Slip and Fall

Some of the most common kinds of premises liability cases involve slip and fall accidents. Whether you lose your footing on a wet substance in a supermarket or trip on uneven concrete outside a shopping mall, you can seek compensation from an unexpected injury on somebody else's property. A slip and fall claim can be challenging to prove in Florida. The experienced premises liability lawyers at the Dean Law Firm in Ocala can investigate your accident and build a case on your behalf.

The first question that will need to be answered in a premises liability claim is who maintained control over the property: the landowner, the lessee, or someone else. After this is decided, your ability to recover for a slip and fall depends partly on what status you held as a visitor.

You may have been a public invitee, business invitee, licensee by invitation, uninvited licensee, or trespasser. Landowners owe different duties depending on the status of the visitor. Most slip and fall cases involve people who are business invitees. To business invitees, the landowner or lessee owes a duty of ordinary care to keep the premises in a reasonably safe condition and to give timely notice of any concealed dangers that should be known to the owner but aren't known to the invitee.

In a slip and fall case, an attorney will have to prove your accident was caused by a dangerous condition that posed an unreasonable risk of harm, which the landowner or occupier knew or should have known. For example, a grocery store in Florida should have policies in place to make sure that somebody checks for spills and cleans them up. If you slip on spilled milk and sprain your ankle, your attorney will try to show that the store knew or should have known of the spilled milk and failed to clean it up, and the milk was on the floor long enough that a reasonable store owner should have discovered it and cleaned it up before you slipped.

Your lawyer can investigate the store's maintenance policies and cleaning records to determine the last time an employee checked the area where you fell. If the spilled milk stayed on the floor for the whole day without an employee trying to clean it up or placing a warning near it, it is likely that the grocery's store's negligence can be proven. It can be more difficult to prove your case in this example if the grocery store acted reasonably. For example, if you fell five minutes after the milk was spilled, the grocery store would have a reasonable argument that it did not know of the unsafe condition, nor could it have known in the exercise of reasonable care.

Although slip and fall cases can be complex, a knowledgeable premises liability attorney can make a big difference in your ability to recover. At the Dean Law Firm in Crystal River, our injury attorneys are familiar with slip and fall cases and have helped many people hurt on somebody else's property. Call 352-387-8700 or contact us via our online form to schedule an initial consultation with our firm. We represent clients in Florida counties such as Marion, Sumter, Lake, Citrus, and Levy.