£22,000 slippery slippers case lost

A British holidaymaker has lost a £22,000 compensation case after claiming she fell because a hotel did not provide rubber soles on its towelling slippers.

Janette Owide, from St John's Wood, north-west London, was on holiday in South Africa when she fell and broke her hip after slipping on the marble floor in her room at a five star hotel.

She argued that the Mount Nelson Hotel owed clients a duty of care to ensure their safety and she should have been warned of the combined dangers of marble floors and towelling slippers.

Mrs Owide was on holiday with her husband at the £218-a-night hotel in Cape Town at the time of the accident in December 1997.

Dismissed the claim

She had claimed £22,415 for medical expenses and general damages, but Justice Abe Motala dismissed the claim at Cape High Court in South Africa.

He said Mrs Owide had failed to prove that a reasonable person would have foreseen that the slippers would cause her to fall on the marble floor.

"Save for a short stay by Mrs Owide in a local hospital, she and her husband continued to live at the hotel for more than two weeks after the fall," he said.

Mrs Owide was ordered to pay unspecified costs.