ALLCORP CLEANING SERVICES PTY LTD v FAIRWEATHER and ANOR [1998] NSWCA 12

ALLCORP CLEANING SERVICES PTY LTD v FAIRWEATHER SUPREME COURT OF NEW SOUTH WALES COURT OF APPEAL

MASON P, PRIESTLEY and STEIN JJA 29 June 1998, 29 June 1998 [1998] NSWCA 12

NEGLIGENCE — PERSONAL INJURY — PERSON SLIPS ON THE FLOOR OF FOODCOURT OF SHOPPING MALL — ADEQUACY OF CLEANING SYSTEM

Mason P Mrs Fairweather was injured when she slipped on a potato chip and fell in an area in the Ashfield Shopping Mall. It was a busy Saturday lunch time in a section of the mall where there were about eighty fixed tables and about two hundred people using the area. The tables were located in the central area between a number of food outlets. The floor was of a terrazzo type.

The occupier of the Mall was Queensland Investment Corporation, the second respondent. However a contract had been let between that occupier and Allcorp Cleaning Services Pty Ltd, the appellant. Under that contract, various cleaning tasks had to be performed in various parts of the shopping mall. The terrazzo and marble floor area in question had to be maintained clean "continuously".

The evidence was that an apparently adequate system had been set in place for the cleaning of the particular area. I do not understand the plaintiff to have challenged the system as such in her case at trial. There was a cleaner who was required to attend exclusively to the terrazzo area. The evidence was that had he done so, he would have been covering each part of the area approximately every fifteen minutes.

Mr and Mrs Fairweather purchased some food and sat down to eat it at one of the tables. On her evidence she was there for about fifteen to thirty minutes, on her husband's evidence about fifteen minutes, before they got up and moved away. They moved away in a roughly circular line, but before they had left the area where the various tables and chairs were located, Mrs Fairweather slipped and fell. When she was picked up, the portion of potato chip was found on her shoe.