Obtaining compensation for a slip-and-fall or trip-and-fall injury isn’t easy. Liability insurance companies get these kinds of claims every day, and their adjusters have extensive experience in them. If your accident and injuries occurred in or around Philadelphia, you’ll need an experienced and effective slip-and-fall or trip-and-fall accident lawyer to represent you. Here’s why.
Competing Duties
An owner or occupier of land isn’t a guarantor of the safety of every person who comes onto their property. We all have a legal duty to use due care and caution for our own personal safety, but on the other hand, owners and occupiers of property are required to take reasonable steps to keep their property free from dangerous conditions. If they fail to do that, and somebody gets injured as a result of a slip-and-fall or trip-and-fall that was caused by a dangerous condition, the owner or occupier of the property can be found guilty of negligence.
The Required Proof
Like injured claimants are all different, every slip-and-fall or trip-and-fall case is different too. Here are three general ways of proving negligence in these types of cases:
- Showing that the owner or occupier or their employee should have known of the dangerous condition and failed to do anything about it. A reasonable owner or occupier with the same or similar condition on their property would have taken adequate measures to remedy or warn of the condition.
- When the owner or occupier of the property or its employee had actual knowledge of the condition and did nothing to remedy it or warn of it.
- Proving that the owner, occupier or an employee caused the condition to exist and did nothing about it.
Most slip-and-fall and trip-and-fall claims pivot on what an owner or occupier of property should have known at the time of the accident. Then, it becomes a question of what reasonable action the owner or occupier took or failed to take. In this context, there are two critical issues. Those involve the following:
- How long the dangerous condition existed before the accident.
- Whether there was sufficient time to remedy the condition or provide adequate warning of it.
Defenses
Injury claimants can expect that the owner or occupier of the property that they were hurt on will try to push some or even all of the liability for the accident over onto them. Here are some typical defenses:
- The claimant simply wasn’t watching where he or she was going.
- The victim was in an area that was clearly off limits.
- Adequate warning of the dangerous condition was given.
- The dangerous condition was open and obvious.
Contact a Philadelphia Slip and Fall Lawyer
If you suffer injuries from a slip-and-fall or trip-and fall anywhere in or around Philadelphia, report it right away, seek immediate medical treatment and then contact our Philadelphia slip and fall injury lawyers.