Slip and Fall Accidents

An icy sidewalk or a slippery floor can result in a dangerous fall. If you have been injured because of dangerous premises, talk to the Pennsylvania slip and fall accident attorneys at Fenner & Boles, LLC. A premises liability lawyer can listen to your experience, explain your rights, and help you get the compensation you need for full recovery.

Business owners owe a duty to the public to keep both the inside and outside of their properties in a reasonably safe condition so that members of the public do not suffer harm as a result of entering onto the property. Too often, individuals who slip and fall in a business establishment immediately pick themselves up, brush themselves off and tell any bystanders (i.e., witnesses) that they are OK. After all, it is embarrassing. Sometimes people think it was their own fault that they fell. When the soreness doesn’t go away and, in fact, gets worse, the injured victim finally seeks medical attention. The family doctor may not know how to treat traumatic injuries and miss the need for extensive (and expensive) medical care, including possible surgical intervention. It is at this point that many such individuals seek legal advice from an attorney. Unfortunately, in the foregoing scenario, there may be little an attorney can do to help such an injured victim due to the lack of needed evidence.

What is the required evidence and where do you get it?

1. What caused you to fall? Specifically, what was it on the floor or walkway that caused the individual to trip or slip? Without this key piece of information, there can be no recovery. It is imperative that victims of such an accident take note of what caused them to fall. Without such information there will be no way for an attorney to establish the victim’s right to recovery.
2. The source question. It must be determined what the source of the substance causing the fall was. Was the source left there by (a) the business owner or the business owner’s employees, or (b) any third person (i.e., another customer)? The reason it is so important to know whether or not the source of the dangerous condition on the floor was caused by the business owner or his employees is because of the legal concept of Notice. If a business owner or his employees are responsible for the cause of the fall, the victim does not need to prove “notice” in order to recover for his injuries.
3. Proving Notice. If a third party, such as another customer, is responsible for the cause of the accident, “notice” is required in order for a victim to recovery for his injuries. To prove “notice” means to prove that there was an awareness of the condition that caused the fall, but that the business owner did nothing or not enough to correct it.

Sidewalks, streets, and parking lots

Many fall-down accidents occur on sidewalks, streets, and parking lots. These types of accidents give rise to a whole different set of issues.

1. Defective streets or roadway surfaces. If a person is caused to fall because, for example, of a crack in the sidewalk, a hole in the street, or a chewed up parking lot, notice will often not be an issue. In many of these instances, notice will be assumed because defects such as these do not happen overnight, but generally degenerate into these conditions over a substantial length of time. In those instances the landowner is charged with notice. It is extremely important, once again, to determine exactly what caused you to fall and now to precisely pinpoint its location. (A difference of six inches can determine which landowner may be liable.) Unlike interior falls, defects such as these are generally not repaired immediately and can be photographed. The exact location will be important when determining ownership of the property.
2. Governmental entities. When a person falls on a sidewalk or in a street, it brings into play the question of who owns and is obligated to maintain that particular street – the Commonwealth or the local governmental agency. There are a whole set of requirements that one must meet in order to recover for injuries suffered, since the government is immune from suit except in a carefully delineated set of circumstances all of which are spelled out in the Pennsylvania statutes.
3. Dangerous surfaces caused by snow and ice. In inclement weather, one cannot recover for slipping on precipitation (i.e., ice and snow) that has only recently fallen or frozen over. This again, goes back to the issue of “notice.” An owner must be afforded a reasonable length of time to clear his property of the ice and snow. In Pennsylvania, this legal concept has come to be known as the “hills and ridges” doctrine. That doctrine holds that the ice and snow that cause the accident must be shown to have been there for a long enough period of time that it exhibits a rough, uneven surface – hills and ridges – because that means the precipitation had enough time to melt and refreeze. Of course, this is not a hard and fast rule if one can demonstrate that the ice has been there for an inordinate amount of time, despite being smooth in appearance.

