Geary v JD Wetherspoon plc [2011] EWHC 1506 (QB)

D operated a pub close to the train station in the Newcastle City Centre; C had been drinking in this pub The building had been refurbished, but what had been left from the previous establishment was a grand open staircase in the centre of the building, with sweeping banisters on both sides, rising to a half-landing and then turning upwards on either side to the first floor C slid down, fell and fractured her spine; tetraplegia developed and C became confined to a wheelchair Previously, people were tempted to slide down and a narrative of past similar incidents had developed There was some doubt as to whether the Claimant had fallen from the section of staircase running down to the half-landing, or whether she had fallen from the top of the lower section of the staircase, just past the half-landing

Did the pub owe a duty to protect the claimant from the obvious risk she accepted by sliding down the banister, and would the proposed precaution have prevented the injury?

Coulson J dismissed the claim. The claimant had freely chosen to slide down the banister and understood the obvious risk of falling. The pub had not assumed a responsibility to protect her from that deliberately accepted danger. The injury was attributed to the activity she chose rather than a duty to make the staircase safe for sliding. The court also considered the separate question of causation and concluded that the alleged differences in banister height would not probably have stopped her. This was a first-instance judgment, not an appellate dismissal. The reasoning does not excuse concealed structural defects affecting ordinary use of stairs.

An occupier need not protect an adult against an obvious danger arising from a freely chosen risky activity where no relevant protective responsibility has been assumed. Geary concerned voluntary banister-sliding, not ordinary use of a staircase or an undisclosed defect.

Geary separates an accident's physical location from its legal source. The staircase provided the setting, but the claimant's chosen activity generated the relevant danger. It is useful alongside Tomlinson and Poppleton in discussions of personal responsibility, while leaving room for different treatment of hidden hazards or dependent visitors. Prior awareness that some customers behave recklessly does not by itself make an occupier responsible for preventing every such choice.