Property owners—by default—are responsible for keeping their property in a safe condition for individuals who have been invited. A dangerous situation can have disastrous effects, such as major injuries or even death. Fall victims may face large medical expenditures as well as lost income as a result of missed work. Each instance involving a slip and fall has its own set of facts and circumstances. Consult a Los Angeles Slip and Fall Lawyer to see if you are eligible for compensation due to a property owner's negligence.

Find A Slip and Fall Lawyer for Premises Liability Claims in California

Many slip and fall accidents occur in the United States every year. A slip-and-fall accident happens when a person/victim loses their balance or trips on a particular property. Accidents occur due to a variety of factors, including damp or slippery floors, dimly lighted stairwells, perilous terraces and balconies, poorly fitted baths and bathtubs, and other hazardous conditions.

If a property/business owner knew (or should have known) about that dangerous situation on their property and did nothing to correct it, you may be entitled to compensation for your injuries or the loss of a loved one. Insurance companies, on the other hand, will hunt for any excuse to either give a little settlement or deny your claim outright. Accidents involving slips and falls are complicated and fiercely defended. You should never be on your own while dealing with such allegations. It is critical to have a professional Los Angeles Personal Injury Attorney on your side who will fight for your rights. This business is a force to be reckoned with because of its significant courtroom, litigation, and trial experience.

Statistics on Slip and Fall Accidents

The following statistics on slip and fall accidents in the United States are based on data from the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration ("OSHA"), the National Floor Safety Institute, the National Security Council Injury Facts, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

In the United States, falls are one of the leading causes of fatalities and injuries.
In the United States, over 3 million accidents involving falls occur each year.
Every year, over 17,000 people die in trip and fall and slip and fall accidents, accounting for almost 15% of all accidental deaths in the United States. Slip/trip and fall incidents are the second leading cause of accidental death in the United States due to the high number of fatalities (after motor vehicle accidents).
Trip/slip and fall injuries result in more than 1 million visits to the emergency room (ER).
Elderly people (over 65 years old) are four times more likely to die in a fall accident than younger people. Fall accidents account for nearly 45 percent of mortality and 86 percent of fractures among the elderly.
Approximately 30% of victims of slip, trip, and fall accidents are injured. Accidents like these are one of the most common causes of traumatic brain injury.
Fractures occur in about 5% of all fall events.
Over 2 million fall-related injuries occur each year as a direct result of flooring materials and floor surfaces.
Slip and fall lawsuits commonly target large department shops, shopping malls, condominium complexes, and apartment buildings for their willful failure to keep their premises safe.
Trip/slip and fall accidents account for over 15% of all job-related fatalities and 22% of all extended work absences (more than one month). The majority of these fall-related accidents (about 60%) occur in the service business, with over 15,000 falls occurring in the manufacturing business.

The statistics are concerning. It is critical for homeowners, business owners, and commercial property owners to take precautions to avoid slip and fall accidents. Inspections and maintenance should be performed on a regular basis to ensure that unsafe situations are rectified or removed before a catastrophic or tragic catastrophe happens.

Dangerous Conditions on the Premises

Slip and fall accidents are most commonly caused by the following hazardous conditions:

Walking surfaces with cracks
Floors with cracks
Sidewalks with cracks in the cement and concrete
Walking surfaces that have been damaged
strewn about, shattered glass
Garbage
Floors, walkways, and sidewalks that have been neglected
Wet carpets
dripping faucets
Liquid spills
Bathroom and pool conditions are hazardous
There are no "slippery when wet" warnings
There are no anti-slip stripes on the steps
There are no mats on the floor
Stairwells that are hazardous
Staircases with no handrails
Stairwells with poor lighting
Terraces and balconies
Railings and obstacles that aren't properly fastened
Floors that are uneven
Sidewalks with uneven surfaces
Pavements that are uneven

The foregoing hazardous circumstances might arise either (1) as a result of an unsafe and faulty construction (i.e., the faults have existed since the property was built) or (2) as a result of the property owner's negligent failure to keep the premises safe (e.g., the failure to clean or perform necessary repairs). Consider one of our prescreened California Lawyers in your Cal Bar Attorney Search.

The Duty of Care of the Property Owner

The owner of a property is responsible for keeping it in a fairly safe state. If a harmful condition exists on the premises, the property owner must either rectify or remove it or notify others of its presence.

