Accident in a hypermarket: who is responsible?

A customer falls in a department store and breaks her wrist while tripping over a billboard.

It takes legal action and assigns liability and compensation to the store and the insurer. The Court of Appeal ordered them jointly and severally to pay him various sums in compensation for his personal injury.

The hypermarket is challenging this conviction and is bringing the case before the Court of Cassation. For him, in the event of a customer falling, the liability of the self-service store can only be sought on the basis of tort. It cannot be done on the principle of consumer safety laid down in the Consumer Code. However, the Court of Appeal dismissed the tort liability of the hypermarket in the absence of evidence of the abnormal positioning of the advertising panel.

The Court of Cassation agrees. In the case where an inert thing is the cause of the fall of a customer, the responsibility of the store can only be sought on the basis of civil liability as defined in the Civil Code. The onus is then on the victim to prove that this thing was the instrument of the damage. Since the victim did not prove the abnormal position of the billboard, the tort of the hypermarket could not be accepted.

Going back on its previous interpretation of the Consumer Code, the Cour de Cassation held that the liability of a hypermarket towards its customers is a general obligation of safety and not an obligation of result. The fact that the client is injured is no longer sufficient to hold him systematically responsible.