The customer is always right. Right? Arguably no. Not when they pinch from you, for example, or when the fat lady can't see her feet and trips over your baskets shouting, "I'll sue" as she goes down. One of the American trends to become more prevalent on our shores in the last few years is our move towards becoming a more litigious society. Mandy Lemmon, manageress of Thorpe Convenience Store in Norwich, contacted me to ask whether her boss could be held liable if one of his customers slipped on the snow outside ­ as a woman had indeed threatened, should she fall. I spoke to broker Ian Hughes of Severn Valley Insurance Brokers (01938 552660) a company which specialises in convenience store coverage, and the answer is no, not if you haven't attempted to clear the snow. The duty of care remains with the customer. If you do have a stab at clearing the ice and snow from your bit of pavement outside the store or your car park, then a customer may sue if they fall, since it might be construed that you didn't do a good enough job. If you make no attempt to remove this evidence of weather, then the reasoning goes that the lady can see there is a lot of ice and snow about and must look out for herself. If you don't clear your car park of snow you'll need to weigh up the chances of getting any customers at all against the odds of being sued and you need to make sure that your insurance policy covers you for at least £2m in public and product liability. Some policies offer £1m but Hughes says that for just a small amount extra, you should go for £2m. This will cover you on the public liability front per event -- so if one of your signs gets blown off in a gale and hits a busload of passing executives and they sue for £2m, the insurance company should cough up and, if it happens again, you would still be covered for the full amount. However, on the product front it is aggregated so each time you claim, the total coverage drops. Ian Hughes refers to this sort of coverage as "slips, trips and try-ons". He is currently handling a case which fits into the try-on category. In this case a member of staff fell over in the shop. The details, which included the fact that she was wearing high heel boots for the first time, went into the accident book. Later on, and backed by a "witness", she claimed that the floor was wet and covered with rubbish. This was patently untrue since the incident had been captured on CCTV along with the nice, clean, tidy floors. As these two stories demonstrate, you can't retail in peace without insurance ­ and remember that you must, by law, be covered for employer's liability. They also demonstrate the polar extremes to be found in staff. It's a pity they can't all be like Mandy. {{GROCER CLUB }}