Property owners, as well as other corporate entities or individuals who have ownership, custody, or control of the property (e.g., those who rent or lease the property), have a responsibility to maintain their property with reasonable and usual care. To be more specific, reasonable care must be taken to avoid exposing others to unreasonable risks of injury.

This responsibility extends to anybody who is invited to the property in question. Property owners bear a duty of care to social guests in addition to those who are invited to the property for the owner's financial advantage - such as hotel guests, restaurant patrons, or grocery shoppers. Anyone who utilizes public property, such as pedestrians on public sidewalks, owes a duty of care to municipalities (city or town governments).

The following are only a few of the responsibilities of property owners:

inspect the premises on a regular basis;
clean the premises on a regular and periodic basis;
maintain the premises on a regular basis;
uncover all potentially unsafe problems that can be detected by diligent examinations;
Any harmful circumstances that have been detected must be corrected;
If a dangerous condition cannot be fixed, rectified, or removed with reasonable effort, visitors and guests should be warned.

Breach of the duty of care.

This is typically the most difficult to establish. If all of these conditions are present, property owners have broken their duty to act with reasonable and ordinary care in the management of their property under California law:

Existing hazards.

The victim of a slip-and-fall accident will be required to give evidence that the condition was indeed risky or unsafe. It must also be demonstrated that the property was used in an intended and expected manner at the time of the slip/trip and fall.

Guests and visitors to the property must exercise reasonable caution when utilizing the premises and keeping an eye on their surroundings. The victim might be deemed to be comparably negligent if the unsafe condition was so clear that any reasonable person would have noticed it. Victims may be inattentive or distracted (e.g., staring at a smartphone) and participate in dangerous behavior (e.g., racing on a skateboard along a sidewalk). In other circumstances, the person who fell may have been unaware of the posted warnings. It will not totally free the property owner of all liability if it is demonstrated that the victim failed to exercise reasonable care, but it will lessen the amount of compensation.

The property owner was aware of or should have been aware.

This is frequently referred to as the "notice" requirement. A victim of a slip and fall accident does not have to prove that the property owner was aware of the dangerous situation in order to win.

It may be sufficient to establish that the unsafe condition existed on the property for a long enough time that any reasonable owner would have seen it. In fact, the majority of cases involve owners who were unaware of the harmful condition yet had adequate time to learn of its existence.

In some circumstances, expert testimony is required to prove notice by demonstrating that – given the sort of property in question (e.g., a shopping mall, restaurant, or hotel) – specific routine maintenance and/or cleaning processes are carried out on a regular basis.

Spills are common and anticipated in coffee shops and shopping malls with beverage kiosks, for example. If you run a coffee shop or a shopping mall, you should do what other decent coffee shop or shopping mall owners do and wipe up any spills as soon as possible.

The business or individual that owns the property had the chance to either rectify or warn about the problem before the accident occurred.

Under the circumstances, the opportunity to give essential corrections or warnings must be reasonable. For example, if a liquid spill occurred in a huge shopping mall, it may be difficult to demonstrate that the spill had to be cleaned up within 2 minutes of its occurrence unless the management was immediately notified.

Proving a property owner's breach of the duty of care is difficult. The following variables are important to consider while considering liability issues:

Was the property in question in a hazardous condition?
Was the property owner to blame for this risky or hazardous situation?
Was there a valid cause for the dangerous situation to exist?
Did the property owner have real knowledge of the hazardous situation on the property?
Has there been any other incident at the same location?
Should the property owner have been aware that the premises in question were dangerous?
Before the disaster, how long had the risky condition been present? Is it possible that the owner would have noticed it if it had been present for a long enough time?
Would a "reasonable" property owner have found the harmful situation in the same or similar circumstances?
Was there a reasonable chance for the property owner to fix the harmful condition, put up a barrier, or give warnings?
Is it possible that the illumination played a role in the accident? Was the area in issue dimly illuminated as a result of faulty or inadequate lighting?

Was the subject property's routine maintenance, repair, and cleaning carried out according to a set of procedures? Is there sufficient documentation of these procedures if the answer is yes? (i.e., logs, schedules, and other documents).

Find the Causes

Under California Personal Injury Laws, victims of slip and fall incidents must show that the dangerous condition that was allowed to persist owing to the property owner's negligence caused or contributed to their injuries.

