The same sort of situation was under consideration in the case cited to me of Visser v. Loblaws Inc., [2001] BCSC 1781. That was an Occupier's Liability case in which a customer at the pharmacy was waiting for her prescription to be filled and sat in an available chair in the waiting area. It was admitted that there was a common law duty to use reasonable care. The chair broke and she was hurt. The evidence was that there were no prior complaints about the chair and nothing unusual was noted about it during cleaning and moving. It was held that there was no breach of the common law duty of care. The evidence did not establish that the store exposed its customers to unreasonable risk of harm by supplying the particular chair, that it did not use reasonable care in the selection of the chair or that it knew or ought to have known that the chair would break.
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