People can slip and fall for a lot of different reasons. Sometimes, a person gets hurt because of snowy or icy conditions in a parking lot. Other times someone might trip over damaged carpeting in the entranceway of an apartment complex.
When slip-and-falls occur at businesses, the people who get hurt may blame the business for the incident. They may hope to seek compensation for their injuries. Businesses do sometimes need to compensate visitors who get hurt because of a slip-and-fall.
Frequently, the premises liability insurance carried by a business can reimburse those who get hurt while visiting. When does a customer or visitor hurt at a business potentially have grounds to request compensation for their slip-and-fall injuries?
Negligence often provides the basis for a claim
Opening a facility up to the public means accepting the possibility that people could get hurt while visiting. Businesses have to conform to safety and accessibility standards. They typically need to train their workers to ensure they maintain safe facilities.
Unfortunately, it is relatively common for employees that companies to fail in their duty to maintain the premises. Workers failing to switch out saturated rugs by the front door or clean up a spill caused by another customer could result in serious injuries.
People involved in a slip-and-fall may want to use their mobile phones to take pictures or record video footage of the unsafe property conditions that led to their injury. Tripping hazards, spills and maintenance issues could all be to blame for a slip-and-fall incident.
If another reasonable person might agree that failing to address facility issues was unsafe, then the injured visitor may have grounds for a lawsuit. Negligence essentially involves failing to do what is necessary for safety or doing something that is obviously unsafe.
If the injured party can reasonably assert that negligence caused their injury, they may have a valid premises liability claim to make against the business where they slipped and fell. A slip-and-fall lawsuit could lead to compensation for medical expenses and property damage losses. People can also recover lost wages if their injuries force them to take time away from their jobs.
Reviewing the details of a slip-and-falls scenario with the assistance of a skilled legal team can help people establish if they have grounds for premises liability lawsuits. After all, many slip-and-falls are preventable with better business practices.