Hey. Sorry about your difficulty.
I wanted to ask - have I misunderstood or did the offender change gender in consecutive sentences?
The law on damage to goods is not as clear (in England) as shopkeepers believe it is. However, spilling coffee on merchandise would probably constitute damage caused by negligence. If you have a shop containing goods which you are inviting people to examine themselves, the law says that it isn't their fault if damage occurs. Suppose, for example, somebody in a bookshop was examining a computer book - say something costing £40. Someone bumps into them and they drop the book and the CD-ROM (in an envelope in the back cover) is broken. The shopkeeper has no right of remedy against either of the customers. Or someone with oily hands leaves stains on a silk blouse.
Shops were not always self service, remember; the accepted view when they all started to stampede in that direction is that the additional risks being run by the shopkeeper were something he or she had to accept as the downside of the lower overheads. It's always open to have a dozen assistants so that clothes can be individually presented to the customer.
But if someone is ignoring 'No eating and drinking' signs and this causes damage to goods which would not otherwise have occurred had they simply been examining them
In practice, all you can do is put a notice on the door and say 'food and drink not permitted inside', and then ask people to go out and finish their food if they come in the shop eating or drinking.
You can't make a citizens' arrest (in England) because no arrestable offence has been committed, so you cannot detain customers against their consent, and even if you could the time and effort involved in claiming against them for a few tens of £s worth of damage is out of proportion. The general view of lawyers and courts would be that this sort of thing is best dealt with by taking out appropriate insurance.
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