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Just how stable are fittings and furniture required to be in commercial settings like cafes frequented by families?
Six-year-old Lily Wunderwald had finished a swimming lesson at Randwick City Council’s Des Renford Leisure Centre in Maroubra with her mother and younger sister on 31 January 2020. The family was in the centre’s cafe, alongside other parents and children, when Lily wandered to a high circular table.
The wooden top sat on a metal pole and round metal base. The table was about as tall as Lily. CCTV footage showed her returning to it several times before holding its edge and likely putting her weight on it. She fell backwards as it came down, and its edge struck her forehead.
Her skull was not fractured, but the 10–12 cm laceration deep to the bone required repair under general anaesthesia the next day. She will bear a lifelong scar on her forehead.
When the matter came to be determined in the District Court, the council’s duty to take reasonable care for visitors’ safety was not in dispute.
The claimant’s lawyers relied on the evidence of an expert who – from photographs and other information but in the absence of a site inspection – calculated from dimensions etc that the heavy table tops carried a significant degree of instability and risk.
That was sufficient for the court to conclude they exposed patrons, particularly children to the risk of injury. It awarded Lily $175,300.
The council appealed, arguing that the risk was not “not insignificant” and that it should not have been expected to secure or remove the tables. It also contended that $50,000 allowed for future economic loss had no proper foundation.
The Court of Appeal accepted that the expert evidence had limitations. But the Council had preserved the table, did not call competing expert evidence, and had not challenged the expert’s basic case at trial that only very modest horizontal force could make it unstable.
In the view of Justice Mark Leeming – who delivered the lead judgment of the court – a table with a 7.5 kg top that could be toppled with very modest force, in a place where many thousands of young children could encounter it, presented a risk that was not insignificant.
The appeal court also rejected an argument that the council would have an impossible task that to extend such precautions to other cafe furniture — low tables, stools to prevent the risk of children climbing and falling. Such comparison was invalid: falling from furniture is not the same essential risk as a heavy and relatively unstable item of furniture falling onto a child.
On the evidence, a reasonable cafe operator should use a more stable table or secure an unstable one to prevent it from falling. The Court therefore dismissed the council’s challenges to liability.
But it reached a different result on the $50,000 ‘buffer’ for future economic loss. The trial judge had reasoned that Lily’s permanent scarring might disadvantage her when changing jobs, or cause stress that might lead to reduced work or time off.
The appeal judges found no evidentiary foundation for either possibility, noting that Lily’s psychological condition had stabilised. It described the $50,000 figure as a speculative possibility, rather than an amount tied to supported assumptions and percentages.
The appeal was allowed only to that extent. Judgment was entered for Lily for $125,300, and the council was ordered to pay three-quarters of her costs in the appeal.
Randwick City Council v Wunderwald [2026] NSWCA 116 Leeming JA Stern and Ball JJA, 23 June 2026
Categories: Entertainment venue injury