Falling in public may feel embarrassing, but the injuries you sustain may leave you needing care and time to recover. The cause of the fall may decide whether you have a case in court.
Premises liability is an arm of personal injury law that deals with events outside of your home that may happen because of someone else’s negligence. A slip and fall is the most common example of premises liability and may occur inside or outside another’s home or business. Getting financial help for recovery after a slip and fall depends primarily on whether you can prove negligence.
What is negligence?
All personal injury claims hinge on whether you can prove to the court that someone else was at fault. In a slip and fall case, this means presenting evidence that the property owner did not do what is reasonably necessary to protect others from getting hurt. When another person does not do all he or she can to protect the public, he or she is negligent.
How do you prove negligence?
Simply providing the court with an opinion that the property owner was negligent is not enough. You have to prove that a condition existed that made a slip and fall likely. For example, if there is ice on the steps up to a business, and the owner has neither placed caution signs nor done anything to try and prevent the ice from forming, he or she knows a slip was possible.
Photographs and witness statements from the defect may go a long way to proving negligence. Asking a professional for help in getting through a slip and fall case may benefit you in the short and long run.
