This article stems from a recent fast food restaurant slip-and-fall mediation and the practical lessons these kinds of cases have taught me.

The dispute hit the usual fault lines for indoor claims: a rainy day with tracked-in moisture, a self-serve drink station, caution signage that was near—but not necessarily at—the slick spot, staff doing periodic dry-mopping, and a frustrating gap in the paper trail (no incident report, no immediate employee statements, and CCTV that didn’t quite catch the exact fall zone).

If you handle these cases, none of that sounds exotic. The fight is never over whether perfection was achieved. It’s whether the occupier’s system for anticipating and controlling indoor hazards was reasonable in the circumstances and actually executed when it mattered. That’s the law, and it’s blunt.

The Legal Frame—Short and Sharp

Ontario’s Occupiers’ Liability Act R.S.O. 1990, Chapter O.2 (OLA)^[1] puts a positive duty on occupiers (owners, tenants, managers—anyone with control) to take reasonable care so people are reasonably safe on the premises. Not perfect. Not zero-risk. Reasonable.

The Supreme Court in Waldick v. Malcolm, [1991] 2 S.C.R. 456^[2]—where a visitor slipped on an unsanded, ice-covered rural farm driveway the occupiers left that way because “nobody sands out here”—made this crystal clear. You don’t get to hide behind local custom. Reasonableness is contextual but real, and courts measure what you planned against what you actually did when the risk materialized.

The Ontario Court of Appeal put a fine point on it in Kerr v. Loblaws Inc., 2007 ONCA 371^[3], involving an 80-year-old shopper slipped on a single grape in a Zehrs produce aisle. Upholding a defence verdict, the Court stressed that the standard is reasonableness, requiring “neither perfection nor unrealistic or impractical precautions.” That’s the line judges reach for when a defendant waves a manual but can’t show timely, targeted action where the hazard actually was.

Where restaurants win (and lose) indoor cases

In restaurants, the highest-risk indoor zones are painfully predictable. They are the entrance vestibules on rain days, self-serve beverage stations, queue lines that snake past condiment bars, and pathways between the counter and the seating area where spills from  trays happen.

A reasonable system has three parts—and you need all three in evidence, not just in a handbook:

1) Anticipation and setup. On rain days, mats and water-capture aren’t optional. At a drink station, you expect intermittent spills. Plan for them with proximate signage ready to deploy, absorbent material on hand, and clear staff responsibility for that zone. “Signs are up near the entrance” is not a plan for a puddle under the soda nozzle. The law asks whether you targeted the risk you knew about^[4]. That’s Waldick^[5].

2) Inspections tied to risk windows. “Every 60 minutes” looks fine in a manual. It’s useless if the station cycled five families in ten minutes and the floor got slick again after the last pass. Reasonableness scales with foreseeable volume and conditions. Courts care about timing and proximity. When was the last dry-mop relative to the fall, and was anyone tasked to re-check the drink station during the surge?

3) Execution you can prove. Indoor claims often turn on logs, video, and contemporaneous notes. If you want credit for a system, bring legible, time-stamped sweep/dry-mop entries. Show the camera that actually covers the hazard zone. Produce an incident report and employee statements while memories are fresh. In the case that sparked this post, the defendants had pre-shift checklists and lobby mopping visible on a counter-area camera, but the fall happened just out of frame, and the core incident paperwork was MIA. That gap hurts when you’re arguing, “Our system was working right there.”

The “Wet Floor” Sign

A yellow A-frame helps—if it’s where the risk is, visible from the approach path, and paired with active cleanup. A sign a couple of feet away from the drink station, facing the wrong direction, or stranded at the periphery won’t save you if the surface remained dangerously slick.

Equally, plaintiffs don’t get a free ride. Walking past a conspicuous sign, admitting you didn’t look down, or choosing a clearly wet route can and does translate into contributory negligence. The split turns on the efficacy of the system at the exact spot and time, weighed against the patron’s own choices. That’s Kerr^[6].

CCTV and the “Just Off Camera” Problem

Modern restaurants live (and die) by their video. If your lens covers the counter but not the beverage station, you’re inviting inference battles. Juries and judges will default to common sense. The closer the camera and timestamped footage to the hazard, the more weight your system gets.

Preserve the clip immediately and pull a still that shows sign placement and floor condition, or expect credibility questions. That’s the money-shot that wins on mediation.

Paper that moves the needle

What changes outcomes indoors are the basics, documented well. Keep time-stamped dry-mop or sweep records for the specific zone of risk. Maintain training rosters and shift briefings that note rain-day ingress and self-serve spill control. Take an incident report that day. Capture clear photos showing sign placement relative to the puddle.

A handbook won’t save you. Documented on-site steps will.

Franchisor vs. franchisee (who’s the “occupier”?)

Restaurant files routinely start with both the franchisor and the local operator named in the claim.

In practice, liability usually follows control of the premises and control of the system on the day. If the franchisor didn’t control the site or the staff and the franchisee ran operations, expect pressure to rationalize the parties as the facts firm up—sometimes wrapped into settlement terms (e.g., discontinuance against the franchisor and the individual, standard releases, and maybe even a non-fault training/apology letter).

The statute addresses duties of occupiers. Job one is proving who that was for the hazard zone[7].

What This Means For Each Side

For defendants (restaurants and operators): Build a rain-day and spill-zone playbook you can prove you follow. That means mats and absorbent runners where water pools, proximate signage (not just by the door), short inspection loops during peak flows, and a culture of document, don’t just do. If your camera misses the drink station, fix that before a fall happens. When a fall happens, produce the incident report and staff notes without gamesmanship.

For plaintiffs: Lock down where the hazard was, how long it likely existed, and what the system was doing in that precise interval. Ask for the logs tied to the drink station or condiment bar—not just lobby “sweeps”—and force clarity on sign placement in the approach path. If the video doesn’t cover the spot, press on inference and the lack of core documents.

Bottom line

Indoor restaurant cases are decided on targeted, timely, provable systems.

As the defence counsel wisely pointed out on my recent mediation, his client’s system of maintenance is the best in the business. When they lose, its almost always on the implementation.

The law doesn’t demand spotless floors or infinite staff. It demands reasonable anticipation of obvious, recurring risks (rain-tracking, fountain splash, queue spills) and credible, time-stamped proof that you dealt with them where it counted.

If your evidence can’t show that, a yellow sign two feet away won’t rescue you.