Steps to take if you have been in a slip and fall accident

1. Take note of what caused you to fall and its general appearance. It is crucial for any slip and fall case that you be able to establish what made you fall. Whether it is a defect in the pavement or ice or extraneous man-made material, you need to be able to describe what made you fall. Any additional details you can supply will add to the possibility of a meritorious case, because you will have to establish how long the defective condition existed prior to your accident in order to prove that someone with responsibility for the area should have repaired the situation or warned people before your injury occurred.
2. Get the names and possibly the phone numbers of anyone who saw you fall (especially any store employees). Witnesses are extremely important in slip and fall accidents for one reason: Without witnesses, there will be only your word for what happened. Since you stand to gain compensation, your word may not be enough.
3. Notify the property or store owner of the fall and insist that a written report be filled out. Just as witnesses are important, it is important that there be a written report contemporaneous with the incident. Insurance adjusters are more likely to take your story seriously if it is corroborated by some internal documentation from their insured – the property or business owner.
4. If at all possible, get pictures and a sample of the substance that caused the fall. In many instances, it is necessary to have an expert evaluate what made you fall in order to establish the property or store owner's liability. In such cases, you want the expert to have as much information as possible about what made you fall.
5. Get medical treatment as soon as possible. If you have been injured in a slip and fall accident, go to an emergency room to have an emergency room physician perform a physical examination. Often, a person who is in an accident is in a state of shock, and is not aware of the severity of the injuries. As a result, it is quite common for people to feel only minimal pain right after the accident, only to wake up the next morning with pain so severe they find it difficult to get out of bed.
6. Follow up with any medical treatment that is recommended for you. Very often, the emergency room doctor will take x-rays and if they show that nothing is fractured, release you with some pain prescriptions, medical devices, and a recommendation that you seek follow up treatment within one day to one week with your family doctor. Make the appointment as soon as you get home from the hospital. If you do not have a family doctor, find a doctor who specializes in physical injuries to accident victims and make an appointment with that doctor.
7. Tell your doctors every place you are hurting. You must be careful to tell any doctor who treats you about every part of your body that is hurting you so that the information becomes part of your medical records. Very often, if one part of the body is hurting the very most, a person will only mention that part of the body to the doctor. Only months later, after the problem with that part of the body feels better, the person will mention that a different part of the body hurts. It is very difficult to persuade an insurance company that the injuries to the parts of the body that are not mentioned in medical records until months after the accident were caused by the accident.
8. Get a doctor's disability note for any time off from work. If you need to take time off work because you cannot perform the duties of your job as a result of your injuries, make sure your doctor prepares a disability slip and notes in your records that you have been placed on disability, and bring or send the slip to your employer. Any earnings that are lost, whether through actual deductions of your pay or through the use of vacation or sick time, are recoverable, but only if they have been documented in the medical records and the employment records.
9. Ask a family member to take photos of your injuries and the scene of the accident. Take photos of all of your injuries a few days after the accident, which is when the bruising may be more visible. Also, take photos of the scene of the accident. The photos of your injuries will prove to be extremely valuable when you try to settle your claim, because they will be the best proof possible of the damage you suffered as a result of the accident. The photos of the scene of the accident may be important for purposes of reconstructing how the accident happened some time later on, when the scene is very likely to have changed.
10. Consult with an attorney who has extensive experience in premises liability cases as soon as possible. Depending upon the jurisdiction, you may have one or two or even three years after you fall to bring suit for your injuries. However, when it comes to slip and fall cases, you have very little time to consult with a personal injury lawyer who can give you the best chances of succeeding in any case you may wish to bring. The reason is simple – loss of crucial evidence. Preservation of evidence is crucial in these cases, and much care must be exercised early on in trying to secure whatever evidence is available to maximize the chances of proving the property or store owner's liability. This will most certainly involve one or more visits to the site by investigators and experts, as well as securing statements from witnesses.

If you believe that you have been seriously injured due to the negligence of another in maintaining their property, contact a premises liability lawyer at Fenner & Boles, LLC.