When the judge thinks ‘how else could this have happened?…’
What happened?
A shopper was injured when they slipped on spilled yoghurt in a well-known supermarket.
The supermarket evidence that they regularly inspected and cleaned the floors and had policies requiring staff to deal with spillages as soon as they were detected. However, they gave no evidence on when that particular floor had last been inspected or cleaned.
The claimant sued the supermarket for negligence.
Legal Outcome
The shopper was successful in their claim (on appeal).
The supermarket were unable to prove what the accident’s cause was. The court presumed the breach because the supermarket was in control of the situation and the accident was not one which normally occurs without carelessness (on the part of the supermarket) – the second requirement is made out whenever an event occurs which is unusual and (in the absence of a contrary explanation) is more likely to be due to negligence than anything else.
This is the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur, which literally means ‘the thing speaks for itself’.
In this case, the area was under the supermarket’s control and while it was unknown how long the spill had been there, it was likely that it had been there long enough to be dealt with – the burden of proving that it had not been there that long was therefore on the defendant.
What can we learn from what happened?
In civil law claims for compensation, it is sometimes thought that the claimant and the defendant need to have watertight cases to be successful in their claim/defence. This may be more the case in criminal law, but in civil law the burden of proof is based on the ‘balance of probabilities’. In this case study, the judge only had to think it is was more likely than not that the supermarket should have cleared up the spillage.
The legal latin phrase ‘res ipsa loquitur’ is very neat, and basically means ‘how else could it have happened?’ This was enough for the judge.
While not categorised as historical in this case study library, it is very old – 1976. There have been many more cases involving shoppers slipping on food and drink in supermarket aisles since 1976!
Source of Information
NCRQ Level 6 Coursework
Law Teacher