It’s so common nowadays for people to end up injured in a supermarket. With so many things all under one roof that items can be knocked over and cause an obvious slipping or tripping hazards from stock falling on the floor – it’s a constant problem.
Ultimately, all this leads to supermarkets being pretty dangerous places. As much as you can look out for your own wellbeing by keeping an eye out for hazards on the floors, there are certain things like water or oil that aren’t easy to spot; and when you’re distracted by the bargain prices, the last thing you are doing is watching where you’re walking. As a result, the Occupiers Liability Act is a pretty important piece of legislation for supermarkets to uphold.
By law, whoever is responsible or in charge of a premises has a duty to do all they reasonably can to ensure people are not injured. Whether you have a claim or not is not so much down to the individual circumstances. Many people are unfortunately under the illusion that if you slip or trip in a supermarket due to an item being on the floor, or a slipping hazard that isn’t cordoned off or doesn’t have signs in the area, you have a claim. This is not the case at all I’m afraid.
Referring back to the Occupiers Liability Act, the law says that those in charge must do all that is reasonable to prevent an injury occurring. Is it reasonable for a supermarket to be liable for your injuries if a spillage occurs and 10 seconds later you slip on it? Is it reasonable that an item falls off a shelf and in an instant later you are the unfortunate person to trip over it? Some people think that if you have an accident and you’re not at fault, someone must pay. This isn’t the case, and I’ll explain why.
A claim for compensation is normally a claim under the law of tort – i.e. negligence. If you’re not at fault, someone else has to be to blame for you to make the claim. For someone to be to blame, they must have failed to act on something or directly done something negligently that has caused you injury. It’s all about what is foreseeable and reasonable. It is foreseeable that a spillage could occur? Of course it is! But is it reasonable that a supermarket could have prevented you from slipping over something 10 seconds after the spillage occurred? How could they have prevented that from happening? It would take superman to do that kind of job…
So the next thing to cover is reasonableness. The best way, I suppose, to make sure that any spillage is dealt with in the quickest possible time would be to employ people to stand on every aisle looking out for them. That’s a lot expenditure on the supermarkets part – it’s not very reasonable now is it? So under the Occupiers Liability Act, the duty they have is to take reasonable steps to prevent an injury occurring. The law is written this way to make sure it takes in to account that a supermarket cannot prevent all accidents from occurring.
This is commonly upheld with a system of regular inspection and maintenance, and some staff training to try and bolster the procedures. Every hour or so someone inspects the aisles and checks for any hazards; simple. If a hazard is reported, someone must be on hand to get to it and cordon it off or put up signage accordingly. Staff can be trained in “clean as you go” where they must look out for hazards whilst doing their duties and make sure any they spot is reported and dealt with efficiently.
So moving back to the question in the title of this article, whether you have a claim is down to whether the supermarket can prove they have taken all reasonable steps to prevent an injury from occurring. If they don’t have a reasonable system of inspection and maintenance, then you may have a claim against a supermarket. But if they do, and you slipped in between inspection periods, you may find it very difficult to win the case.
Many people end up pretty disappointed because you can sustain some horrific injuries by slipping or tripping in a supermarket. One slip and you could dislocate you knee, leaving you needing reconstruction surgery, months of rehabilitation, a permanent weakness in the joint, and months off work. The cost of being off work for so long could run in to thousands of pounds, and the impact it has on your life can be horrendous. But, if the supermarket has taken all reasonable steps, they can successfully defend the claim.
Give us a call on our free claims helpline on 0800 634 75 75 to discuss your potential claim. Make it as quick as you can because CCTV could be the make or break of the claim. The camera never lies! Footage from CCTV evidence could be used to show whether the area was inspected properly, but footage is normally erased after a mere few weeks.
