BARDSLEY v BATEMANS BAY BOWLING CLUB LTD [1996] NSWCA 44

BARDSLEY v BATEMANS BAY BOWLING CLUB LTD

SUPREME COURT OF NEW SOUTH WALES COURT OF APPEAL

MAHONEY P, COLE JA and WADDELL AJA 10 April 1996, 25 November 1996

[1996] NSWCA 44

Negligence — whether Club liable when person trapped crossing crowded room.

Mahoney P This case illustrates the practical difficulties involved in the law of negligence. The plaintiff, Mrs Ethel Bardsley, was injured in the premises of the defendant, Batemans Bay Bowling Club Ltd. She was present, as she was entitled to be, during the activities on a Friday evening conducted by the Club. She had been playing at a poker machine. She went from that machine to the bar to change money and obtain "some ten cent pieces". She had to go only a short distance, on one view about eighteen or twenty feet. She had to go through a group of people, she said they were two or three deep, near the bar to change her money and go back to the poker machine. There were, she said, at least three rows of tables, some metre or so apart. People were seated at the tables. She had to "squeeze" her way between the tables and the people to go where she was going.

At one of the tables was a Mr Donald Green. She thought he was sitting at the table but in fact he was kneeling beside it. Because he was kneeling, the lower part of his legs was on the floor. As she "squeezed" her way through, she did not see his legs on the floor, tripped over them and fell. She suffered the injuries for which she has sued the Club.

This case illustrates the practical difficulties involved in the law of negligence. For the reasons to which I shall refer, I am in substantial agreement with the submission made for the appellant plaintiff that, if the terms of the law are as they conventionally are stated to be, the facts of the present case show negligence on the defendant's part. Yet I agree with the trial judge and with Cole JA and Waddell AJA that the appeal should be dismissed.