAM, J.

In this case, a man was tragically crushed to death beneath an 18-wheeler tractor trailer when the trailer's support columns sank through the asphalt surface of a commercial parking lot. Pursuant to summary judgment, the trial court dismissed the claims of the decedent's family against the owners of the parking lot and the water company that serviced the area. These appeals followed. We affirm the trial court's judgment.

BACKGROUND

On the afternoon of April 17, 2009, Joseph Brown, Jr. was operating an 18-wheeler tractor trailer loaded with 41,573 pounds of fiberglass. He drove the truck into the parking lot of the Belle Aire Plaza shopping center, located at 12101 Florida Boulevard in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, seeking to temporarily park the trailer portion of his rig. Mr. Brown encountered one of the shopping center's tenants, Patrick Huff, who operated a motor vehicle inspection business at the front of the shopping center's parking lot. Mr. Huff informed Mr. Brown that he could not park in the lot without permission from the shopping center's owners. Apparently undaunted by Mr. Huff's warning, Mr. Brown drove to another area of the parking lot and proceeded to park his 18-wheeler without permission from the shopping center's owners. Mr. Brown unhooked the trailer from the tractor and crawled underneath the trailer near the trailers front support columns that rested on the parking lot's asphalt pavement. While underneath the loaded trailer, the support columns suddenly sank through the asphalt pavement, causing the trailer to collapse and crush Mr. Brown to death.

The plaintiffs are Mr. Brown's surviving wife, Lena L. Brown, and his two adult children, Joseph Brown, III, and Latessia Brown-McClellan. The plaintiffs initially filed suit for damages against the owners of the shopping center parking lot, Sharon Bettis and Glenda Deshotel, alleging that the asphalt surface of the parking lot was defective in design and/or construction, because it was not thick enough to support the weight of Mr. Brown's trailer. The plaintiffs further allege that the property owners failed to warn of any weight limit for the parking lot and that the parking lot was poorly maintained. The plaintiffs also sued gas and electric utility companies, as well as The Baton. Rouge Water Works Company ("BR Water"), maintaining that water leaked from water meters, mains and/or pipes and flowed along gas lines in the vicinity of the parking lot, eroding and causing void spaces beneath the asphalt that led to the collapse of the pavement and Mr. Brown's death.1 Subsequent to the filing of the plaintiffs' lawsuits, Mr. Brown's insurer, Old Republic Life Insurance Company, intervened in the suit as the subrogee of Mr. Brown's wife, who had received death benefit payments pursuant to an occupational accident policy providing coverage for Mr. Brown.

BR Water filed a motion for summary judgment, contending that there was no evidence that the water mains, meters and/or pipes owned by BR Water leaked at or near the location of the accident, and thus, there was no evidence that BR Water could have contributed to Mr. Brown's death. The property owners also filed a motion for summary judgment, maintaining that the sole and undisputed cause of the accident was Mr. Brown's failure to abide by the instructions given him to not park his tractor trailer rig in the parking lot without permission. The plaintiffs and Old Republic opposed both motions for summary judgment. After a hearing, the trial court granted summary judgment in favor of the property owners and in favor of BR Water, and dismissed all of the plaintiffs' and Old Republic's pending claims with prejudice. Judgment was signed accordingly on February 19, 2013.

Old Republic and Mrs. Blown appealed, both arguing that the trial court erred in granting summary judgment in favor of BR Water and the property owners because genuine issues of material fact remain with respect to: (1) the existence of a leak at the water meter owned by BR Water, (2) the property owners' knowledge of the unreasonably dangerous condition of the parking lot; and (3) the lack of adequate warning and signage given the unreasonably dangerous condition of the property owners' parking lot.

LAW AND ANALYSIS

Summary judgment is subject to de novo review on appeal, using the same standards applicable to the trial court's determination of the issues. Berard v. L-3 Communications Vertex Aerospace, LLC, 2009-1202 (La. App. 1st Cir. 2/12/10), 35 So.3d 334, 339-340, writ denied, 2010-0715 (La. 6/4/10), 38 So.3d 302. Summary judgment is appropriate if the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, admissions, and affidavits in the record show that there is no genuine issue as to material fact and that the mover is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. La. Code Civ. P. art. 966(B). The burden of proof on summary judgment remains with the mover. However, if the mover will not bear the burden of proof at trial on the matter that is before the court on the motion for summary judgment, the mover's burden on the motion does not require him to negate all essential elements of the adverse party's claim, action, or defense, but rather to point out to the court that there is an absence of factual support for one or more elements essential to the adverse party's claim, action, or defense. Thereafter, if the adverse party fails to produce factual support sufficient to establish that he will be able to satisfy his evidentiary burden of proof at trial, there is no genuine issue of material fact. La. Code Civ. P. art. 966(C)(2); Robles v. ExxonMobile, 2002-0854 (La. App. 1st Cir. 3/28/03), 844 So.2d 339, 341.

