SUCCESSFUL DECISION IN A SUPERMARKET SLIP
The recent Court of Appeal decision in Catherine Hines v Iceland Foods Ltd (2010) is good news for Defendant’s!
In this case the Claimant, Mrs Hines, was visiting the Defendant’s supermarket premises and was passing through one of the checkout areas when she stepped on a stray wire basket on the floor, lost her footing, and fell. She suffered a painful injury to her shoulder.
Mrs Hines established in her evidence that there was a danger on the floor. As a result the Defendant had to discharge the evidential burden by explaining how the accident could arise whilst exercising reasonable care. It was the Defendant’s case they were not liable for the accident because the Claimant could not prove a breach of the common law duty of care under the Occupiers’ Liability Act. The basket had only been placed on the floor shortly before the accident occurred and no system could have identified the danger prior to this. It was submitted that there was a reasonable system of checking in place by staff every five minutes or so who would have removed any hazards had they seen them.
When the case was first heard the Judge found in favour of Mrs Hines. He found that the evidence did demonstrate the Defendant’s system was inadequate as it did not pick up a stray basket.
On appeal the Defendant’s repeated their submissions that the basket was there for a very short time and there was a reasonable system in place to identify such hazards. The Court of Appeal found that the District Judge had failed to make a finding about the period of time that the basket was on the floor. The Court could not see as a matter of common sense that a basket would have remained as an obstacle to other customers for a significant period of time.
It was accepted that staff had been trained (that as a matter of priority) items like this were to be removed if they were aware of them. It was difficult to see what more the Defendant could have done to prevent such an accident. A system could not have been devised to avoid what happened. To have a member of staff on duty to check the aisles of the store and identify slipping and tripping hazards at all times was too high a standard given that the Defendant already had a number of systems in place. It was not reasonable to suggest that they should employ anyone to do this. On that basis the appeal was allowed
Where an occupier has a satisfactory system to deal with slipping and tripping hazards in place the duty of care to visitors to ensure their safety is one of reasonableness. The Court in this case emphasised it was not prepared to set the standard for a system beyond this.