Restaurants have a responsibility
JOHANNESBURG – Find out what recourse you have if you get food poisoning after eating at a restaurant.
Garry Hertzberg, practising attorney at Dewey Hertzberg levy and Host of the Laws of Life with Garry Hertzberg on Cliffcentral.com, writes:
Waiter, there is a fly in the butter … Yes, it’s a butterfly.
This brings to mind when, years ago, my candidate attorney was on holiday in Cape Town and had taken a week off.
On the first night, he and his girlfriend went to a nice country restaurant at which he ordered onion soup. It was delicious, a culinary delight of melted cheese floating on creamy onion soup with garlic melba toast. They walked back to their hotel feeling quite satisfied and all was well –until about 3am when he awoke to an uncomfortable sensation in his belly and his holiday was wrecked. He was decidedly unhappy with the quaint little restaurant that had ruined their break, and in those days, before the Consumer Protection Act and social media made restaurants more accountable, there was not much he could do.
He did call them to complain that they had given him food poisoning, and would you believe they offered them a free meal. Sure, they really wanted a free meal at a restaurant that put him out of action for a week.
These days there are simpler solutions.
One option is to turn to online rating sites such as Zomato and HelloPeter. Service providers know that bad social media publicity can be very damaging to business so they will do almost anything to prevent this.
Another option is to turn to the Consumer Protection Act which makes it easier to claim damages for food poisoning resulting from the consumption of contaminated food. Regardless of whether or not the restaurant was negligent, all you need to prove is a ‘product defect’ and that there was harm.
Finally, you could approach the civil court and sue for damages, which in this case would take the form of hospital and other medical expenses, possibly loss of enjoyment of life, loss of earnings for time off if you had to take time off work and legal costs.
In conclusion, our courts have sent out a warning that consumers don’t have to settle for free dinners from restaurants that are slightly unsavoury. Food providers have a great responsibility to you, the patron, to ensure that all food served is safe.
