SLIP & FALL ACCIDENTS

Slip and falls are a particular kind of personal injury case, which means that filing such a claim could result in getting paid for the injuries you suffered when you fell. More specifically, you have grounds for a slip and fall claim when your accident meets the following criteria:

• The slip and fall resulted in an injury or injuries

• The accident was caused by someone else’s action (or inaction)

• You could not have easily avoided the accident

This is, of course, a simplified breakdown of what constitutes a strong slip and fall case. At their core, these types of personal injury claims are intended to help you recover, both physically and financially, when your accident was someone else’s fault.

Slip & Falls on Private Property

When you fall and get hurt at a family member or neighbor’s house, your instinct probably isn’t to file a claim against them. But don’t think of this as an act of revenge or spite. Really, it’s just making good use of their insurance. That’s what insurance is for, after all.

Slip & Falls on Business Property

Although avoiding a slip and fall altogether is ideal, there are two benefits of having a business on the other end of your personal injury claim: 1) they tend to have better insurance, and 2) they generally have security cameras and witnesses to help you prove your side of the story

Proving Who Is at Fault

Most slip and fall cases have a certain amount of “he said, she said.” While the plaintiff (the injured person) says one thing, the defendant says something entirely different. No matter the details of the accident itself, this argument always comes down the same question: “Who is really at fault here?”

Take Aaron, for instance. Let’s say that Aaron is a walking through a hardware store, trips over a hose that is stretched out in the middle of an aisle, falls down, and breaks his wrist trying to catch himself.

At a glance, this case seems pretty cut and dry — the store left a piece of equipment laying around, and a customer got hurt because of it. Clearly, the store is complete to blame.

But what if it's not that simple? What if the security cameras reveal that it was another customer who stretched out the hose? What if witnesses claim that Aaron was texting rather than looking where he was going? What if Aaron had walked right past an “area under construction” warning sign?

When Both Parties Are at Fault

In Illinois, when it is not 100% clear who is to blame for a slip and fall accident, courts implement the comparative negligence rule. This term, “comparative negligence,” is just another way of saying that fault can be shared.

If you are found to be 50% or more at fault for your injuries, you cannot claim financial compensation. However, if you are found to be anywhere from 0%-49% at fault, you can claim anywhere from 51%-100% of what your claim is worth. How much you can claim correlates directly to how much fault you share in causing the accident.