Arpita is in the final year of her LLB at JGU. The night before her final exam for Legal Ethics, she goes to her favourite caf called 'Happy Chai' to order tea and eat a snack. The restaurant is busy because it is frequented by many students and locals. Happy Chai is owned and run by Mr.Kumar.

When Arpita enters the restaurant, she can see that it is fully booked. There are no chairs or tables free. Kumar tells Arpita that because the restaurant is too busy, she will have to wait for up to 1 hour to get a table to sit at. Arpita asks Kumar whether there is any possible way of getting somewhere to sit down and eat her dinner because she is hungry and cannot wait that long. Since Kumar knows that Arpita is a regular customer, he offers her a spare table and a chair in a room next to the kitchen that Kumar uses for storage.

Kumar fails to tell Arpita that the chair has not been used for around four months and that the back legs of the chair have become quite loose over time. A customer warned Kumar about this problem about six months ago, but Kumar has not got it repaired yet.

Arpita sits at the table in the spare room and Kumar serves her the dinner she had ordered. During her meal, Arpita swings backwards and forwards on the chair so that the front legs of the chair continually lift off the ground. She does this about 20 times, rocking backwards and forwards. Eventually, both back legs snap off, causing the chair to collapse under her, and she falls hard to the ground.

The next day Arpita awakes with severe back and neck pain.She went for a quick run at the gym in the morning but this only made the pain worse. She decided to persevere and still sits her Legal Ethics final exam that morning. However, because of the severe back and neck pain, her concentration and ability to do well in the final exam are compromised. She ends up failing the Legal Ethics exam and has to do a re-sit exam, potentially delaying her graduation date.

It turns out that Arpita has ruptured a disc in her back. This may have been because she has a pre-existing condition where her spinal discs were in quite a fragile state. As a consequence, she also ends up incurring medical costs

and physiotherapy costs for treatment for the ruptured discs and muscle damage to her spine and neck, and she cannot work for a week (in her part-time job).

Sarah, another student from JGU who was in the same batch as Arpita, was sitting at a table nearby and witnessed Arpita crash into the ground. When she went home that evening she started having nightmares and was diagnosed the following day with a chronic sleep disorder, which the doctor said was probably a result of the traumatic experience of seeing Arpita fall down.

Advise all parties on any potential causes of action in Tort, assuming these events took place in a common law jurisdiction. If successful, consider the possible damages and relief that Arpita may request from the court.