Slip and Fall Accidents: Step-By-Step Case Evaluation

Slip and fall accidents and the injuries they cause often result from someone else’s negligence. When you are a victim of a slip and fall accident and incur severe injuries, you can seek compensation against the party at fault, whether that is the property owner, a product manufacturer, or the property’s tenant. You might be confused about who may be liable for your injuries and how to pursue an insurance settlement against that party. Below are some of the basics about proving a slip and fall accident claim and options available to victims of the injuries that slips and falls may cause.

Slip and Fall Accidents

The first key to a Slip And Fall Accident is identifying who may be liable for the resulting injuries. In figuring out who may be liable, some parties to consider include the property’s owner or tenant, as well as an employer or employee of the owner. These parties have a responsibility to ensure that the premises are safe and to identify and warn of any potential hazards that may exist.

In some instances, an individual could have created a situation that was designed to intentionally cause you harm, which may even carry the potential for criminal charges.

Proving Liability

The next step is proving the negligent party’s liability. It is insufficient to just point fingers at the property owners and claim that they caused your slip and fall accident. There are a few factors on which courts evaluate whether a party was negligent.

Here are some of the factors a lawyer may consider when evaluating your slip-and-fall case.

Did the owners have enough time after the hazard occurred to remedy it in order to prevent the accident from happening? For example, another customer may have accidentally spilled a bottle of oil just seconds or minutes before you slipped, without allowing the owners or their employees enough time to identify and remove the hazard. However, if the owners or their employees had sufficient time learn of the hazard and to clean it up, but they failed to follow required procedures or ignored it, you likely have a claim for negligence.

Why was the hazard present? Was the obstacle created to satisfy a reasonable task or remedy another dangerous situation? If not, they may have been negligent for failing to remove it.

Was the hazard within an area where you were permitted to be? Under the law, owners and employees must make public places safe for people legally on the property. However, if you were somewhere you were not permitted to be, you may not have a claim for negligence.

Prove Your Innocence 

In the process of proving another party’s negligence, you will also have to affirmatively demonstrate that you did not contribute to causing the accident. When you identify another party’s liability, whether you exhibited the appropriate level of care in the situation will also come into question. To determine whether your negligence played a role in the accident, you may have to answer the following questions:

Were you engage in other tasks while walking at the area, such as speaking on the phone, texting while walking, or running unnecessarily?

Were you supposed to be in the area where you slipped and fell, or were you there without authorization?

Did you ignore caution signs or instructions not to step on the area where the hazard existed?

If you even partially contributed to causing the accident, the amount of compensation you may recover can be reduced by your percentage of fault or entirely precluded, depending on the state where your accident occurred. However, an experienced personal injury lawyer can guide you on the best course of action, even if your negligence played a role in your injuries.

Fort Myers Personal Injury Attorney Bill B. Berke, this blog post’s author, has spent decades helping injury claimants build strong legal claims and fight for the damages they have incurred. Contact him today to see how he can help you seek the compensation you deserve from the responsible party.

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Created on Feb 5th 2021 07:06. Viewed 283 times.

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