BC court rules store had its paperwork in order after slip and fall in produce store
A piece of lettuce. A slip. A significant ankle injury. And nearly five years later, a court ruling on occupiers’ liability. In Tu v. 12300118 Holdings Ltd., 2026 BCSC 1387, the BC Supreme Court dismissed a slip and fall claim against a Vancouver produce store, not because the fall did not happen, but because the store had its paperwork in order.
A sweep log that became the deciding factor on occupiers’ liability
This case on occupiers’ liability started when in November 2021, Christine Tu slipped on a piece of lettuce at Orchards Farm Market in Vancouver and suffered a significant ankle injury.
The store’s owner and manager, Regina Shui Hing Wong, filed an affidavit stating that she personally trained employees in slip and fall prevention, drawing on over 40 years of experience in a fish factory and knowledge from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
Attached to that affidavit was a sweep log for November 2021, which is a daily check list showing hourly inspections. Every box between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. on November 30, 2021 was initialled.
Tu argued that Wong was not credible and that her affidavit contradicted her discovery evidence. However, the court disagreed and found no contradiction between what Wong said in her affidavit and what she said at discovery. Both confirmed employees were trained to inspect on roughly an hourly basis and to clean up any hazard immediately upon spotting it.
Procedural aspect that defeated the personal injury claim
Aside from ruling on occupiers’ liability, there was also a procedural lesson here. Tu had the November 2021 sweep log for nearly a year before the hearing but did not seek further examination of Wong on it.
Relying on Rahnama v. Loblaws City Market, 2024 BCSC 2120, as affirmed in a later ruling, the court held that a party cannot simply hope “something might turn up” at a full trial when it has failed to challenge the evidence already in its hands.
What is occupiers’ liability under BC’s Occupiers Liability Act
Under s. 3 of BC’s Occupiers Liability Act (OLA), occupiers owe a duty to take reasonable care to see that people on their premises will be reasonably safe. As confirmed in this ruling, the key word is “reasonable,” and the OLA does not require perfection, and occupiers are not insurers of visitor safety.
Two things must be established for an occupier to meet that standard:
- a system must be in place to prevent or address hazards
- that system must actually be followed
If both boxes are ticked, a court is unlikely to find liability, even if someone was genuinely hurt.
What a ‘reasonable system’ of inspection actually looks like
For personal injury lawyers advising either side, this ruling on occupiers’ liability offers a clear benchmark. The court compared the Orchards system directly to two earlier cases:
- Tremblay v. Westfair Foods Ltd., 2003 BCSC 1017: where hourly inspections with a maintained log were found reasonable
- Charlie v. Canada Safeway Limited, 2010 BCSC 618: where a written policy requiring inspections every two hours, supported by logs, also passed the reasonableness test
Orchards inspected every hour, more frequently than the two-hour standard in Charlie. The court found the Orchards system was at least as thorough, if not more so.
For plaintiff in personal injury cases, this ruling reinforces that challenging a sweep log without gathering contradicting evidence will likely not be enough, whether through further discovery, witness statements, or other records.
Ultimately, the action was dismissed by the court, and the defendants were awarded costs.
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