Are You Really Liable for Slips and Falls Outside Your Restaurant?

Back in 2014, a woman by the name of Lisa Donovan reported slipping on “hoagie guts” in a Wawa parking lot. She, in turn, filed a lawsuit against the company, claiming they should be held liable for her injuries.

For those of you unfamiliar with this brand, Wawa is a chain of convenience store/gas stations that also happens to offer on-the-spot food services. So, the remnants of food or beverages could realistically end up on the ground of their parking lots at any given time. But should Wawa be responsible for cleaning up a customer’s mess? In the store, that answer would be a firm “yes”. In the parking lot though? Well, according to the judge on this particular case, the answer is still…

YES.

The defense attorneys for Wawa have tried to make the argument that their client was not negligent. They’ve also tried to have the case thrown out because Donovan did not confer with a liability expert to provide proof that Wawa was at fault. The judge, however, dismissed both claims and “agreed with Donovan…, saying a splattered hoagie in a parking lot is no different than water on the floor of a grocery store.”

So, does this lawsuit against Wawa hold any relevance for the restaurant industry? If it does, what exactly are restaurants liable for in the case of slips and falls?

Slips and Falls: What Restaurateurs Need to Know

Just like how you’d put up a wet floor sign to block a spill or make immediate repairs if you spotted a potential hazard, you should be doing the same for the premises outside your restaurant. While you might argue that’s not part of the guest experience and isn’t up to you to monitor as closely, guests would argue otherwise, as evidenced by the case between Donovan and Wawa.

Depending on how far your property extends, anything that occurs on the sidewalk, in the parking lot, or in some other area outside your restaurant but within property limits could find you at fault for an injury. Injuries caused by:

• Spilt food or drinks
• Other obstacles left out in the open
• Dangerous stairways
• Problems with flooring or pavement (like potholes or cracked sidewalks)
• Ice, snow, or accumulation of rainwater
• Poorly lit areas without any proper security measures in place (note: this is usually only the case if you live in a high-crime area)

The law basically says that the matter of liability regarding slips and falls on a restaurant’s premises ultimately comes down to two questions:

• Was the injured person acting in a reckless manner that led to this slip and fall?
• Did the owner of the restaurant know about the hazard and actively choose not to fix it?

The problem lawyers often run into with that last question is the “know” part of the statement.

This isn’t necessarily about a restaurant manager constantly monitoring the sidewalk for leftovers that someone dropped. This is more about whether or not someone took the right preventative measures, like sending an employee to scan the sidewalk every four hours, plowing the parking lot during a snowstorm, or adding a more stable handrail to a staircase. Whether you created the unsafe condition or not, if it’s on your property, then you are responsible for fixing or properly securing it.

How to Correctly Handle Slips and Falls

No restaurant is immune from a slip and fall accident. You can’t help if a customer at table 10 dropped their drink and someone unknowingly walked through it immediately afterwards. You also might not be able to catch every obstacle, imperfection, or mess left directly outside your restaurant. So, while it’s important to be vigilant and on the defense for these sorts of things, you also have to be ready with an offensive plan in case something does happen.

As soon as a slip and fall injury is reported on your premises, you must log it in your guest recovery and feedback system. Collect the following information, at the bare minimum:

• The injured party’s name
• Their contact information
• Date of incident
• Their statement about what happened
• Statements from employees or other witnesses of the incident
• The type of injury
• Photos of the injury and/or what caused it (when applicable)

This should be every general or location manager’s response to a slip and fall accident. Hop into your system (you can use Pedanco for this!) and log every serious issue that occurs on your premises, whether that be a slip and fall, a foodborne illness, or something else. Once all the information is logged, you can then assign it to the appropriate management team as well as to corporate to carry through to a resolution.

Obviously, this is an important part of your operational process to ensure that guests are never left out in the cold. Any negative experience they have with your restaurant should be documented, addressed, and resolved as quickly as possible. However, having a reliable guest recovery and feedback system also enables you to keep a chronological paper trail of the incident as well as the steps your company took to handle it. This is great both from a legal standpoint as well as for training purposes.

Conclusion

Just knowing that there’s a potential for injury on (or just outside) your restaurant and not doing anything about it could put your restaurant in danger of a lawsuit. Make sure you’re properly prepared by developing a solid defensive and offensive plan to handle it.