If you have been injured or hospitalized as a result of your fall, seek medical help as soon as possible. If you have a medical emergency, it is important that you go to an emergency room (ER), urgent care clinic, or walk-in clinic or request to be taken there. Do not put off seeking medical help. Insurance companies commonly make the presumption that if you did not seek prompt medical attention for your injuries, you were not seriously injured.

Also, if you seek medical assistance after a slip and fall event, describe your injuries in full. If there is a discrepancy between the medical records' description of your injuries and your claims, the property owner's insurance company will be hesitant to pay anything to resolve your claim. An inconsistent allegation will not be well received by the jury if your case goes to trial.

Even if you have a past injury, disease, or pain in the same location that was injured in the accident (which is sometimes referred to as a "pre-existing condition"), you are still entitled to compensation for the aggravation of your condition. As a result, if you are injured as a consequence of a slip and fall event, make sure to tell your medical providers that you were injured in a fall.

Storing/Saving Evidence

When circumstances allow, it's a good idea to take the following measures to gather and preserve important evidence:

Photos.

Almost all cell phones and smartphones have cameras these days. It's critical to photograph the scene of the accident, including any hazardous conditions, objects, or liquids that contributed to your fall. You should also photograph your clothing, shoes, and any injuries you have (cuts, bruises, hematomas, stitches, splints, casts, etc.).

Object that might have caused the accident.

Save the precise object that resulted in your fall. For example, if you tripped or stepped on a tile or stray equipment parts, keep it it.

Clothing and footwear.

It's also a good idea to keep the shoes and clothing you were wearing at the time of the accident. Fill a plastic bag with these items and seal it. Any debris adhering to your shoe or stains on your clothing from spilled liquid will be properly preserved in this manner.

Report of an accident or incident.

Inquire if the location where you fell has a policy of generating incident reports. Managers and security officers are ideal places to start when filing an accident report. Shopping malls and department stores, for example, usually have such a policy in place. The accident/incident report will serve as a record of your version of events in the aftermath of the fall, and it will be extremely helpful in pursuing your case. Finally, request a copy of the report before leaving the premises.

Gather eyewitnesses.

Make an effort to acquire the contact information of everyone who observed your fall, including names, addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses. If you didn't get any witness testimonies or snap any photos, a California Slip and Fall Lawyer would do everything necessary to get and preserve as much evidence as feasible under the circumstances.

When you hire an L.A. Slip and Fall Lawyer weeks or months after your accident, however, acquiring evidence becomes much more difficult since witnesses forget what they saw, accident scenes are cleaned up and fixed, and injuries heal. Medical records do provide verification of injuries, but witness testimony, actual physical objects, and photographs are crucial for establishing your case in court.

Reporting Slip-and-Fall Injuries

If you were injured in a slip and fall event, you should report it as soon as possible:

The property owner must be notified of the accident.

Whenever feasible, contact the property owner immediately to report your fall. Smaller business owners, such as restaurant owners, are typically on the premises.

Large-scale commercial assets, on the other hand, are usually held by firms with complicated organizational structures and hierarchies. As a result, you are unlikely to meet with the owner of a big commercial facility like a shopping mall, dealership, or supermarket. In that situation, request to talk with the highest-ranking official, such as a general manager, supervisor, or the head of security.

If the fall happened on public property (e.g., a sidewalk, a park, etc. ), make sure the incident is reported as soon as possible to the municipality where it happened.

Please report your accident as soon as possible.

You should report the incidence on the same day, if possible, or the next day at the very least. If a verbal report isn't possible, consider writing to the property owner or management to inform them of your fall. If you wait too long to file a report, it could jeopardize your chances of receiving compensation for your injuries. This is true if there were no witnesses to your fall. Insurance adjustors question the trustworthiness of those who file claims late, and juries will feel the same way if these cases ever get to trial.

If you're filling out an accident or incident report, double-check that it's correct.

Many residential and business businesses have regulations in place that require anyone harmed on their property to fill out an incident report. You are not required by law to file an incident report. If you're hesitant about filling out and signing an incident report, don't be afraid to say no. You have the right to this! If you do end up filling out an incident report, make sure your description is correct.

Insurance firms should not be given recorded statements.

