Woman sues Coles after slipping on grape in Woden supermarket

The woman, named in an ACT Supreme Court judgment as Z Buljat, claimed she had ongoing disabilities caused by the September 2017 incident.

She said while walking through the meat section, her right leg slipped and she landed on her shin.

"She had not been looking at the floor before she fell, but after she had fallen, she saw a trail in front of her leading to a squished grape," Acting Justice Audrey Balla wrote in a judgment published on Friday.

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The judge said a worker at the store, Ms Skinner, saw the grape after organising staff to help Ms Buljat to her feet.

"She looked around on the floor and saw a smashed grape. It was close to Ms Buljat," Acting Justice Balla said.

Acting Justice Balla found after the accident, Ms Buljat saw a general practitioner who ordered an x-ray of her right knee.

"[It] was normal. He prescribed Panadeine Forte and told her to rest," she wrote.

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Two days later, the same GP examined the knee and noted some tenderness. He recommended a short course of Nurofen and rest.

Ms Buljat complained of ongoing pain in her knee, seeing her GP multiple times in the following months regarding her leg.

Four months later, in February 2018, she attended the emergency department at Canberra Hospital and was found to have deep venous thrombosis (DVT).

Acting Justice Balla found Ms Buljat had failed to show, on the balance of probabilities, that the DVT was related to the grape fall.

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If Ms Buljat had successfully sued Coles, it would have been ordered to pay her more than $16,500, plus interest, in damages.

Despite the outcome, Acting Justice Balla said the risk of a person injuring themselves by falling on a grape in a Coles supermarket was "foreseeable" and "not insignificant".

"It was the evidence of Ms Skinner that while she was the manager at the store there were incidents from time to time with persons falling on grapes," she wrote.

"Customers look at the items for sale, not at the floor. Any customer slipping and falling could hit the floor with some force."

Ms Buljat's lawyers claimed Coles had breached their duty of care by failing to remove the grape from the floor, allowing grapes to be sold in open bags and failing to put mats on the floor in the meat section.

Acting Justice Buljat said these claims were not supported by evidence.

"Coles has admitted that it sold grapes in open bags," she wrote.

The plaintiff did not suggest what packaging could stop customers from eating grapes while in the shop, the judge wrote.

She also said they only presented one idea - erecting signs - which would have stopped shoppers from consuming grapes.

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The manager of the Woden-based Coles store at the time of Ms Buljat's fall gave evidence.

She said staff were taught "in particular, to be on the lookout for grapes that may have fallen onto the floor".

Ms Skinner, the staff member who responded to the incident, had worked there for 12 years.

She told the court "the most common item that customers would slip on was grapes".

"The manager in the fresh produce section caught a lot of people eating grapes," Acting Justice Balla wrote.

"Customers would take grapes from the fresh produce section and drop them while eating them as they walked around the store or drop them when feeding them to their children."

Ms Skinner also said Coles management showed staff a five- to eight-minute video on "dealing with a spill", which instructed them to "keep a lookout and to clean as you go."

Ms Buljat was ordered to pay Coles' legal costs.

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