Slip and Fall Injury

Very basically, a slip and fall injury or lawsuit is when the victim actually does injure himself either by slipping or falling on the premises of the owner where the owner had not shown sufficient levels of care to make sure the area was safe or did not put up signage to sufficiently warn the victim about the slippery or unduly dangerous terrain which can be shown to directly cause an injury.

The hard part about slip and fall injury claims is that it is very hard to prove and requires that the victim actually know a little bit of law before the accident actually happens. This is because it is almost impossible to get evidence to prove that the slip or fall was directly caused by the owner showing negligence and not the victim just being careless.

The very first question that has to be asked if you feel that you are the victim of a slip and fall injury is if the slippery floor or uneven surface was caused by an unforeseen element which should have been looked at by the owner of the property or was the poor surface condition due to the area having a purpose making it slippery. Purpose meaning the poor surface is used to either drain water (i.e. drains or flow cannels), catch water (i.e. base of gutter system). If the area has a purpose and is designed that it is slippery when in use then you might not have a case.

In order to determine if a slip and fall claim is possible, one of these have to be true. Firstly you must be certain that the owner of the premises or an employee has actually caused a spill or a worn uneven surface which resulted in your injury. Secondly, the owner of the premises or an employee must be shown to know of the hazard and shown to not do anything about it. Lastly, the owner of the premises or the employee must be shown that their actions in not repairing the surface where any reasonable person would and thus caused the injury.

As mentioned earlier the burden of proof has to be established by the victim that he/she was not simply careless and caused the injury themselves. The “rules of comparative negligence” help in measuring the victim’s own carelessness. These rules come in the form of questions that you can ask about your own conduct:

• Did you have a legitimate reason -- a reason the owner should have anticipated -- for being where the dangerous area was?
• Would a careful person have noticed the dangerous spot and avoided it, or walked carefully enough not to slip or trip?
• Were there any warnings that the spot might be dangerous?
• Were you doing anything that distracted you from paying attention to where you were going, or were you running, jumping, or fooling around in a way that made falling more likely?