Packing firm liable for milk trays falling on 63-year-old shopper

A BOX containing 1 000 aluminium milk trays weighing 9.08kg, which came tumbling down from a shelf and hit a 63-year-old shopper on her shoulders and neck, could cost Plastilon Packaging dearly.

The North Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, ordered that the business was 100% liable for the damages which Margaret Meyer could prove she had suffered as a result.

She instituted a claim against Platilon following her ordeal in December 2014 when she went shopping with her daughter Madeleine Marais at this outlet’s Rietfontein shop in Pretoria.

While Meyer held the store accountable for the injuries she had suffered, management said it was her fault.

They claimed that she tried to remove the box from a top shelf, which caused the box to topple onto her.

Their version was that she was negligent as she tried to remove the box herself, without considering her age and her strength.

According to them Meyer should have called a shop assistant to help her.

Meyer meanwhile vehemently denied that she tried to remove the box from the shelf. According to her it simply fell from above, onto her.

But Judge Brenda Neukircher, in evaluating all the evidence, found that Meyer’s version was the more probable one.

Meyer, an estate agent, told the court that she accompanied her daughter to the store, as the latter had to buy some items for her business.

She said she did not plan to shop herself. While browsing around an aisle, she noticed some plastic glasses on the bottom shelf which would be “perfect for the family’s upcoming braai at Roodeplaat Dam that weekend”.

She picked up the glasses, and as she turned around she felt something heavy fall on her head, and she heard a “clicking sound” in her neck and was rendered unconscious.

When she regained consciousness, she was sitting on the floor with her back to the shelf, where she found the glasses; to her right on the ground was a “large box”.

She was approached by a worker, who asked if she was okay. She asked him to call her daughter.

According to Meyer, someone working there gave her a cold drink.

She said she kept holding her neck because it was swelling and sore, and she asked Marais to take her to hospital.

Meyer was confronted with the version of one of the employees that he saw her standing on a ladder and pulling out a middle box from the third shelf.

Judge Neukircher said of all the witnesses, she found Meyer to be the most credible.

Although there were inconsistencies and Meyer did not exactly know what happened that day, she stuck to her guns from the start.

The judge added that the crossexamination by Meyer’s legal team of the defendant’s witnesses mostly destroyed the latter’s version that Meyer caused the accident herself or that someone in another aisle might have pushed the box through to the aisle in which Meyer was, causing it to fall.

“It is far more likely, given the photographs taken by Marais and the height to which the boxes were packed, that one was not correctly or safely packed and eventually toppled over.

“In failing to ensure that the boxes were safely packed, the defendant was clearly negligent,” the judge said.

The amount of damages owed to Meyer will be determined at a later stage.