Premise liability laws put the responsibility on store owners to keep their places of business reasonably safe for customers. What happens, however, when a store owner doesn’t take that obligation seriously?
People get hurt — sometimes, quite badly.
For example, one Florida woman slipped on some melted ice water that had collected in front of a bin at a convenience store when she stopped to buy a soda. That single fall ended up causing injuries to her tailbone, her back, shoulder, wrist, right hand and neck. She’s since had surgery to repair nerve damage in her wrist and fix a torn rotator cuff and will have to have additional surgeries in the future for lumbar disc fusion in her back. She’s already endured more than two years of physical therapy, spinal injections and visits with a pain management specialist.
Immediately after her fall, the owner hurried to mop up the area and put out notices that the floors were wet — a move that probably didn’t make him look much better to the jury once the woman took her case to court. Eventually, however, the owner admitted on the stand that he had known that the ice bins could create a problem with water on the floor — after all, another customer had already fallen there just a year before.
The injured woman won her case in July for nearly $2 million, one of the largest verdicts seen in Tallahassee for that kind of claim.
It’s important to note that the jury decided that the victim in the case mentioned above had zero liability for her own accident, but she still had to take her case to court to get a fair settlement. Store owners and insurance companies often fight good claims hoping that people will simply give up on ever getting a fair settlement.
If you’ve been injured in a slip-and-fall accident, find out more about how an attorney can help you get a fair settlement by continuing to review our site or contacting us directly.
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