Loblaws Inc. has been ordered to pay about $26,000 to a Pelly Crossing woman who fell in the Whitehorse Real Canadian Superstore six years ago.
Mary Alfred, 61, sued the company that owns the grocery store for negligence after she accidentally stepped on a four-wheeled dolly, fell and fractured her right knee.
Alfred, who was 61 at the time, was getting help at the service desk when she turned to the right and was tripped up by the dolly.
In his decision, Yukon Supreme Court Justice Leigh Gower said the Superstore had a responsibility to protect its customers from “reasonably foreseeable” hazards.
“The fact that Ms. Alfred stepped on a dolly, which was on the floor in an area in front of the customer service counter is evidence that a Superstore staff person failed to comply with the store’s policy of removing the dollies from the floor after usage,” he said. “This was a breach of Superstore’s duty of care to protect its costumers from reasonably foreseeable hazards.”
In court, Loblaws’s lawyers argued that Alfred should have seen the dolly, which got some traction with the judge.
Gower awarded Alfred $35,000 in damages but lowered that amount to $26,250, to take into account Alfred’s role in the accident.
Alfred also tried to get Loblaw to pay damages for a broken leg she suffered after a second fall she had outside her home two years later. She argued that the second fall would not have happened her knee wasn’t weakened from the first fall.
Gower dismissed that argument, noting that an X-ray showed that her knee had fully healed at the time.