If you are suffering from a slip and fall injury due to faulty conditions you are probably angry and you may be worried about how you are going to make things work financially. You might be in pain which has prevented you from doing basic tasks. Perhaps you have missed work, been unable to drive, or are even bedridden. You want compensation for the pain you have suffered due to preventable poor conditions. Here is what you need to know.
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Slip and Fall on Faulty Steps
Stairs can become loose planks of rotten wood, or chunks of concrete from the freezing and thawing of winter. When stairs are not constructed properly, the rise or run of the step will not be up to code. In these situations, a person would expect to have a secured footing going from one step to another, and instead experience a serious hazard on the stairway, resulting in injury.
Slip and Fall Injury on a Residential vs Business Property
If you slip and fall on a commercial or residential property, their insurance allows you to be compensated for injuries you might sustain due to their negligence. This is called as a general proposition, a premises liability case. In a slip and fall case, we must show that the person responsible for taking care of the property was negligent. The first thing that we need to show is that the individual created the dangerous condition. This requires us to show knowledge on the part of someone who is in charge, and that can be very difficult. The other thing that we can show is that they knew that there was a defect in the property and failed to fix it. And that is when we need to show that the defect existed for an extended period of time. This happens a lot when establishments are putting signs up, where there is a dangerous condition that’s causing injury to an individual. Once we can show one of these factors, then the insurance company for the establishment will often step in, to try to resolve these cases.
Slip and Fall Injury Due to a Faulty Hand Rail
The most prominent issues that we deal with from faulty hand railings are when people are walking up and down stairs. Hand railings are put into place to provide stabilization for people who are using stairways.
Oftentimes people are falling, or trip and unknowingly try to use a hand rail that is loose or defective. A faulty hand rail will not provide proper stabilization and often causes the person to fall. In those situations, we need to show that the owner of the premises or the person responsible for the premises should have known of the defective condition. Oftentimes, that comes into play when we interview past renters of the same property for example. We can also do that by showing a decay in the hand railings themselves, because decay in the hand railing does not happen overnight, and we hire experts to come in that regard.
The other issue in respect to hand rails is when there is no hand rail there at all. Certain codes in states, towns, cities require that there is a hand railing in certain situations and in the event that those hand railings are not put into place, then it’s evidence of negligence on behalf of the owner of the premises.
Let our experience work for you. If you have injured yourself in a fall, you may be entitled to compensation for your injuries. Contact our dedicated Buffalo Slip and Fall Lawyers today to schedule a free case evaluation.