Guest slips on waterlogged floor near jacuzzi

CASE SUMMARY 

Tedstone v Bourne Leisure Ltd (t/a Thoresby Hall Hotel & Spa) [2008] EWCA Civ 654 concerns a guest who slipped on a waterlogged floor in the vicinity of a jacuzzi at a hotel near Pearlthorpe.  

At first instance, the Recorder Mr Khangure QC, found that the defendant had breached section 2 of the Occupiers Liability Act 1957 for permitting a potentially dangerous pool of water to lie on the floor where the claimant slipped. The judge relied on an investigation report detailing findings from a site visit in November 2000, which said that some areas around the pool allowed water to pool. There was evidence that the defendant knew this and had scheduled some reprofiling work to take place over the Christmas holidays to prevent water pooling on the poolside. Mats had been deployed unsuccessfully to try and improve slip resistance, but they had since been removed, as they were found to have posed a greater risk of tripping. Non-slip tiles had been used in the area where Ms Tedstone had slipped. 

The ground given permission for appeal was that the Recorder imposed too high a duty of care on account of there being no evidence that the water had been present on the jacuzzi floor for more than five minutes and must have been caused by a malfunction of the jacuzzi. The Court of Appeal found that there was no evidence to support a malfunction of the jacuzzi and insufficient evidence to displace the Recorder's finding that the defendant knew there was a problem with water pooling on the pool surround. 

The Court of Appeal found that the accident had occurred in an area on the poolside where water had not gathered before. It also found that the water had not been seen in the five minutes before the accident. The Court found that the water must have come from an unusual spillage from the jacuzzi either because of its extra vigorous mechanism or persons using it in an extra-splashy way. Crucially, the Court found that had the defendant established a system of poolside checks, it would not, on the balance of probabilities, have led to a materially different outcome. Following authority from Lawton LJ in Ward v Tesco Stores [1976] 1 WLR, the water had not been on the floor long enough to enable the defendant to have been reasonably expected to discover it. Consequently, the appeal was allowed. 

This case raises important considerations for pool operators where water is known to collect in puddles on the pool surround. The principles of this case were further reinforced by Lougheed v On The Beach Limited [2014] EWCA Civ 1538. 

References

Tedstone v Bourne Leisure Ltd (t/a Thoresby Hall Hotel & Spa) [2008] EWCA Civ 654. 

Citation. Jacklin, D. 2023. Tedstone v Bourne Leisure Ltd (t/a Thoresby Hall Hotel & Spa) [2008] EWCA Civ 654. Water Incident Research Hub, 28 January.