Slip and fall cases are like other personal injury cases. Accident victims usually face high medical bills to treat painful injuries, and they often look online to find legal help. Before you can receive compensation, however, you will need to prove slip and fall negligence. You need to show that the property owner or occupier failed to use reasonable care to address hazards or otherwise keep the property safe for visitors.
Call Griffin Law Firm, P.C., to talk about your slip fall accident. This is a complicated area of law, and it’s often unclear what duties a property owner owed to you. In this article, our Snellville slip and fall lawyer explains why proving negligence in slip and fall cases is so important.
What Are Slip and Fall Negligence Cases?
A slip and fall negligence case is brought because a property owner exposed a visitor to unreasonable risk, usually because of a property defect. Perhaps the owner created the defect, or it arose naturally. Property owners cannot turn a blind eye to hazards that arise naturally. Instead, if they let people onto their property, they must use reasonable care to protect the visitor from harm.
The owner could be at fault if you were injured in a slip and fall. Our law firm will review the facts to determine if slip and fall negligence exists.
Elements of Negligence
Is a property owner responsible for your slip and fall injury? One answer might be, “Yes, they are responsible because I was injured on their property.” But that line of thinking isn’t always accurate. Property owners do not guarantee that no one will be hurt on their property. Instead, you need to prove negligence.
Negligence is a legal theory of liability that has four elements:
- Duty of reasonable care. The property owner/occupier must owe you, the victim, a duty of care.
- Breach of the duty of care. Essentially, this means the owner failed to live up to their duty to use reasonable care to protect a visitor. They fell short of their legal obligations.
- Causation. The breach of the duty must be the cause of your slip and fall and subsequent injuries.
- Damages. These are bodily injuries or financial losses as a result of the accident.
Proving a Duty of Care
Did the property owner owe you a duty of care? The answer might be no if you were trespassing. However, if they invited you in, then they certainly owe you a duty of care. A common situation is a store that has its doors open, inviting customers to enter.
Proving Breach of a Duty
Most slip and fall victims are visitors who had a right to be on the property. They slipped and fell in a business or a government building, or they fell on a friend’s property.
In many cases, you have a case if the owner/occupier created a hazard that caused you to fall or if they failed to warn or protect you from one. Many people slip and fall due to:
- Standing water
- Condensation
- Wet leaves
- Slips of paper or bits of trash
- Ice
- Uneven floorboards or carpets
- Worn carpeting
- Crumbling or buckled staircases
Imagine walking down a pharmacy aisle, looking for aspirin. You don’t see a puddle of water on the floor, so your feet go out from under you when you slip on it. You might have a case because a pharmacy should use reasonable care to protect its customers and they didn’t clean up the puddle or put a cone up to warn you.
Documenting the Hazard
This is a critical step in any slip and fall case. It is so easy for a property owner to deny a hazard even existed if you don’t document it. Return to the example of someone slipping on a puddle in a pharmacy. If they don’t take a picture, the pharmacy could mop the floor and then deny the puddle even existed. They could claim the victim tripped over their own feet and is solely responsible.
We recommend the following:
- Use your phone to take a picture of any hazard that caused a slip. If you don’t have a phone—or if it broke in your fall—ask a bystander to take a picture for you.
- Ask a witness for their name and phone number. They can also testify that the hazard existed.
- Contact a lawyer quickly. Did you fall in a store? Many stores use surveillance cameras to catch shoplifters. We can ask for a copy of the footage to prove the existence of a hazard.
These are three ways to preserve evidence and help strengthen your compensation claim.
What Steps Should a Property Owner Take to Protect Visitors?
The answer depends on many factors. For example, a business should regularly inspect its premises and immediately fix hazards. If they can’t immediately mop up a spill, then they should cordon it off or otherwise warn visitors.
By contrast, you might cut across someone’s lawn to catch a bus. The owner didn’t invite you on the premises, and they might have no reason to assume you would cut across their lawn. They might owe no duty of care.
The Role of Comparative Negligence in Slip and Fall Negligence Cases
Victims can also be negligent. For example, you could have been scrolling through TikTok or Instagram while crossing a parking lot in winter. You don’t even see ice on the ground, and your feet go out from under you.
Or you see a sign warning you that the store just mopped the floors. But you run into the store and flip onto your back. In these cases, you are partially to blame for falling because you did not use reasonable care yourself.
Georgia’s comparative negligence law states that you cannot receive compensation if you are 50% or more to blame (OCGA § 51-12-33). Also, any compensation is reduced by your share of fault.
Call A Top-Rated Snellville Personal Injury Lawyer Today
Proving negligence in slip and fall cases is critical for obtaining a fair settlement and holding the property owner accountable for unreasonable hazards. Griffin Law Firm, P.C., can tackle your case from the beginning and negotiate a settlement on your behalf. Contact us to learn more.