A landlord who receives complaints about a defective hot water system that causes sudden temperature fluctuations in the shower breaches its duty of care by failing to repair or replace the system, where the risk of injury from slipping or falling is foreseeable and the landlord fails to adduce evidence that the cost of replacement was prohibitive. The precise mechanism of injury (vasovagal episode rather than slipping) need not be foreseeable provided the kind of damage (physical injury from a fall) was foreseeable. The expense of alleviating a risk is not a fact on which the plaintiff bears a legal burden of proof; the defendant's failure to call evidence on cost justifies an inference that the precaution was not disadvantageous.
The full text is available to signed-in members, including the 10 later cases that cite this judgment.
1 of the 10 citing cases carry a classified treatment. How each court treated it is available to signed-in members.