Damage to customers: risks and how to protect yourself

The daily goal of a valid professional is to carry out their work to the best of their ability: but involuntary damage is an event that happens even in the best companies and it is good to be prepared, informed and protected to avoid any eventuality.

Most of us don’t even consider the possibility of something happening, yet there’s no need to be too imaginative. Let’s take the case of the waiter holding a steaming pizza who trips due to some children running between the tables – a more than common circumstance – and in falling causes the pizza to slip onto the arm of a little girl who gets burned. The parents denounce the fact, asking for damages and, in the end, the judge holds the restaurateur responsible, who had to foresee the presence of lively children, forcing him to pay compensation of 30,000 euros. It’s not fantasy, it happened in reality.

Of course, not all cases are so clear to define and a restaurateur – or a hairdresser or any other professional to the public – cannot always control the conduct of others.

However, the literature on cases of involuntary damage is rich and varied: how many times has a hairdresser come very close to scarring a customer’s face? It was clearly not his intention to do so, but the sudden passage of a person was enough to move the arm. Who has never had an elderly customer in the shop, who perhaps is unable to climb the step properly and falls? The stairs may be in perfect condition or have a slight flaw in wear that we had not noticed and which could work against us. To date, the Court of Cassation does not have incontrovertible criteria to establish responsibility: let’s take the example of a customer of a supermarket who was hit by automatic doors on her way out. Upon the request for compensation for failure to fulfill the supermarket’s contractual obligations, the civil Court of Cassation denied the existence of these obligations, which instead fell within the non-contractual ones and which obliged the customer to exercise protection of her own physical safety regardless of the supermarket’s role as custodian of the goods on sale.

As merchants, we are not always required to pay compensation, which is provided for in cases of unjust damage. Sometimes compensation is provided, especially in cases where there is no injustice in those who suffer the damage but it is deemed necessary to rebalance the situation with a sum of money.

However, what makes the protection of the business owner so essential is precisely the nature of the possible damages within a commercial establishment: non-pecuniary damage, which, in the case of health, cannot be the subject of economic quantification. Article 2059 of the civil code regulates requests for compensation in the event of non-pecuniary damage and is recognized in the constitution. Biological damage, widely covered in the jurisdiction, takes into account the duration of the disease and the irreversible health consequences. Civil liability policies for every professional activity are therefore not only a legal obligation, but above all the best way to protect assets.