BLAMING OTHER PEOPLE DID NOT WORK THIS TIME

But it had to go all the way to Australia’s High Court for reason to prevail

Diane Burns was 47 and working as a teacher's aide when she took a group of disabled children to a Hoyts cinema in Bankstown in 1997. She left her seat to chase after a four-year-old boy who had crawled away. When she returned she did not notice the seat had retracted automatically; she sat down, missed the chair and hit a metal bar. The woman, who was not a regular cinema goer, sued the cinema operator, saying it should have erected signs warning the seats were retractable. The High Court, however, unanimously rejected her damages claim, saying there was nothing to suggest that, had there been a sign, she would have read it and pulled her seat down before she sat on it. The decision overturned a NSW Court of Appeal finding in her favour. She had entered the cinema when the lights were on, and when she chose a chair in the front row had pushed it down in order to sit on it.

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