Whenever you slip and fall while you are out shopping, and you injure yourself, you might wonder who you need to blame whenever the injury is severe.
No one wants to walk through a store’s doors and then get carried out on a stretcher, but where do you go to get justice?
Who becomes liable if a slip and fall accident happens while you are shopping?
The Store’s Obligation To The Customer
Every single store that brings people into its building has an obligation to the safety of the customer inside. They have an unspoken contract with everyone who sets foot inside of the storefront, that they will be safe and that the property is maintained to ensure that no one gets hurt.
They might clear snow and ice from the front of the store, ensure that their store mats are smooth to prevent tripping, ensure that the lighting is bright enough to prevent tripping, or put out warnings for wet floors or potentially unsafe areas. Still, some stores don’t do a lot of these things, or sometimes customers just trip and fall anyway.
Whenever you have a slip and fall case, the first thing that your lawyer will do is try to determine that your accident was specifically caused by the store failing in their obligation to keep you safe. This can be harder to prove than you might think though.
Talk to an Expert Personal Injury Lawyer Who Can Help Prove Liability
As you can see, proving the liability in a slip and fall case can have a lot of moving parts and can be very complicated, so if you are injured while you are shopping, then you need a good personal injury lawyer who can look at the facts and see how the store can be held liable for your injuries.
Reaching out to the personal injury lawyers at Wieand Law Firm can help you if you are injured in the Philadelphia area. They won’t stop until you are given the care and treatment you deserve because of someone else’s negligence.
Plus, you don’t pay a penny unless they win, so reach out to them at www.wieandlaw.com to get the help you need.
How Is The Store Held Liable?
If your lawyer is trying to prove that your injury was caused by the store not upholding its duty of care, then they are trying to prove negligence. Negligence is when the store knew that a situation was dangerous, but refused to act on it and as a result, someone got injured. If the store is not taking steps to remedy the situation, then it can be held liable.
The evidence must show that the store knew about the condition that could have caused a danger, had ample and reasonable opportunity to change or circumvent it, and did nothing or did not have a system in place to prevent the condition from happening.
However, the store’s liability isn’t the only thing being checked up on. The customer is often held for liability as well, because in some cases the condition that led to the injury could have been avoided. For example, if you trip and fall over a large display case and injure yourself, suing the store might be a problem because of these factors.
First, the large display case was easily seen, the use of large displays is commonplace and the number of injuries resulting from them are rare, and the customer could have very easily walked around the case and avoided the injury altogether.