You may be asked to provide a recorded description of your accident and the injuries you received by an insurance claims representative. You are not required to offer a recorded statement to insurance adjustors by law, just as you are not required to fill out a written report for property owners. As a result, if you have not yet retained a California Personal Injury Attorney to defend you in your slip and fall case, it is never a good idea to give insurance companies any recorded statements.

Damages That Can Be Recovered in Personal Injury and Catastrophic Injury Cases

Victims of personal injury and catastrophic injury can seek non-economic and economic damages in personal injury and catastrophic injury cases. Those who have been hurt in an automobile accident may be able to pursue Punitive Damages in specific cases. Loss of Consortium damages can be sought by the spouses of accident victims.

Damages that aren't monetary in nature

The following forms of past and future losses suffered by the wounded victim are included in non-economic damages:

bodily pain
a physical defect
a problem (physical)
a reduction in one's ability to enjoy life
an inconvenience
emotional suffering
grief
embarrassment
emotional trauma

Economic Losses

Victims of negligence or recklessness may suffer large financial losses as a result of their physical and mental injuries. The following are examples of economic damages that can be claimed in addition to property damage:

medical expenses in the past and future, including the costs of:

services provided by doctors
admissions to the hospital
Diagnostic testing (labs and imaging investigations including ultrasounds, x-rays, CT scans, and MRIs, among others)
recuperation costs (medical, rehabilitation, etc.)
therapy for the body
Services provided by skilled nursing facilities
treatment (occupational)
Health-care services at home
profits lost in the past (wages)
future earnings capacity decrease (the ability to earn income)

other monetary losses, such as:

Expenses paid out of pocket
the cost of repairs to your home or car
the price of accompanying care

Past medical expenses in California can be recovered with the following restrictions: only out-of-pocket expenses and sums that have been reimbursed (paid for) by insurance can be recovered. Past medical expenses may also be subject to liens imposed by Medicare, Medi-Cal, insurance companies, and medical providers themselves, depending on the circumstances.

If necessary, your LA Personal Injury Attorney will hire expert economists to assess and prove future economic damages, such as the present value of future medical expenditures and lost wages. If a victim requires ongoing medical and attendant care in the future, life care planners will be hired to estimate the cost of that care throughout the course of the patient's life expectancy.

Punitive Damages

Punitive damages can be granted to penalize a careless wrongdoer who engages in "oppression, fraud, or malice" activity. 3294 of the California Civil Code. In such circumstances, particularly serious wrongdoing, such as drunk or impaired driving, is involved.

Loss of Consortium

The legal spouse of the victim of negligence or recklessness may seek damages for loss of consortium as a result of the wrongdoer's actions. The following are examples of consortium loss:

companionship, affection, love, safety, security, aid, community, moral support, and care of the damaged spouse
The inability to engage in sexual relations with the injured spouse or to have children with him or her (if applicable).

Economic losses, such as the following sorts of damages, are not included in loss of consortium damages:

the loss of financial support that would have been provided by the wounded spouse if the injury had not occurred
the loss of earnings suffered by the claiming spouse because he or she had to stop working to care for the injured spouse
the value of the claimed spouse's past and future personal services (such as nursing or attendant care) rendered or to be supplied to the injured spouse
the cost of hiring outside help to replace domestic services that would have been provided by the injured spouse in the absence of the injury (e.g., cleaning or cooking)

What if it leads to a wrongful death?

The term "Decedent" is used in California law to refer to a deceased person.

The following people (or the Decedent's personal representative on their behalf) have the right to sue for Wrongful Death:

a spouse
a domestic partner [a person who was the decedent's domestic partner in a registered domestic partnership established in accordance with California Family Code 297(b) at the time of the decedent's death]
children
Issues involving deceased children
additional minor children (such as stepchildren) who lived with the decedent for at least 180 days prior to death and were financially dependent on the decedent

Anyone else who would be entitled to the decedent's property under intestate succession laws

Heirs are those who have the legal right to file a Wrongful Death lawsuit. When it comes to heirs' wrongful death rights, there is a particular procedural hierarchy. For example, just though a Decedent has a surviving husband, children, and grandchildren do not mean they can all bring a Wrongful Death lawsuit as plaintiffs. The surviving spouse and children would be the traditional plaintiffs in this case.

