The High Court dismissed a shopper’s personal injury proceedings against Dunnes Stores after finding she had not proved what caused her to fall in the store.
In a judgment delivered on 8 June 2016, Mr Justice Bernard J. Barton said the plaintiff had to establish the cause of the fall on the balance of probabilities before the court could consider whether the store’s cleaning and inspection arrangements were adequate. He found that she had not discharged that burden. The court therefore did not decide whether Dunnes Stores was negligent or in breach of statutory duty.
The plaintiff said she slipped on water or another clear liquid on a laminated timber floor near the store entrance at the Mill Shopping Centre in Clondalkin on 13 June 2013. She testified that after getting up she saw liquid and a skid mark on the floor, and that her trouser leg was wet. She did not report an injury or identify a cause when approached immediately after the fall, but returned the next day to report it.
The fall was captured by the store’s CCTV, but the recording skipped frames at intervals of one or two seconds. It showed the plaintiff entering the area and then on the floor, but did not capture the moment of the fall or establish its cause. A store cleaner inspected the area twice within minutes and said he saw nothing that could explain the fall. The judge accepted his evidence, which he said was corroborated by the footage.
The plaintiff’s engineer said the flooring’s slip resistance when wet was comparable to walking on ice. The engineers agreed on the floor’s slip characteristics. However, the plaintiff’s engineer accepted that the amount of water needed to wet her trouser leg and leave liquid and a skid mark would have been considerably more than a few drops. The defendant’s engineer estimated it would be about a small glass of water. The court found no evidence explaining how such a spill got there, and no evidence that other customers had slipped or struggled on that area. About 85 people had crossed it in the half-hour before the fall.
The judge also considered evidence that a person slipping while walking forward would usually fall backwards. The plaintiff fell forwards, and no satisfactory engineering explanation was offered for that. While the court did not rule out the possibility of a slip, it concluded the plaintiff had not proved that water caused her fall.
The judgment noted that the plaintiff’s knee injury and loss were not materially disputed, but said those matters arose for consideration only if liability was established. The court ordered the proceedings dismissed.