ACT Court of Appeal awards woman more than $27k after slipping on grape at Coles, Woden

On September 23, 2017 the woman was shopping at Coles in Woden.

She slipped on a green grape and fell to the ground while alongside the fresh meat display, injuring her right leg.

On Friday, the ACT Court of Appeal awarded her $27,309 in damages and other costs.

The woman initially lost the case in the ACT Supreme Court in March, before lodging an appeal.

In the initial case, Acting Justice Audrey Balla ruled against the complainant, finding Coles had not breached its duty of care.

The main issue was the effectiveness of Coles' cleaning system.

The court head the supermarket operated on a "clean as you go" system, requiring staff to look for hazards while undertaking other duties.

Despite professional cleaning of the store before and after hours, the store was not cleaned by an external agency while open to customers.

While giving evidence, a manager at Coles said grapes were the most common item customers would slip on.

She said customers would take grapes from the produce section and drop them while eating as they walked around the store, or they fed them to their children.

The judgment, published on Friday, ruled there was the likelihood spills and items on the floor would be missed with no dedicated attention paid to the issue.

"It inevitably subordinated the detection of spills and hazardous items to the performance of the staff members' other duties," it read.

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"A system of dedicated inspection would have detected a grape or other spill or slip hazard in the area."

The court found the woman's injuries caused her to "experience some pain as a result of the accident, even though there may have been a psychological component to the causation of that pain".

However, the appeal found there was no evidence to support the woman's claims her diagnoses of deep venous thrombosis and depression were a result of the fall.

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