Slip / Trip and Fall Accidents

DEFINITIONS

A trip occurs when the foot of a pedestrian (someone walking) hits something that’s in the way, causing loss of balance, and a fall.

When there’s not enough traction between a pedestrian’s shoe or boot, a slip can occur.

A fall occurs, and an accident tales place, when a pedestrian loses balance.  There are two types of falls, those that occur on the same level usually because of a slip or trip and falls from a different height.  The most frequently occurring accident is the slip and fall; most falls occur on the same level. However, falls to different levels tend to produce the most serious personal injury, and most different level falls involve a drop of ten feet or less.

Slip and fall and trip and fall accidents can happen inside or outside a building. Let’s talk about New York City outdoors slip/trip and fall accidents first.

OUTDOOR ACCIDENTS

Snow and Ice

A slip and fall accident requires a wet surface.  When outside, we’re usually talking about a slippery condition due to snow or ice. Snow can be salted and then re-freeze.  Ice can melt and then runoff onto a walking surface and freeze. There are many ways that a snow and ice accident can arise – sometimes the snow is not shoveled or cleared correctly.  An experienced snow and ice attorney can tell you if a property owner has failed to correctly maintain a sidewalk or parking lot, so that there is legal liability or negligence.

Senior citizens are prone to slips and trips and falls. Especially so in snow and ice weather. When seniors are injured in falls, they tend to be hurt worse and have a slower recovery than the general population.  Falling is the leading cause of accidental death for seniors.  

As people age their bones become more brittle and thinner.  Changes in functional ability due to age make seniors less mobile and flexible, and their vision may be less than 20-20.  Seniors tend to suffer more serious broken bone injuries than the younger population and are particularly susceptible to hip fracture injuries.  With fractured hips taking away an injured senior’s mobility, other complications are likely, such as bed sores, infections and even pneumonia.

Sidewalk Defects

While snow and ice accidents often happen on sidewalks, clean and dry sidewalks can present a tripping hazard to Brooklyn, Queens and Bronx pedestrians.  A sidewalk with a difference in height of more than one-half inch (½”) or more between concrete sections (known as “flags”) may present a tripping accident hazard.  Also dangerous are broken-up sidewalks, or sidewalks pushed up by tree roots. See my blog post about the danger of a broken up Brooklyn sidewalk.  It is common in sidewalk accidents to see broken bones – ankles, knees, wrists, hands and even hips.

Once upon a time, all sidewalks were the responsibility of the City of New York.  A law was passed a few years back to relieve the City of New York of some of this liability, and now the landowners of commercial or apartment buildings can be sued cases for failing to properly maintain their sidewalks.

Street or Roadway Defects

A trip and fall accident can also happen while moving off of a sidewalk or crossing the street. Sometimes holes are left in the street by construction, or a metal plate may be attached to the surface of a street or roadway to cover a hole, but if the metal plate is raised it may present a tripping hazard.

Private Property

Workers can slip and fall at construction sites. Shoes should be checked for wear and tear. Gripper soles should be in good conditions, heels not too high. Wearing proper footwear for the walking surface and job site can prevent serious personal injury from an accident. Pedestrians can trip and fall on driveways or lawns.  Sometimes there’s accumulated garbage or other debris on the ground – sometimes near a dumpster.   An outside contractor may be responsible for creating a dangerous outdoor condition as a result of the work that they were hired to perform.

Every summer the news carries reports of children drowning when they went into a swimming pool unsupervised.  Like the 11 year-old boy who drowned in Long Island, the 2 year-old girl who nearly drowned in Long Island,  and the 18 month-old boy who almost drowned in Staten Island.  Homeowners with pools must be careful and have a fence with a locking gate and a floating pool alarm, which signals if a large object enters the water.

INDOOR ACCIDENTS

Premises Accidents * Building Accidents

A “premises accident” can occur almost anywhere, but generally refers to an accident inside a building – many people in Brooklyn, Queens and Bronx live in apartment buildings and an accident can happen inside an apartment or in a public area of the building.  A proper defendant in a building accident case may be a private owner or, in some cases, a municipality, such as the New York City Housing Authority.  A premises accident may also take place in a private home, office or store.

A slip and fall accident can happen in a building.  There may be water on the floor – for example, I’ve had clients slip when a floor was just mopped but no warning sign placed.  They would only find out the floor had just been mopped after they slipped and fell and someone came over to help them.  This can happen on flat surfaces as well as on stairs.  I had a client slip and fall on a freshly painted basement floor, he suffered a herniated disc in his lower back and needed back surgery.

Sometimes people slip and fall indoors – on a flat walking surface or on stairs – because the floor surface is made up of a slippery material.  Slippery floor surfaces might be made of terrazzo, marble, or other unsuitable tile.  Often, these materials can be made less slippery by the use of tractional (non-slip) additives or materials placed on top.

Inside a home or apartment and trip and fall accident may occur because of torn or frayed carpet.  Or a slip and fall accident can take place on a too slippery bathroom floor, or in a bathtub without traction slips or a rubber tub mat. Senior citizens, especially, have to be careful climbing into and out of bed, or chair, or bathtubs and showers.  They may fall, and no one else could be at fault.

