A court in Australia has ordered costs against a claimant who had sued a grocery store after a slip-fall, after finding that “the grape could not have been on the floor longer than 10 minutes… and it was not realistic to expect every piece of vegetable matter which fell to the floor be picked up instantly.” [Harriet Alexander, Melbourne Age via Tortylicious on Facebook]:
“Coles is not bound to ensure the absolute safety of entrants to its stores,” he said.
“It must take reasonable care.
“Coles could not have been expected to ensure safety by, for example, having several staff in every aisle doing nothing but watching for dropped vegetable matter, or by allocating a staff member to ‘shadow’ every customer as they walked around the store.”
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Slip-and-fall plaintiffs are more likely to be dismissed as greedy in societies where medical costs are automatically covered anyways.
In another recent post, Walter noted that American lawsuit culture has metastasized to British tourists. Australia and Canada can only hope that talk of an “Anglosphere” of shared values has limits.