Reference no: EM13933943

Mrs Mac, from all accounts a sprightly 77 year old, was shopping in Aldo's Supermarket. She carried a plastic shopping basket which was filled with several food items to be purchased. Mrs Mac then walked to the Dairy section where she found an 18 metre bench-like freezer which contained the frozen apple pies she wished to purchase. Upon locating the pies, Mrs Mac leant into the freezer, extracted two apple pie packets, placed them into her basket, hanging from her left forearm. Mrs Mac then turned to her left to walk on down the aisle to the checkout area. As she moved off, the weight of the basket on her arm caused her to wobble.  She bumped into a stack of approximately six cartons of frozen pies on the aisle, stumbled and fell to the floor suffering physical injuries. Those physical injuries include significant trauma to her left wrist, right knee and ribs. Mrs Mac continues to suffer ongoing physical pain, for which she is prescribed painkillers. 

The cartons which Mrs Mac bumped into had been left in the aisle at 9.15 am by Greg, an employee of Aldo's, who was in charge of the Dairy Section. Greg had intended to unpack all the cartons into the pie section of the freezer, but he had not been able to do that task before Mrs Mac's fall. Ordinarily the dairy section was stocked with frozen products before the supermarket opened at 8 am using the closed store stocking procedure. This procedure involved stacking the frozen food cartons in front of the freezer, where they were to be unpacked. 

An alternative stocking procedure known as the open store procedure, used when the supermarket was open, was to take the cartons of required stock to wherever it was needed and immediately unpack the contents.  The key difference between the two stocking procedures is the closed store procedure involves leaving piles of cartons unattended in the supermarket aisles, whereas the open store procedure does not.

On the day of Mrs Mac's fall, the frozen goods were not delivered until about 9 am, an hour after the supermarket had opened. Greg was anxious to get the frozen goods out on display as soon as possible. He considered that the closed store procedure for stocking was the quickest and most efficient means of doing so. Greg stacked approximately six cartons of frozen pies adjacent to the front of the freezer to be unpacked. The stack was a little lower than the height of the freezer.

An incident report prepared by Aldo's store safety officer records Mrs Mac's fall as occurring at  10.00am in the morning. Greg states by the time of Mrs Mac's fall he had unpacked all but about six stacks of frozen pie cartons. At the time of Mrs Mac's fall, Greg was unpacking cartons of chickens at one end of the freezer cabinet.  He saw her fall and went to her assistance.

Since her fall at Aldo's Mrs Mac has become to a large extent house-bound. To alleviate her boredom, she has taken up online gambling which has developed into an addiction. Unfortunately, she is not very successful and has to date lost $25,000 from gambling.

Advise Mrs Mac whether she can sue Aldo Supermarkets under the tort of negligence, and if so what damages she may recover.  Make reference to relevant case law and the Civil Liability Act 2003 (Qld) in your answer.

In your answers, DO NOT discuss liability under the law of contract or sections 18-29 of the Australian Consumer Law (Cth).