There have been recent news reports about balcony or terrace railings in Manhattan giving way when leaned on, sending a young man to his death.  Too late, New York City building inspectors warned apartment residents to stay off their balconies until inspections could be carried out.  You can’t rely on the government to protect you from injury, which is why New York accident lawyers play a vital role in our system of justice.

Floors and stairs can be slippery because of excessive waxing, polishing and/or buffing.

Some Thoughts on Liability for Negligence in Slip/trip and Fall Cases.

Sometimes clients come to me thinking they’re entitled to recover SOMETHING because they slipped or tripped and fell.  Then I have to explain, the owner is not responsible in every accident case.  The injured claimant still has to prove negligence.  This means showing the condition was dangerous; that the nature of the condition or defect was such that a hypothetical reasonable, objective person would have been hurt by it. Was it a “trivial defect” so insignificant that you never should slipped or tripped or have fallen?  Or was the defect so “open and obvious” that you should have seen and avoided it?

An important issue is “notice.”  A New York property owner or landlord or property manager can’t be held responsible for an accident or injury unless they either knew about the dangerous condition (known as “actual notice”), or the dangerous condition existed for a long enough period of time that they should have known about it (known as “constructive notice”).  This can be very difficult to show.   If an injured client knows how long the defective or dangerous condition was there, than he or she should have known about it, and why couldn’t they just avoid it?   And how do you prove the landlord knew what you may think the landlord knew?  Is a landlord likely to volunteer that telephone complaints were received, or face-to-face complaints? Keep in mind that most people don’t put their complaints about dangerous walking surfaces into writing.

Another form of actual notice is where the property owner or manager created the dangerous condition. Notice of a created condition is automatic, because the owner is considered to know about the defect as soon as it comes into existence.  So if I break up a walkway or staircase and leave it unguarded and someone falls and is hurt, well I made a dangerous condition and should be held legally responsible.

The larger point is that just because you fell and got injured doesn’t automatically mean you’re entitled to recover money.  Many clients or potential clients don’t understand this and I’ve turned down cases that other lawyers have accepted and worked on for years, only to have them thrown out or dismissed from court

Stairway * Staircase Accidents

Stairs and steps have a large body of case law all their own because many accidents occur on staircases and stairways.  Steps should be uniform and level.  There are formulas for the safe dimensions of parts of the step such as riser height, tread depth, size of landing platform, construction of stair nosing, and so forth.  Non-uniform stair dimensions and other stairway defects cause more injuries and deaths than any other type of accident after automobile accidents.

Did you know that safe handrail heights are between 30 inches and 38 inches above the stairs for stairs with one side against a wall, and at between 34 inches and 38 inches at open staircases?

Also, handrails must be of the correct size. For example, homemade hand rails that are too small or too large to grasp can be unable to function to stop a stair way fall. A handrail made out of a piece of 2x6 lumber set on edge or on flat and run along a stairway cannot be properly gripped.  Loose or missing handrails are equally dangerous.

Outdoor stairs made of wood can be especially hazardous. Rotted stair treads or stringers can present a stair collapse hazard.  Stair riser heights should be between four inches and seven inches. To allow the foot to step safely, stair tread depths should be at least eleven inches.

Especially dangerous are curved stair treads because they are different sizes (which can fool the walker’s expectations) and because at the inside of the curve the tread width can be too small to permit safely descending the stairs.

Stair treads should not be broken, loose, missing or damaged.

An experienced stair accident attorney will often consult with a safety expert, architect or engineer about the defects in a staircase that caused a client’s injury.  It is essential that a stairway accident victim hire a New York accident lawyer right away, because the sooner the lawyer can get the expert to inspect (photograph and measure) the stairs, the better.  This is because the steps may be repaired or replaced or otherwise changed.

Supermarket * Department Store Accidents

Slip/trip and fall accidents are common in grocery stores and supermarkets throughout the country. Most often, some person slips and is injured because of a spill of water, detergent or other liquid negligently left on the floor.  A supermarket accident can also occur where merchandise or pallets of good are left in the aisle and some shopper trips.  Sometimes plastic straps are left dangling or open the floor and can grab a pedestrian’s foot or ankle causing a trip and fall injury. Finally, items improperly stocked on shelves can fall onto customers.  These falling object accidents can lead to head injuries.

Millions of people in New York go shopping in department stores across the city and state every day. When we enter a department store, we expect that we can distract ourselves with looking at merchandise, and not have to be on guard for our own safety.  As with supermarkets, department stores can have merchandise piled up that can fall.  Or a department store can have an unsafe stairway or ramp leading from one floor of shopping to another, or at the store’s entrance or exit.  Freshly mopped floors can present a slip hazard; worn or frayed carpet can present a trip hazard.

Problems present when people don’t know what they skipped or tripped on.  There’s a simple rule here: if you don’t know what caused you to fall, there’s no case. Period.  Sometimes I have to send a potential client back to the accident scene and the problem has been fixed, cleaned up, or changed.  Without a credible cause of the slip or trip there’s nothing a lawyer can do.

Also, there can be dangers from department store elevators.  And shoppers with small children should be extra careful on department store escalators – small body parts can get caught, bones broken and even some fingers or toes amputated.

For your serious personal injury, you need legal representation from a qualified personal injury attorney.  Contact us for your free consultation.

Law Offices of Gary E. Rosenberg, P.C.

(718) 520-8787