Slip-And-Fall Accidents
Property owners have a duty to their premises reasonably safe from hazards and dangerous conditions. These premises include stores, restaurants, hotels, etc. But, if someone slips and falls on someone else’s property, it doesn’t necessarily mean that owner is liable or that their insurance company will pay for their injuries or medical bills.
However, once the property owner or their agents are on actual or constructive notice of an identifiable hazard or defect on the premises, their duty of care increases and the law imposes a DUTY on them to either fix the problem or give reasonable notice of the hazard to lawful visitor to the property. If the property owners breach this duty, they may be liable for damages to a visitor who is injured when they slip and fall as a result of a hazardous or defective condition which the owner is aware of.
These claims are a challenge because if it not as easy as you might think to prove exactly what a property owner knows or doesn’t know about a specific defective condition or hazard. So, if you are involved in this type of accident, you need to do everything possible to “freeze the status quo”,, by doing a prompt investigation. This means taking photos of the area where you fell down, photos of the specific hazard or defect that caused you to fall, getting the names and contact info of any witnesses to the fall, notifying the owner and/or owner’s agent (store manager) immediately, and giving brief statement as to what caused you to fall IF YOU KNOW…IF you don’t know, don’t guess!
You may think that just because large stores have web cam videos, they promptly share them with us so that we can view them to see what they depict. Wrong, this is not what happens! We regularly request that property owners, big box stores in particular, preserve videos for future reference. But, it is the exception not the rule that they preserve the video footage, and it is common for the store to recycle a video even before we make our request to preserve it. In other words, most owners or agents of large properties, like retail stores, do not cooperate with our investigation and do not share the results of their investigation with us until and unless we file a lawsuit, and get a Court order for them to produce the results of their investigation for our review.
Bringing claims against property owners is not a walk in the park. It is a fight, and we’re prepared for the battle for information from the day we get hired to represent an injury victim of a premises defect or hazard. At the Law Offices of Dan Lyons & Associates, we fight for the rights of people who have been injured in slip-and-fall accidents caused by property owner’s negligence. We fight to maximize damages for clients who have suffered injuries from slip and falls in West Haven, Milford, Orange, New Haven, East Haven, Branford, Guilford, Madison and throughout Connecticut.
Uncovering The Causes Of Slip-And-Fall Accidents
Insurance companies do not pay slip-and-fall and trip-and-fall accident claims willingly. They use aggressive tactics to deny liability and sometimes even point the blame at the accident victim. This is why it is so important to have a personal injury attorney on your side who knows how to investigate the facts and get the claim started as quickly after the accident as possible.
Dan Lyons and our legal team aggressively pursue the facts, searching for evidence in maintenance logs, surveillance footage, witness testimony and other sources. Our investigation is to find out whether the property owner knew or should have know about the unsafe condition and did nothing about it, or took inadequate measures to warn visitors of it. We work as quickly as possible to gather evidence before it disappears, and a prompt and thorough investigation often uncovers negligence on the part of property owners, and their agents.
If untreated ice and snow, cracks, potholes, inadequate lighting or any other hazardous or defective property conditions caused your accident and injuries, we are here to evaluate the case, to see whether we can make a claim for damages.
But, remember, the longer you wait to call us after a fall-down injury, he more difficult it is to reconstruct what happened to build a case, interview witnesses, etc. So, if you’ve been injured in a slip and fall case, call us NOW at 203-932-2222 or contact us online at freeconsult@Danlyonslaw.com arrange your free consultation and case evaluation with an experienced and highly rated premises liability attorney.
Attorney Lyons is a highly rated lawyer who has brought numerous claims on behalf of clients who sustained slip and fall injuries throughout the State of Connecticut, including clients who reside in Milford, Orange, West Haven, New Haven, East Haven, Branford, Guilford and Madison.
