Australian Safeway Stores V Zaluzna Summary

Case Analysis – Australian Safeway Stores Pty Ltd v Zaluzna
Facts
The respondent (Zaluzna, plaintiff) entered the foyer of a supermarket owned by the appellant (Australian Safeway Stores, defendant), of which due to wet weather conditions, the flood had become, “wet or moist”. The respondent slipped and fell on the floor, causing injuries to the respondent. The respondent sued for damages resulting of negligence, and a breach of the general duty of care, and the special duty of care owed by an occupier to an invitee.
Zaluzna sued for damages in the Supreme Court, appealing to the Full Court following Tadgell J judgment. The defendant appealed by special leave to the High Court of Australia.
Issues
1. The standard of the duty of care owed by the occupier of a premise to the invitee.
2. The concurrent existence of a general duty and a special duty.
Outcome
The majority found that the appellant owed a general duty of care to avoid a foreseeable risk to the respondent, and that the appeal should be dismissed. The court made no conclusions on if there was a breach.
Legal Reasoning

Majority judgement (Mason, Wilson, Deane, and Dawson JJ.)
In Hackshaw v Shaw the facts of the case are vastly different, the findings from the case were instrumental in the decision of present case as it, as Deane J stated:
… it is not necessary, in an action in negligence against an occupier, to go through the procedure of considering whether either one or other or both of a special duty qua occupier and an ordinary duty of care was owed.

All that in all the relevant circumstances including the fact of the defendant's occupation of premises and the manner of the plaintiff's entry upon them, the defendant owed a duty of care under the ordinary principles of negligence to the plaintiff. A prerequisite of any such duty is that there be the necessary degree of proximity of relationship. The touchstone of its existence is that there be reasonable foreseeability of a real risk of injury to the visitor or to the class of person of which the visitor is a member. The measure of the discharge of the duty is what a reasonable man would, in the circumstances, do by way of response to the foreseeable

risk.
The above quote is definitive of the outcome of the judgement, as the material facts of the present case can be applied to the authority. Zaluzna entered lawfully, which gives rise to a relationship of proximity. Additionally the risk of injury was foreseeable to the respondent, if reasonable care was not taken. Therefore, a general duty of care was owed.
Brennan J on dissent referred to the same case refers Gibbs CJ judgement in the same case in which the notion of coexisting duties was discussed; with a general duty of care being able to extend over a special duty owed
Papatonkis
…it should now be again accepted in this country that the so-called "special duty" which an occupier of land owes to an invitee is, on analysis, properly to be seen as the ordinary common law duty to take reasonable care: "The duty is a duty to take reasonable care. The standard is the standard of the reasonable man", per Fullagar J., Commissioner for Railways (NS W) v. Anderson (86).