Grocery Store Injury

This case comes to us from the files of “just because you are injured doesn’t mean you have a good lawsuit”. In Ingles Markets, Inc. v. Carroll (a Georgia Court of Appeals decision found here), the plaintiff was shopping for groceries when a 11 year old boy ran into her and caused her to suffer injuries.

The plaintiff alleged that the store failed to monitor its customers, in this case children, closely enough to prevent injuries like this from occurring. Ingles regularly conducted sweeps to ensure no children were running around and causing potential hazards. Such a sweep occurred only 30 minutes prior to the injury suffered by the plaintiff.

In reaching its conclusion, the Court observed: “…based on her own testimony – that when she initially saw the child out of the corner of her eye, he was not running, but ‘walking fast’ – the child could only have been running a very short time before he ran into her. Thus, only a constant patrol – the type of procedure we have specifically declined to impose on proprietors under normal circumstances – could have possibly prevented her injury here.”

Readers should note that this might be a case of negligent parenting. The first footnote indicates that the boy and his parents were named in the complaint but failed to answer the complaint and defaulted.

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