In ruling on a motion for summary judgment, the trial court's role is not to evaluate the weight of the evidence or to determine the truth of the matter, but instead to determine whether there is a genuine issue of triable fact. Hines v. Garrett, 2004-0806 (La. 6/25/04), 876 So.2d 764, 765 (per curiam). Despite the legislative mandate that summary judgments are favored, factual inferences reasonably drawn from the evidence must be construed in favor of the party opposing the motion, and all doubt must be resolved in the opponent's favor. Willis v. Medders, 2000-2507 (La. 12/8/00), 775 So.2d 1049, 1050 (per curiam). However, a trial court may not make credibility decisions on a motion for summary judgment. Monterrey Center, LLC v. Education Partners, Inc., 2008-0734 (La. App. 1st Cir. 12/23/08), 5 So.3d 225, 232. In deciding a motion for summary judgment, the trial court must assume that all of the witnesses are credible. See Independent Fire Ins. Co. v. Sunbeam Corp., 99-2181 (La. 2/29/00), 755 So.2d 226, 236. Additionally, because it is the applicable substantive law that determines materiality, whether a particular fact in dispute is "material" for summary judgment purposes can be seen only in light of the substantive law applicable to the case. Guardia v. Lakeview Regional Medical Center, 2008-1369 (La. App. 1st Cir. 5/8/09), 13 So.3d 625, 628.

The substantive law outlining liability of an owner for defective things is found in La. Civ. Code art. 2317,1, which provides:

Such liability is predicated upon a finding of negligence. See Broussard v. Voorhies, 2006-2306 (La. App. 1st Cir. 9/19/07), 970 So.2d 1038, 1042, writ denied, 2007-2052 (La. 12/14/07), 970 So.2d 535. The general rule is that the property owner has a duty to keep the property in a reasonably safe condition. The owner must discover any unreasonably dangerous condition on the premises and either correct the condition or warn potential victims of its existence. Henry y. NOHSC Houma No. 1, L.L.C., 2011-0738 (La. App. 1st Cir. 6/28/12), 97 So.3d 470, 473, writ denied, 2012-1761 (La. 11/2/12), 99 So.3d 677.

Thus, to establish liability based on ownership or custody of a thing, the plaintiff must show, by a preponderance of the evidence, that: (1) the defendant was the owner or custodian of a thing which caused the damage; (2) the thing had a defect (an unreasonable risk of harm); (3) the defective thing caused the damage; (4) the defendant knew or, in the exercise of reasonable care, should have known of the defect; (5) the damage could have been prevented by the exercise of reasonable care; and (6) the defendant failed to exercise such reasonable care. See Granda v. State Farm Mut. Ins. Co., 2004-2012 (La. App. 1st Cir. 2/10/06), 935 So.2d 698, 702.

In an action to recover damages for injuries allegedly caused by another's negligence, the plaintiff has the burden of proving negligence on the part of the defendant by a preponderance of the evidence. Hanks v. Entergy Corp., 2006-744 (La. 12/18/06), 944 So.2d 564, 578. Most negligence cases are resolved by employing the duty-risk analysis, which entails five separate elements: (1) the duty element — whether the defendant had a duty to conform his conduct to a specific standard; (2) the breach element — whether the defendant's conduct failed to conform to the appropriate standard; (3) the cause-in-fact element — whether the defendant's substandard conduct was a cause-in-fact of the plaintiff's injuries; (4) the scope of liability or scope of protection element — whether the defendant's substandard conduct was a legal cause of the plaintiff's injuries; and (5) the damages element — whether the plaintiff was damaged. Id., 944 So.2d at 579.

Based on our de novo review of the evidence, we conclude that the plaintiffs did not establish that they would be able to satisfy their evidentiary burden of proof at trial that the property owners failed to keep the parking lot in a reasonably safe condition for the light commercial traffic of the customers and tenants of the shopping center. The experts all agreed that the parking lot was not designed to withstand heavy truck traffic. The undisputed evidence reveals that the owners generally did not allow 18-wheeler trucks to park in the shopping center's parking lot, and Mr. Brown had been explicitly informed that he could not park his 18-wheeler in the parking lot without the permission of the property owners, which he did not have.2 There is no evidence that the property owners knew or should have known that there was a void space hidden below the asphalt surface where this unfortunate incident occurred. Accordingly, there are no remaining genuine issues of material fact regarding the negligence or liability of the property owners. Summary judgment as to the property owners was properly granted and the trial court did not err in dismissing the plaintiffs' claims against the property owners.

Likewise, the plaintiffs did not establish that they would be able to satisfy their evidentiary burden of proof at trial that BR Water had custody and control of water pipes, mains, and/or meters that were leaking within the vicinity of the parking lot at issue. There was no evidence that there was an actual water leak in the area or that any of BR Water's equipment was somehow defective. The plaintiffs' expert geotechnical engineer, Sergio Aviles, stated that it was a possibility that there was a water leak in the area of the accident.3 It takes more than the existence of a mere possibility to prove a fact by a preponderance of the evidence in order to defeat summary judgment. See Hawkins v. Fowler, 2011-1495 (La. App. 1st Cir. 5/2/12); 92 So.3d 544, 547-548, writ denied, 2012-1449 (La. 10/8/12), 98 So.3d 860. See also Hanks, 944. So.2d at 578 ("[p]roof is sufficient to constitute a preponderance when the entirety of the evidence, both direct and circumstantial, shows the fact sought to be proved is more probable than not.") Additionally, there was no evidence that BR Water knew or should have known that an area below the surface of the property owners' parking lot was eroded due to leaking water company equipment. There simply was no evidence presented that created a genuine issue of material fact precluding summary judgment. Therefore, it was appropriate for the trial court to grant summary judgment in favor of BR Water and dismiss the plaintiffs' claims against BR Water.

CONCLUSION

For the stated reasons, the summary judgment dismissal of the plaintiffs' claims against Sharon Bettis, Glenda Deshotel, and Baton Rouge Water Works Company is affirmed. Appeal costs are assessed equally against the plaintiffs-appellants, Lena L. Brown and Old Republic Life Insurance Company.

AFFIRMED.