Advice please for Broken Tooth from Prune stone in 'pitted' punes purchase

[andrew1]

Hi, My wife bought some 'Pitted' prunes in a High Street supermarket and merrily ate some, one of which had a full stone in and broke two of her teeth.

The bag they were in had in big letters across the front " DRIED PRUNES" and in slightly smaller, but still large lettering " Pitted and Ready to Eat" so on the face of that package she was content in buying them as she did not wish to have stones in them.

On the back in the small print along with the ingredients, alergy advice and nutritian, but in much smaller writing came the word 'WARNING' - (in bold type): then in non bold lowercase type"Although every effort has been made to remove stones, some small stones or fragments may remain"

My wife went to the dentist to have these teeth fixed and came away with a bill of £348.00 for the repair.

My question now is how best to approach this to get this bill repaid by the store as in my mind if there was the remotest possibility that the store felt there may be a stone or part of a stone in even one of them then that should be stated as prominently on the front of the bag alongside the sales pitch that they were 'Pitted and ready to eat' because they were cleary not.

I therefore feel this is a responsibility of the store and that the warning on the back in smaller print a less important statement than the sales pitch on the front.
We should certainly not now be faced with this kind of bill as a result.

Do we write to the store ourselves initially to make a claim, if so how, or do we go to a solicitor to do this? We have the evidence of the package, the stone, the broken teeth, the invoice.

If we do this ourselves, how would this be approached as I'm sure they have a depth of lawyers at their disposal to fight claims like this off and I'm not as young as I used to be for a fight (over 70 now!) and my wife cannot do this herself. I fought one once before, but that was a long while ago.

Has anyone any experience in this and could point me in the right direction please?

Many thanks

Andrew1

[R0b]

Hi,

It would be a personally injury claim and wouldn't generally recommend you handle these types of claims yourself where the value being claimed is over £1,000 as there are protocols and other things that you need to adhere to or risk losing out. You may want to speak to some no win no fee solicitors or if you have legal expenses insurance you may want look at that as you could be covered.

There's a link below to an article where a law firm sued Aldi and obtained £3,000 compensation due to a stone in his cereal, not too dissimilar to your issue here.

https://celsolicitors.co.uk/3000-com...urgery-cereal/

[andrew1]

That's great, thank you. I'll keep the thread posted so others know what happens.

[theberenger]

It may be prunedent, sorry, prudent (I'll get my coat...) to retain the packaging, the stone that damaged the tooth, and the other prunes also containing stones as evidence if it's not too late to do so?

[andrew1]

Thanks TheBerenger, I have done that and forwarded to the solicitors photographs of all the evidence detail. The damage, the packaging, the invoice for the repairs to the teeth and I have kept all the hard evidence just in case it's needed. I'm just waiting for the appraisal by the legal team and we'll see what they come back with. The devil is always in the detail so I keep everything. Thanks for the nod...I'll keep the progress posted up on the thread as it comes.

Cheers

[andrew1]

Well, I have just had a conversation with solicitors and I am not entirey impressed with the way they have handled this. I won't go into detail as in doing so, knowing these solicitors troll forums, it might jeopardize my case as it progresses, but I will keep the thread updated as things go forward. Thanks for your guidance and recommendation thus far though.

Thanks
A1

[paulajayne]

"Although every effort has been made to remove stones, some small stones or fragments may remain"

The small print will most likely be the tripping point.

Prunes have stones
Fish has bones
ETC.

[andrew1]

Hi, sorry for the delay in updating, but this claim is as slow as the slugs eating my sunflowers.....but it's still live.

Initially, our claim was 'assessed' by a firm of solicitors and we were told effectively to buzz off and we had no claim due to the reasons outlined by PaulaJayne above (thank you)......so we sat on it.Hey presto, a few months passed and we had an email from a senior solicitor there who told us that they had written to the store in question and would update us on progress which was a bit of a surprise as we thought the case had been binned!

Anyway, we (my wife and I) were told that the store was denying responsibility, but that they had passed the claim onto their supplier - EH???

The supplier of Prunes of course, not being in the UK made that complicated.Probably from Eygypt or somewhere like that!

One would have thought that given the point of sale was the store, they would have been the liable source, not the supplier of the contents of the packet as the packaging was all done in the name of the high street store and all the sales gumph of the package which described the Prunes must have come from the promotions team of the store itself!

I suggested that if I had bought a BMW car and the wiring failed, I'd not be waiting for BMW to go a find the supplier like Lucas or some other specialist supplier they used of that wiring loom and then waiting to sue them - seems crazy as who actually knows where the source originated from? It would be up to BMW to refer to the contract to supply they had with their supplier and take up any issues with them, not the purchaser of the end-product to go looking...same with the Prunes!

That said, all has gone quiet again and we wait.....tick tock....but I'll keep you posted as and when (and if) we get any updates..

Thanks