Court annuls the € 65,000 award for a € 10 Dunnes jug that broke

A € 56,000 award to a woman who was burned when a glass jug she bought at Dunnes Stores broke after pouring hot water from a kettle into it has been set aside by the Court of Appeal.

The three-judge appeals court found no evidence to support Superior Court Judge Kevin Cross’s conclusion that Dunnes was negligent in selling the 10-euro jug to Eva Cekanova.

Cekanova (31), Windmill Terrace, Clonsilla, Dublin, sued Dunnes for the accident with the jug, which he bought in the Blanchardstown shopping center, Dublin, in December 2015.

It was claimed, when he poured hot water into the jug to make tea, it suddenly and without warning broke, bathing his legs.

Dunnes denied negligence and claimed that Ms Cekanova ignored a warning label on the jug that she claimed specifically states that you should not use hot water in it.

Negligence

Judge Cross found that Dunnes was 75 percent negligent in not having a warning label affixed to the jug against its use for hot liquids, and accepted that Ms. Cekanova, who is a native of Slovakia, would not have purchased it if she had such a tag. Dunnes should have known that people in Ireland from foreign countries will use a glass jug and pour hot water into it, he said.

He argued that Ms Cekanova was 25 per cent negligent, as she should have known that the tea here is not made in glass jugs and had an obligation to check if the jug was suitable before putting hot water on it.

He said that Ms Cekanova suffered a major injury and was left with scars. The total damages were assessed at 75,844 euros but, due to the determination of contributory negligence of 25%, they were reduced to 56,883 euros.

Allowing Dunnes to appeal Wednesday, Judge Seamus Noonan said that “it is universally known to reasonable adults of normal intelligence that boiling or very hot water has the potential to break an ordinary glass container.”

While Ms. Cekanova had testified the first time she learned of the “heat shock” phenomenon was at her lawyer’s office, that was “at least a somewhat surprising proposition.” His evidence that the water was not boiling when he poured it into the jug, and was rather 80-90 degrees Celsius, was “very difficult” to explain in the absence of any knowledge of the effects of boiling or very hot water on the running water. Cup.

The judge disagreed with Mr. Justice Cross’s finding that the jug was “intended” to have a label warning against use for hot liquids.

Pitcher or pot

While Ms. Cekanova gave evidence that in her native Slovakia “we normally use a large glass jug to make tea,” there was absolutely no evidence that Mr. Justice Cross discovered that Dunnes knew, or should have known, that Slovak citizens could buy glass jugs. for such purposes, he said.

Rather, Ms. Cekanova’s evidence was that she knew very well that people here use kettles to make tea. If using glass jugs for tea was a well-known custom that Dunnes should have known about, it was surprising, having sold over 11,000 of these jugs, some of which had no labels, no other complaints of a similar nature were received, he said. .

If such a safety warning were necessary or necessary, it would have to be permanently etched on the jug, as a label would be removed after the jug’s first use, he said.

Based on those and other findings, it accepted Dunnes’s appeal and dismissed Ms. Cekanova’s cross-appeal against the finding of 25 percent contributory negligence on her part.

Judge Noonan said his tentative opinion was that Dunnes would be entitled to his legal costs in Superior Court and Court if he appealed against Ms. Cekanova, but she had 14 days to consider whether to argue for an alternative cost order.