San Francisco Slip and Fall Attorney

As top San Francisco personal injury lawyers, the attorneys at Delfino, Green & Green have made it their mission to ensure injury victims get the compensation they need to recover—physically and financially. Contact us today to schedule your free consultation.

Everyone falls down on occasion, and sometimes it’s no one’s fault. These types of events are not what we’re talking about when we refer to slip and fall accidents, at least in the legal sense.

Slip and fall accidents (sometimes called trip and fall accidents) refer to injuries that, rather than being caused by a misstep or loss of balance, were caused by a property owner’s careless actions. They can cause serious injuries that would never have occurred without negligence.

Here’s an example of a claim-worthy slip and fall accident:

It’s your turn to pick up lunch for the office.

You go to a multi-story shopping center to order takeout from your coworker’s favorite restaurant—a small organic cafe—on the second floor. After you’ve picked up your order, you head back to the escalator and walk onto the first step, heading down.

Seconds later, the escalator malfunctions, jerking violently beneath your feet. You fall, tumbling down the remaining steps. You suffer serious injuries that require hospitalization and six months of physical therapy. You miss several weeks of work and wages.

If you’re the injury victim in this scenario, you didn’t do anything wrong. You entered a public shopping center as a paying customer, expecting to be safe. Instead you were met with a hazardous environment that damaged your physical body, emotional wellbeing and financial standing. Don’t you deserve help?

At Delfino, Green & Green, we think it’s unacceptable that so many injury victims are forced to pay the price for someone else’s negligent actions. That’s why we fight tirelessly in pursuit of compensation for our clients. Keep reading to learn more about slip and fall accidents, their consequences and how an experienced slip and fall lawyer can protect your future.

What Causes Slip and Fall Accidents?

Slips, trips and falls are among the most common causes of accidents in retail stores, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Although myriad factors can cause these types of accidents, the following are the most likely culprits:

• Spilled liquids or food. Especially common in restaurants, spilled liquids can cause unsuspecting passersby to slip on the floor. It is the job of the business owner or manager to ensure they are adequately and appropriately staffed to clean up these messes before they become a hazard, or to warn customers with adequate signage.
• Electrical cords or wires cluttering a walking space. When a property owner allows electrical cords and wires to clutter a pathway, they put guests at an increased risk of tripping, as well as suffering electrical injuries.
• Sidewalk defects. It is the property owner’s responsibility to make sure that guests—especially ones with limited mobility—can travel safely along designated paths. Uneven, broken and otherwise damaged sidewalks can endanger pedestrian safety.
• Loose or torn carpeting. When torn or lifted, carpeting increases one’s risk of suffering a slip and fall accident, especially if they depend on using a cane, walker, wheelchair or prosthetics to walk.
• Inadequate lighting. Any publicly accessible area of a business should have adequately bright and properly maintained lighting fixtures.
• Insufficient signage. It’s the responsibility of a store owner or manager to warn guests of potential hazards by providing signs that effectively communicate the danger.

Slip and fall accidents can be caused by a wide range of hazards. What connects these diverse cases is the fact that they could have been prevented.

Understanding Premises Liability

In California, the law of premises liability states that property owners and occupants owe a duty of care to visiting guests. That means they must maintain reasonably safe conditions on their property and warn visitors about any potential hazards that aren’t immediately noticeable.

When a property owner or occupant fails to ensure a safe environment, they put their guests at unnecessary risk for serious injuries. As a result, they may be held liable for injury victims’ damages. Although premises liability encompasses myriad types of accidents, slip and falls are among the most common.

Although most people associate slip and fall lawsuits with accidents that happen in stores and retail establishments, these cases are not limited to public spaces. Even if the accident occurred at a friend or family member’s house, an injury victim is entitled to file a lawsuit if a duty of care was breached.

Liability and Negligence in Slip and Fall Cases

In order to receive compensation, a slip and fall injury victim and their lawyer will need to demonstrate that the other party acted with negligence, disregard or malice.

The first step in determining liability is to answer this key question: Did someone else (generally the property owner) either cause or fail to prevent my accident? If the answer is yes, you may have a case.

Determining Liability

To hold another party responsible for your injuries, your slip and fall attorney will likely need to prove one of the following:

• The defendant failed to recognize and remedy a potential danger. The property owner should have recognized a dangerous condition and removed or repaired the danger, but failed to do so. You will need to establish that a reasonable person would have seen the condition as hazardous and that the defendant had ample time to remedy the situation but chose not to.
• The defendant directly caused the hazardous condition. Your slip and fall injury was a direct result of the defendant’s actions, and it was reasonably foreseeable that someone would be injured as a result. 

A large part of proving either one will be demonstrating that the defendant responded in a way that most people would consider to be reckless or unreasonable.

Proving Negligence

To be deemed negligent and be held liable, the defendant must have failed to act as a reasonably prudent person would have. This can be harder to do than you might think, as what constitutes “reasonable” varies from person to person. To investigate whether a defendant acted reasonably, your lawyer may consider the following questions:

• Did the hazardous condition exist long enough for a reasonably responsible owner or employee to take action?
• Does the property owner or employee routinely check the property for hazards?
• Was there a reasonable justification for the hazard and did it still exist at the time of the accident?
• Could steps have been taken to prevent the accident from occurring?
• Was poor lighting or limited visibility a factor?

As you can see, slip and fall cases require a thorough investigation in order to prove liability and negligence. After clearly establishing the at-fault party and their role in your accident, a San Francisco personal injury lawyer can move forward in pursuit of your compensation.

Types of Compensation Slip and Fall Victims Can Receive

Most injury victims don’t realize that they can typically include a lot more than just medical expenses in their settlement calculations. In fact, most slip and fall lawsuits allow injury victims to include both economic (financial losses) and non-economic damages (intangible losses).

When you calculate your settlement, you may be able to include the following damages:

• Medical expenses related to the accident
• Future medical expenses
• Lost wages, benefits and future lost wages
• Property damage
• Pain and suffering
• Loss of enjoyment of life
• Permanent disability
• Scarring and disfigurement

If the court determines that the defendant acted with outrageous negligence or malice, it may also award you punitive damages. Unlike compensatory damages (both economic and non-economic), punitive damages aren’t designed to replace your losses. They are awarded in an effort to punish the defendant and deter similar behaviors in the future.

After suffering a serious injury, no one feels like starting a lawsuit. The harsh reality is that if you wait until you feel like it, your window to receive compensation may close.

At Delfino, Green & Green, we’ve seen every type of premises liability case imaginable. Although their case details vary greatly, the thing that connects our clients remains the same: They were paying the ultimate price for someone else’s actions. That idea will never sit right with us.