After tripping in an oily puddle at Sainsbury’s, a customer claims she developed PTSD and is suing the store for £500,000 in damages.
At a London location in July 2019, legal secretary Georgina Hennessy, 47, stumbled on a “spilled coconut oil product,” breaking her ankle and leaving her bleeding on the ground.
She alleges that after having a metal plate and screws placed in her ankle, she later suffered from crippling post-traumatic stress disorder.
Ms. Hennessy is now suing J Sainsbury Plc in the High Court for up to £500,000, alleging that shop employees were negligent in failing to notice and clean up the mess.
According to documents submitted to the court by her attorneys, Irwin Mitchell, Ms. Hennessy was hurt in a fall at a business on Walthamstow Avenue, Chingford, in 2019.
According to her attorneys, “the claimant utilised the self-service checkouts and continued to go towards the shop exit.”
The claimant “slipped on a split coconut oil product while rounding a curve at the self-service checkouts, suffering significant damage to her right ankle and a cut to her right hand.”
Ms. Hennessy, of Enfield, north London, underwent ankle surgery and spent a week in the hospital, but she claims that since then, PTSD has incapacitated her.
Despite receiving cognitive behavioural therapy for her PTSD as well as “eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing,” a type of therapy that helps patients overcome traumatic experiences by focusing on the traumatic incident itself, the claimant “has experienced significant psychological symptoms as a result of the accident,” according to her lawyers.
Her attorneys hold the large grocery chain responsible for the incident and charge it with common law negligence and violations of the Occupiers Liability Act of 1957.
It is said that store employees “failed to take such care as was reasonable in all the circumstances to ensure that the claimant did not suffer harm.”
Additionally, according to her attorneys, they “caused and/or authorised the floor to be or to become or to be wet/slippery with a split oil product.”
Additionally, “any or any sufficient method of inspection” was not ensured.
The court received Ms. Hennessy’s claim last month, but it wasn’t made public until today.
The court has not yet presented any arguments in opposition to Sainsbury’s claim, and the matter has not yet been heard by a judge.