Slip and Fall Attorneys

It’s important to note that while there can be many contributing factors to a slip and fall injury, it can be very difficult to prove the validity of your claim due to the large number of fraudulent claims that have been made over recent years. When this factor is combined with the large amount of surveillance equipment that many businesses use on, in and around their premises, your claim needs to be very accurate and robust in order to withstand the litigation process. With this in mind, over time there are a number of genuine situations that have consistently proven to increase the chances of a slip, trip or fall accident occurring. It would be impossible to make an exhaustive list of all the circumstances that can lead up to an individual slipping and falling on another person’s property. Below is a very small list of just a few causes:

• Some of these can include (but are not limited to):
• Failure to guard against dangerous adjacent areas
• Negligent care of a sidewalk or publicly owned area, such as a pothole in the ground
• Safety code violations
• Torn carpeting
• Changes in flooring
• Poor lighting
• Wet floors
• Unsafe or narrow stairways
• Lack of a hand or grab rail
• Faulty escalator stairs
• Elevator malfunction (quick stop or start)
• Untextured concrete

People of all ages are at risk of suffering an injury from a fall. Older adults age 65 and over, however, seem to face a higher risk of danger from falling, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It appears on average that one out of every four senior citizens falls each year. Once a senior has fallen, the chances of falling again double. The CDC notes that non-fatal fall injuries cost around $50 billion annually.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has its own statistics, as well, concerning this topic. The WHO states that falling is the second most common cause of unintentional and accidental injury deaths each year worldwide. Traffic accidents are the number one cause. Children have a high risk of catastrophic falls because they tend to take high risks through potentially dangerous actions.

Individuals such as construction workers who are working in hazardous, high-height professions stand a great possibility of being injured in a fall. Others who use alcohol, illicit drugs, and pain medications are also at a greater risk of injury through falling.

Determining whether another party is liable for a person’s slip and fall accident can be a difficult task. Each situation depends on whether the owner of the property was negligent in allowing a condition to remain unsafe, thus exposing the victim to an unavoidable and unexpected hazard. It is incumbent on the injured party to show that the accident was caused by a dangerous condition of which the property owner or possessor was aware, or should have been aware.

In addition, the dangerous condition had to be an unreasonable risk that anyone visiting the property would not have expected to encounter under the circumstances. A property owner is not responsible for injuries received by a person who is behaving carelessly or recklessly and fails to avoid an obvious danger. To prove that a property owner was previously aware of a dangerous condition, the victim must show any of the following:

• The owner or possessor of the property created the hazardous condition.
• The owner or possessor of the property was aware the condition existed, but negligently failed to fix it.
• The condition existed for a sufficient time that a reasonable owner or possessor of the property would have already discovered and fixed the problem before the accident happened.

So, it should be clear from the above explanation that, in order to hold the owner or possessor of a property liable for a slip and fall accident, the victim must prove that the accident was foreseeable due to negligence that created the dangerous circumstance.

Previously in this article, the term reasonable was used. Negligence claims must deal with a defendant’s behavior and whether it was reasonable. What exactly does this mean?

Often, in the legal system, a plaintiff must show that the defendant’s behavior and actions were unreasonable, or were the kind of actions that no reasonable person would do given the same set of circumstances. Below are a few questions that a victim can ponder in determining if a property owner or business owner could be found liable:

• Does the owner regularly examine and clean or repair the property? If so, is there proof of this regular routine?
• If the slip and fall was the result of a torn, bulging or broken spot of carpet, vinyl flooring, or sidewalk, was the area in such a hazardous condition long enough that the owner should have been aware of it already?
• If the fall was caused by an object left on the ground or floor, was the item there for a legitimate reason?
• If the answer to the previous question is affirmative, had the legitimate reason already ended, and could the item have been removed or made safer otherwise?
• Was there another location for the object that would have created a safer situation? Was there a safer manner for placement of the object that wouldn’t have overly inconvenienced nor been very expensive for the owner?
• Would a simple warning notice or barrier placed at the spot have helped prevent tripping or slipping?
• Was broken or poor lighting a contributing factor to the accident?

If any of the above questions are affirmative for you, it is possible that you could benefit greatly by speaking with one of our experienced legal representatives at The Eichholz Law Firm. You may be eligible to receive compensation for the damages suffered through someone else’s negligence.