Wakefield Woman Secures £7,000 Damages For Supermarket Slip Injury

A Wakefield woman secured £7,000 in damages after Liddy’s Solicitors helped her to claim for a back injury suffered when she slipped over in a branch of Wilkinson.

The woman slipped on soap that had been spilled by an unknown shopper and landed on her back. She already had degeneration in her spine and the fall made her condition much worse for a period of 18 months.

She instructed Liddy’s Solicitors to represent her and during our initial contact with the retailer, it denied being at fault for our client’s fall.

Supermarkets, probably more than any other type of shop, have a duty to take reasonable steps to try to make sure that their premises are safe to use. Of course it was not its fault that a shopper had spilled the soap and not told anybody, and perhaps the first Wilkinson found out about the spillage was when the accident happened. However, supermarkets have a duty to regularly inspect the aisles for spillages and to clean them up when they are discovered.

Wilkinson carried out inspections every two hours and was able to prove the aisle had been checked at 1pm, around an hour before the claimant slipped. The spillage may have occurred at any time between 1pm and 2pm.

The store did not provide any evidence from staff members to say that they were on the aisle on a regular basis between 1pm and 2pm and that they saw no spillage. There was no evidence therefore that the spillage had not been there for an hour, in which case it should have been cleaned up.

Court proceedings were issued and the case was listed for trial on October 3rd. However, the defendant had a late change of mind and, on September 26th, agreed to settle the claim for damages of £7,000.