Expert: John Varghese - 9/24/2009

Question
I was wondering if you can help me.

This morning I went shopping at a large supermarket chain store and bought a tin of coconut milk for cooking at lunch time. It was on a special offer, so I thought I would buy a few tins, then I thought I would look at the sell by date to see if it was worth my buying a few more. The date on it was 7th Sept and todays date now the 24th Sept. I thought it a bit odd them selling something out of date, and checked to see if I could find one with a different date, all of them (LOTS of them) had the same date. I decided to buy it anyway.  

After lunch today i started feeling a little sick, nothing to bad, just not great, so i thought i would check the date again on the tin that I used and saw that the sell by date was 7th Sept 2008 not 2009 - so it was OVER a year out of date!

Is there a case legally, or is it just best to tell the supermarket quietly.  If their plan is to sell all the tins it will take quite a while as there were hundreds of them, and I really don't want anyone else to get sick.

Many thanks in advance  

Answer
Dear Susan,

You surely have a case!. As per food laws of most of the countries, no retail store shall stock any food material in the store which is out of date, and if they do so they would be liable not only to replace the goods but also to refund you the money and compensate you for the inconvenience as well as the hospital expenses if any you have incurred on account of consuming the food they have sold. However you will have to prove that store has sold the goods after the expiry date and if you have retained the bill for purchase of the goods from the store, that itself is sufficient evidence that the store was in default. You can even get a good amount as compensation for mental agony and the store may end up losing their license( in certain jurisdictions).

Hope this is clear.

Regards

John Varghese