Slip and fall incidents can dramatically change a victim’s life, producing injuries ranging from fractures of wrists and hips to major head injuries. Most fall injuries fall within the ambit of so-called premises liability law, which has its own special requirements – it’s not enough to snap a picture of the dangerous circumstance on your mobile phone to show a judge that a business premises or rental dwelling has a negligently caused defect. There are various factors that must be proven by law to recover if you are the victim of a slip and fall accident.
In order to prove liability in a slip and fall lawsuit, you will need to prove one of three factors:
- That the property owner and/or his or her employees knew or should have known about the dangerous condition that caused the injury because a “reasonable” person in his or her position would have done so.
- That the property owner and/or his or her employees knew about the dangerous condition and ignored it.
- That the property owner and/or his or her employees caused the dangerous condition.
Proving the foregoing elements is just the beginning. A successful personal injury claim based upon premises liability legal principles also requires that the injured person demonstrate that a sufficient time existed within which to warn or remedy the dangerous condition, such that the owner, manager or other responsible person failed to do so. Where serious fall injuries occur, early retention of a skilled personal injury attorney is key. At the Walkup law firm in San Francisco, our lawyers have handled premises liability cases of all types and sizes for more than 50 years.