Ruling deems pharmacy 75 percent liable for injuries as occupier of premises
In a case where a 68-year-old woman fell and broke her hip while walking to a pharmacy, the Nova Scotia Supreme Court found the establishment 75 percent liable for her injuries after accounting for her contributory negligence of 25 percent.
In Jansen v. J.M. Reynolds Pharmacy Limited, 2026 NSSC 79, the defendant operated a pharmacy in Liverpool, Nova Scotia. The former married couple who owned the pharmacy also owned the building where it was located.
The plaintiff became a customer of the pharmacy in or around 2019. In May 2021, she and her partner headed to the establishment to pick up a prescription. After parking behind the building, they walked along a drive-through area, around the corner, and onto a sidewalk.
The plaintiff’s right foot caught on the lip of a planter bed adjacent to the pharmacy entrance and rolled down into the planter bed due to the height differential between the sidewalk and the planter bed’s dirt level. She fell and broke her hip.
The planter bed once had a wooden border, which had remained unreplaced since it sustained wear-and-tear damage. This left an unmarked lip between the sidewalk’s edge and the planter bed, with a drop-off of around an inch.
The plaintiff sued the pharmacy. She alleged negligence for failing to maintain sufficiently safe premises in accordance with its duties as an occupier under Nova Scotia’s Occupiers’ Liability Act, 1996 (OLA).
The defence provided evidence of hiring a landscaping company to tend to the planter bed.
Contributory negligence found
The Supreme Court of Nova Scotia saw a prima facie case of negligence under the OLA. The court acknowledged the potential hazards posed by walkways with uneven surfaces and height differences.
Here, the court described the unmarked lip as a hazard, given that the pharmacy’s clients were sometimes older people with mobility needs. The court ruled that the planter bed’s dirt level sufficiently created an unsafe condition. The court found it reasonably foreseeable that the risk could endanger a customer, as it did to the plaintiff.
The court held the defendant pharmacy 75 percent liable for the plaintiff’s injuries. The court explained that the pharmacy failed to establish a reasonable regime of inspection and maintenance or discharge its duty to take reasonable care in the circumstances, owed as an occupier to users of the premises.
The court saw no evidence that the pharmacy, or anyone on its behalf, ever viewed the planter bed, inspected it, or tended to it in any way in the months leading up to the plaintiff’s fall.
The court did not consider this a situation in which the plaintiff actively chose a shortcut that deviated from a well-established travel path. However, the court found her 25 percent contributorily negligent for failing to take steps to look out for her own safety.
The court noted that the plaintiff knew about the planter bed and was walking in daylight in an area she had traversed multiple times. The court concluded that she should have looked down as she rounded the corner to ensure that she was stepping fully on the sidewalk, rather than on its edge.
