Question

Louie has been drinking beer and watching the Jaguars game and he runs out of beer so he naturally decides he needs more beer. He goes to the store to buy more beer and while walking to the beer cooler he steps on a candy wrapper dropped by a previous customer, slips and falls and breaks his leg. He wants to sue the store and asks your advice. Does he have a cause of action and if so what theory or theories are available to him. What defenses does the store have? What is the likely result?

Answer 1

Of course Louie can sue the owner. It is the duty of the shop owner to take care of their customers or vendors or any invitees once they enter the portals of his shop. If he fails to do so, he can be held for gross negligence and sued for injuries suffered and damages occurred. The damage can extend up to bills incurred on treatment of the injury and also lost income due to injury. All other damages are hypothetical and depends on facts and circumstances. However, the customer has to prove the injury suffered by appropriate evidences in the proceeding of the suit. This is held in the legal theory for slip and fall claims.

Generally, customers tend to look across into the cooler and not to the floor. So, the foreign element ie chocolate wrapper lying on the floor remains undiscoverable obviously . So, it's the duty of the shopkeeper to treat such mess by implementing appropriate floor inspection and cleaning, which he must've failed to keep. Thus customer had to slip and fall and injure himself. Hence, the shop keeper is negligent and the customer can sue him.

The owner can resort to the doctrine of Risk assumption. Under this, the owner is not liable for damages occurred if,

• The risk of walking in the affected area was easily noticeable/understandable to the injured customer.
• The injured customer despite knowing the affected area, continued to walk taking the risk of slipping and falling.

Since the chocolate wrapper was easily discoverable by Louie, the owner can defend he continued to take the risk.
One more way of owner defending could be by proving that the wrapper was dropped by customer not very much early and before his staff could clean it up, Louie had stepped on the wrapper.

It all depends upon what the evidences are and how much weights to they possess to defend the party's claims. The likely result is Louie will succeed.

Please comment in case of any query regarding the solution.