First Steps After Suffering a Slip-and-Fall Injury in California
by Arkady Itkin
(San Francisco, California)
Most injury lawyers don't like handling slip and fall injury claims and for several good reasons: they are hard to prove and the other side, knowing that these claims are difficult for the victims, fight those claims more aggressively than other injury claims, such as auto accidents.
One of the main difficulties in pursuing a slip and fall claim is proving the existence of notice. In other words, the claimant must show that the owner or the operator of the area where the fall occurred knew of the dangerous conditions for a certain period of time and failed to remedy that condition in a reasonable timely manner.
Many businesses, such as large grocery and department stores maintain good cleaning and maintenance logs where these records reflect the their isles are checked and cleaned every hour or every few hours.
This means that they generally do the best they can to prevent slip and fall injuries, and even if a person slips and falls at a store, the business is very likely to not be liable as the business did not have notice of the condition.
Despite the above, some slip and fall injury cases can and should be pursued, and a lot depends on the victim's first actions right after the fall. As an example of a good claim, I will use a recent slip and fall case I handled.
In that case, my client slip and fell on an oil spill in a parking lot of a major car body shop chain store. The client sustained a serious injury to his knee and ankle and had to undergo two surgeries, being off work for over 6 months.
The client did several important things that protected his rights and made his case stronger:
* He kept his shoes and pants. This is important because the defendants often try to blame the victim shows for being slippery and causing the fall. My client's shows were almost brand knew and had a very good, stable sole that could not be blamed for falling.
The pants were soaked in oil, so that the defense could not argue that it was something other than oil that made the guy fall and break his foot.
* The client asked for help and asked for an ambulance. This is a wrong time to act tough and refuse medical treatment.
If you do refuse medical care immediately after the incident, you give the strongest ammunition to the defense or their insurance company to argue that you couldn't have possibly been injured very seriously, because if you were, you would have sought urgent medical care as soon as possible.
* The client insisted on filing a report right after receiving urgent care. He took the names of all the witnesses that saw him fall in the lot and the people who helped up him and escorted him to sit at a curb and weight for an ambulance.
He demanded to see at least on employee and get his name, so that the defense doesn't deny the very occurrence of the incident later.
* The client took photos of his injured foot and knee and of the area where he fall. These photos later were some of the most compelling evidence of the negligence on the part of the defendants, showing oil spills all around the parking lot, that clearly have not been cleaned for a long time.
The client also took photos of the area around, showing that no warning signs regarding possible oil spillage were posted.
The above are simple, practical things that every victim of a slip-and-fall injury can do to maximize his chances of recovering fair compensation for the injuries sustained.
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Arkady Itkin
http://www.arkadylaw.com
San Francisco & Sacramento Injury Lawyer
