STELLENBOSCH – A full bench of the high court in Cape Town has thrown out a trial ruling that found a well-known Stellenbosch restaurant liable after a customer swallowed a needle-like object hidden in a hamburger.
The three judges ruled that the trial judge wrongly applied a legal principle and confirmed that restaurants cannot be held automatically liable for hidden food defects without proof of carelessness.
Customer hospitalised after swallowing needle
The case started after a dinner on 3 October 2020, when Maxine Williams visited Beyerskloof Wine Bar with her husband. While eating her hamburger, Williams felt severe throat pain and started coughing. She later found blood in the restroom basin.
Emergency X-rays at Stellenbosch Mediclinic showed a thin needle-type object stuck in her throat. Doctors kept her in hospital for five days before the object passed naturally.
Williams sued Beyerskloof Wine Bar for damages, claiming the restaurant failed to serve safe food. In May 2025, the trial court ruled in her favour. The judge said the presence of the needle “spoke for itself” under a legal doctrine called res ipsa loquitur, which means “the thing speaks for itself”. This shifted the burden onto the restaurant to prove it was not careless.
Appeal court reverses decision
The Supreme Court of Appeal granted the restaurant permission to appeal. The full bench, led by Justice P.S. Van Zyl with judges A. Le Grange and D. Kusevitsky, overturned the trial court’s judgment completely.
Justice Van Zyl ruled that Williams needed to prove the restaurant was careless, not the other way around.
The appeal court looked at the evidence and found that Beyerskloof Wine Bar followed strict health and safety rules. The restaurant bought pre-spiced patties from a trusted butchery that has operated since the 1960s. Staff used plastic brushes instead of metal wire brushes to clean grills. The restaurant had never experienced a similar incident.
Restaurant could not have prevented incident
Because Williams could not identify whether the needle came from the bun, patty or garnish, it was impossible to work out how the object got into the food.
The court said a reasonable restaurant owner could not predict hidden foreign objects in sealed supplier ingredients. Restaurant owners cannot reasonably be expected to take extreme steps such as X-raying every ingredient or scanning prepared meals with metal detectors.
The court confirmed that South African law does not hold food sellers strictly liable for defective products. The high court upheld Beyerskloof’s appeal.
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