Wrongful Death Actions Require All Heirs to Join or Be Joined

To avoid several lawsuits resulting from the same facts, all heirs who are eligible to claim for Wrongful Death must either join or be joined in the same action voluntarily.

A wrongful death case is regarded to be joint, single, and indivisible under California law. These concepts have been understood by courts in the context of wrongful death proceedings to mean the following:

Joint action. All wrongful death heirs must either join the case on a voluntary basis or be joined as defendants if they are unwilling to do so. The goal of this rule is to ensure that just one verdict is issued for all damages recoverable in the case.
Single action. Only one wrongful death case can be filed, regardless of whether the action is brought by one or all of the Decedent's heirs.
Indivisible action. Indivisible action refers to the fact that the Decedent's heirs are not permitted to file separate wrongful death actions against the same defendant or defendants.

The law puts an affirmative duty on plaintiffs in wrongful death proceedings to join all known omitted heirs in the same single lawsuit - that is, to invite all extra and eligible heirs to participate in the action and designate them as fellow "plaintiffs." Some heirs may be unwilling to participate in the case voluntarily for a variety of reasons. If this happens, every heir who refuses to join the lawsuit as a co-plaintiff must be identified as a defendant (also known as "nominal defendant" or "defendant in name only"). Despite the fact that such heirs are identified as defendants, California law treats them as plaintiffs.

It will not stop wrongful death claimants from taking their case all the way to trial if they do not include all heirs. Intentionally deleting heirs, on the other hand, expose plaintiffs to personal culpability. The omitted heir or heirs will not be allowed to file a "new" wrongful death lawsuit against the defendant or defendants who were unaware of their existence if a wrongful death case results in recovery through a settlement or a trial verdict. Instead, the Decedent's heirs who were wrongly omitted will be able to sue the heirs who were plaintiffs in the wrongful death lawsuit for a part of the recovery.

Developing Evidence for a Wrongful Death Claim

Wrongful Death is a cause of action (claim) that arises when a person dies as a result of someone else's conduct or omission. Wrongful death suits are founded on a defendant's underlying misconduct. The notion of liability is determined by the defendant's state of mind. Negligence claims and claims based on intentional misconduct are the two most common types of "state of mind" claims. Intentional torts are those in which the defendant meant to damage or injure someone. Such instances are quite uncommon.

Although the negligent defendant did not mean to cause any injury or death, he or she is nevertheless accountable because of his or her carelessness, which resulted in someone's harm or death. The majority of personal injury and wrongful death cases are caused by someone else's negligence. Without an autopsy, many wrongful death lawsuits, particularly those involving medical malpractice, may be difficult (if not impossible) to prove.

Negligence-related wrongful death claims

Although the term "accident" is widely used to describe tragic situations, it is not genuinely an "accident" when the death is caused by negligence, and the fatal consequence might have been averted if the wrongdoer had acted in a reasonably reasonable manner. Negligence, as we define it in personal injury cases, is the act of failing to exercise ordinary or reasonable caution.

A person is negligent, according to the California courts' definition of negligence, when he or she does something that a reasonably prudent person would not do under the same or similar circumstances or fails to do something that a reasonably prudent person would do under the same or similar circumstances. 158 Cal. App. 3d 630, 637 Hinckley v. La Mesa R. (1984). A California Wrongful Death Lawyer will battle diligently to bring the wrongdoers to justice if they failed their obligation to behave with reasonable care and caused the loss of a loved one.

Wrongful Death can occur as a result of a variety of sad circumstances. It can be time-consuming and difficult to sort through facts. This is when the services of a Los Angeles Wrongful Death Lawyer are required.

Intentional Misconduct Causes Wrongful Death Actions

The underlying wrongdoing in some wrongful death cases is actual intentional violence. Such situations frequently entail separate criminal charges for murder or involuntary manslaughter, which are handled by relevant agencies such as the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office. However, a Los Angeles Wrongful Death Lawyer may be able to use the criminal action to increase your chances of recovering in a civil case.

Strict Liability for Wrongful Death

Strict liability is the third sort of liability that can be used to support a wrongful death claim. In some circumstances, the defendant's state of mind may be irrelevant, and the defendant may still be found liable even though no carelessness or deliberate wrongdoing occurred. Fatalities caused by defective items are common examples of such occurrences.

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