To succeed in a delictual claim, a plaintiff is required to prove all the elements of delict. In the recent case of Gailis v Woolworths (Pty) Ltd and Another (Case No 11651/2022) (Western Cape Division, Cape Town, 11 December 2025), the High Court was required to determine whether the plaintiff, who sustained injuries in a fall at the Constantia Village Woolworths store on 11 April 2021, had established liability on the part of the defendants.
The plaintiff's pleaded case was that she had slipped and fallen on a wet and slippery floor surface. The central question before the court was therefore whether the plaintiff had proved the existence of a wet, slippery or otherwise hazardous substance on the floor at the time of the incident.
While it was common cause that the plaintiff had slipped and fallen inside the store on the stated date, there was a dispute as to whether the floor was wet, as alleged. by the plaintiff. In assessing the evidence, which included the plaintiff's own testimony (which the court found to be inconsistent and to contain concessions that she had not observed any hazard before she fell), the evidence of witnesses to the incident, and contemporaneous records, the court concluded that the plaintiff had failed to prove that the floor was wet.
The failure to establish that there was a wet, slippery or hazardous substance on the floor at the time and place of the fall was fatal to the plaintiff's case.
Turning to the applicability of the doctrine res ipsa loquitur (the thing speaks for itself), the court observed that while the doctrine may, in principle, apply in slip-and-fall cases, it can only do so once a plaintiff has established that the fall was caused by a proven hazard. The doctrine, the court emphasised, "cannot be used to infer the existence of the hazard itself".
In the circumstances, the court ruled against the plaintiff and dismissed her claim with costs.
The judgment serves as a reminder that, while shop owners owe a general duty to ensure that their premises are reasonably safe, a plaintiff who alleges a breach of that duty bears the evidentiary burden of proving the existence of a hazard that caused the fall.
