The owners of the Whitehorse Real Canadian Superstore have been ordered to pay about $26,000 to a woman who fell in the store six years ago, fracturing her knee.

Mary Alfred sued Loblaws Inc. for negligence after she accidentally stepped on a four-wheeled dolly, fell and fractured her right knee in June 2006.

Alfred, then 61, had come to Whitehorse from Pelly Crossing to grocery shop.

The dolly, which is normally used to move stacks of shopping baskets, was near the customer service desk, where she had gone to get help.

In his decision released last week, Yukon Supreme Court Justice Leigh Gower said the Superstore was required to protect its customers from "reasonably foreseeable” hazards.

"The fact that Ms. Alfred stepped on a dolly which was on the floor in an area in front of the customer service counter is evidence that a Superstore staff person failed to comply with the store's policy of removing the dollies from the floor after usage,” he said.

"This was a breach of Superstore's duty of care to protect its costumers from reasonably foreseeable hazards.”

The judge pointed out the grocery store's lawyers made no arguments to suggest otherwise.

Gower awarded the woman $35,000 in damages. He lowered that amount to $26,250, a reduction of 25 per cent, to take into account Alfred's role in her own fall.

In court, Loblaws' lawyers argued that Alfred had two chances to see the dolly before she fell.

The first was when she and her husband initially approached the costumer service counter and the second as she turned to the right just before stepping on the dolly.

Alfred also wanted Loblaws to pay damages for a second fall two years later outside her home.

She claimed she was walking toward the house when she stepped on her right foot in a way that caused her right knee to buckle.

She fractured her right leg just above the ankle.

Alfred argued that the injury from her second fall would not have happened if it weren't for the weakness in her knee from the first fall.

Therefore, she said, Loblaws should have to pay damages for that fall too.

But Gower said Alfred failed to prove a link between the two tumbles.

He pointed out that an x-ray of Alfred's leg after the second fall showed that her knee had fully healed.

This is not the first time the Real Canadian Superstore has been sued for negligance.

Earlier this year, a Whitehorse woman filed a similar lawsuit after she slipped on a wet patch of floor and suffered a concussion.

Willard Phelps, who briefly led a Conservative government in the Yukon in 1985, also took court action againt Loblaws after a fall in the Superstore.