In May of this year, the Ontario Court of Appeal released its decision in the case of Kerr v. Loblaws.

Kerr had slipped on a grape on the floor of a store and suffered injuries valued at in excess of $58,000 by the jury at the trial.

The store had a system of sweeping and checking for produce, although written records were not available to prove compliance.

The courts ruled that the defendant store took “reasonable steps” to prevent the mishap and the claim was totally dismissed.

A lot of work had to go into the defence to reconstruct what was done or not done surrounding the incident. This is because there were no written records, a mat was missing, no inspection schedule could be proven and manuals had not been reviewed or read by the store manager. On the basis of these deficiencies, the store dodged a bullet in this action and the outcome would have been more certain if these and other deficiencies had been proactively dealt with.

Lessons Learned:

• Whether you are a retailer or not, your business premises must be reasonably safe for the public and your employees;
• If something goes wrong, it is up to you to prove you took reasonable steps. You have to prove Due Diligence;
• Wish Lists or Best Practices don’t work unless you can prove a system;
• The system in this case was touch and go because proof of compliance was sketchy and written records were not used. This made the claim harder to defend;
• A proper “Trial Ready” Due Diligence system would have included some of the elements missing here and would have saved a lot of time, expense and aggravation for the company, the insurers and the lawyers and probably would have discouraged the claim in the first place;
• It is much better to be proactive than reactive!

Follow Up:

Fold your loss prevention methods into a proactive and trial ready Due Diligence system.

It works!