Fashion can be beautiful, but it can also hurt. This has less to do with painful color combinations or extreme combinations. Rather, a customer was literally struck by the price tag when trying on clothes in an outlet store. The price tag was not secured and was therefore dangerous, the customer claimed and took the case to court. The store must specifically indicate the presence of price tags on the clothing. The 29th Civil Division of the Munich I Regional Court countered with adjectives such as “unrealistic” and “unreasonable” and dismissed the lawsuit.
It was a shopping day in April last year when the woman put on a T-shirt in an outlet. The price tag hit her right eye so badly that it was seriously injured: she had to have a corneal transplant, the woman explained in court. To this day she suffers from pain, her vision is limited and her eye is extremely sensitive to light.
The woman wanted to claim 5,000 euros in damages because the outlet store was to blame. It had violated its duty to ensure road safety. The price tag was “dangerous due to a lack of security and visibility.”
The fashion store was a little surprised by this, as such cases had never occurred before. The label was a standard price tag measuring nine by five centimeters with rounded corners. “The price tags were clearly noticeable due to their size and the weight of the bundle,” the outlet store said.
The court found that the outlet store had fulfilled its obligations
In fact, the district court was unable to establish a claim for compensation for pain and suffering “under no legal aspect”. Safety measures are only required to the extent “that a prudent and sensible person who is cautious within reasonable limits considers them necessary and sufficient to protect others from harm”. The business operator should not be held responsible “for all conceivable remote possibilities of harm occurring”. Rather, the customer must protect himself from recognizable sources of danger.
And in this case, the 29th Civil Chamber ruled, the outlet operator had fulfilled the safety obligations imposed on him. The presence of a price tag was to be expected by the customer. It was reasonable for the woman to take “her own safety precautions” when trying on the clothes. “And according to general life experience,” the court also explained, “a customer takes a look at the price tag before trying on the clothes.” He could therefore easily take care not to injure himself when trying on the clothes. According to Cornelia Kallert, press spokesperson at the Munich I Regional Court, the ruling is not legally binding.