Greasy chip causes injury
1. Strong sued Woolworths claiming that their failure to clean the footpath regularly hadnegligently caused her injury.
2. In relations to causation, Woolworths argued that, even if they had employed a cleaner to check the area every 20 minutes, Strong would have to prove that the chip had been on the footpath for a longer period than 20 minutes in order to establish that Woolworths’ failure to clean had caused her injury.
3. Woolworths did not think the harm was within the scope of their liability because it was likely that the chip had been dropped by someone who had just purchased their lunch, and so a regular cleaning check would not have prevented the injury occurring.
4. The High Court concluded that once Strong had established causation between Woolworth’s failure to regularly clean the area and her injury,there was no argument about whether it was appropriate to extend the scope of Woolworths’ liability to the harm that she suffered: it was appropriate for this to be within the scope of their responsibility.Even though the food area was busy and many items of food were regularly dropped, the negligence wasn’t that that particular chip was on the ground, the negligence was that Woolworths didn’t have a regular cleaning schedule to check whether any chips were on the ground.