No one expects a routine trip to the grocery store to wind up with a trip to the emergency room. Yet if you slip on a spill on a grocery store floor, you could seriously injure yourself, necessitating immediate medical care. This can be an expensive incident, especially as the medical bills grow and you are unable to work due to your injury.
Slip-and-fall incidents fall under the legal umbrella of premises liability claims. The following are the elements of a premises liability claim in New York.
Invitation onto the property
If you are injured on another person’s property, you must be able to prove the following elements. First, you must lawfully be on the property, for example, the owner invited you there as a customer or guest or you were hired to work there. If you were a trespasser, the property owner must have known you were on their premises.
Property owner negligence
Second, you must be able to prove the property owner negligently failed to address an unsafe condition. This means that the property owner had to know or should have known that there was a dangerous condition on their premises, such as a spill on a grocery store floor, and did not remedy it, rope it off or post warnings about the dangerous condition.
Injuries caused by negligence
Third, you must prove that the property owner’s negligence caused your injury. For example, you would have to prove that the grocery store you were shopping at negligently failed to address a spill on the floor, which you slipped on causing your injury.
If you are injured on someone else’s property in New York as an invited guest, you can take several steps. First, you can let the property owner know of your injury as soon as possible. You can seek medical care and document your injuries and the circumstances surrounding them. Finally, you can discuss your situation with a personal injury attorney who can advise you on premises liability laws and how they apply to you.
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