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SLIP AND FALLS: GETTING UP AND MAKING A CLAIM
You are shopping in the supermarket and walking down the aisles filling your cart when suddenly you step on liquid detergent leaking from a bottle and slip and fall and become injured.
You are at a restaurant getting ready to enjoy the salad that you just prepared at the food bar when a stray piece of food causes you to slip and fall and become injured.
You are at the shopping mall walking through a department store and a broken piece of hanger causes you to slip and fall and become injured.
Slip and falls are every day occurrences in supermarkets, malls and restaurants. To consider a claim for personal injury as a result of your fall, there are a number of factors to review in proceeding with such a claim.
Initially, you must properly identify the responsible party for your claim, such as the owner, landlord and/or management company of the location where you fell, and prove they were negligent in causing your fall. To show negligence, you must prove that party had a duty to protect you against such hazards and breached that duty which then caused your fall and injuries.
Further, an individual who slips and falls in a business is called a business invitee, someone who is invited onto the premises for business transactions. Business invitees are entitled to the highest duty of care, and the owner, landlord and/or management company of the premises owes a duty to protect invitees from hazards or dangerous conditions they know or should know exist. That said, it must be shown that they had actual or constructive notice of the dangerous conditions to impose liability.
Actual notice of a dangerous condition is an actual awareness of the condition and failure to remedy it. Constructive notice is shown when there are facts to suggest there was knowledge of a dangerous condition and a failure to remedy. Some of the factors used to determine constructive notice are the time that elapsed between the creation of the dangerous condition and the incident, the size and physical condition of the premises, the nature of the business, the number of people using the premises, the frequency of use of the premises, the nature of the dangerous condition, the dangerous condition location on the premises, and the opportunity to remedy the dangerous condition.
Should you sustain a slip and fall, it is imperative that you make a report immediately after the fall at the premises, and take photographs of the dangerous condition. If possible, seek out any witnesses who may have seen the fall and obtain their name, address and telephone number.
You should then seek immediate medical attention. If the dangerous condition is a liquid substance and adheres to your shoes and clothing, do not wash the clothing or shoes.
The damages that you may pursue in a personal injury claim include those to compensate you for pain and suffering, out-of-pocket medical bills not paid by your insurance, or if you have no insurance and wage loss. Contact Fox and Fox, Attorneys At Law, P.C. (610) 275-7990 to discuss whether you may have a claim for a slip and fall.
