Thousands of people are injured each year (some very seriously) when they slip and fall on a damp floor, faulty stairs, or a rugged patch of ground. Sometimes the property owner is accountable for the accident, and sometimes they are not.

If you have been hurt in this way, first acknowledge that it is a natural part of living for someone to fall on or to trip onto the ground or floor. Also, some things put into the earth: drainage grates, for instance. A property owner cannot always be held liable for instantly picking up or cleaning every slippery substance on a platform. Nor is a property owner always subject for someone slipping or falling on something that an average person should expect to find there. We all have a responsibility to watch where we're going.

Nevertheless, property owners do need to be cautious about keeping up their property. While there is no specific way to determine when someone else is legally accountable for something on which a person slips or falls, cases usually take into account whether the property owner worked carefully to ensure that slipping or tripping was not expected to occur and whether you were negligent in not seeing the thing you fell on. Here are some standard rules to help you determine whether someone else was at fault for your slip and fall injury.

Determining Liability

To be legally accountable for the injuries you sustained from slipping and falling on someone else's property, one of the following must be valid:

-The owner of the property must have created the spill

-The owner of the property must have known of the dangerous surface but did nothing about it.

-The owner of the property should have known of the dangerous surface because a "normal" person taking responsibility for the property would have identified and corrected it.

-The third position is the most popular, but is also less precise than the first two because of those troublesome words "should have known." Common sense often decides liability in these cases. Judges decide whether the owner of the property took proper care and if the steps the owner chose to keep the property safe were reasonable.

Any negligence claims often depend on whether the defendant responded reasonably. In defining a property owner's "reasonableness," the law focuses on whether the owner makes frequent and careful efforts to keep the property safe.

Your Own Carelessness

In almost every slip and fall case, you must determine whether your carelessness added to the accident. The rules of "comparative negligence" help measure your own reasonableness in going where you did, in the way you did, just before the accident occurred.

If you or your loved one are the victims of a slip-and-fall accident, contact Davis Law Firm Today!