New York Slip & Fall Accident Lawyers

You should remember that you probably won’t be suing your family member or friend if you slip and fall at their home. You will be filing a claim against the policy provided by their homeowner’s or renter’s insurance provider. Such insurance policies exist for this exact reason, so you shouldn’t feel guilty for using them. If you don’t want to start a claim, then you might have no other way to have your costs covered.

Renters are just as responsible for protecting visitors from unreasonable hazards as homeowners. If you slipped and fell on a rental property, then you could file against a renter’s insurance policy.

You might be able to file a claim against a municipal agency if you slipped and fell on public property like a park or a sidewalk away from any private property. Claims against a municipal or government defendant are often restricted by a brief statute of limitations, so you should speak with an attorney as soon as possible.

New York uses pure comparative negligence rules when considering liability for slip and fall accidents. Under this rule, you can seek compensation from any involved party with a liability percentage of 1% or greater.

It might be possible to hold the city liable for a slip-and-fall accident caused by unsafe sidewalks, but it is unlikely. New York City and many other cities throughout the state places the responsibility of sidewalk maintenance on the owners of adjacent properties, including both residential and commercial properties.

When you are invited to someone’s home, they should make reasonable attempts to protect you from hazards there. They might not be legally obligated to clear those hazards, but they can’t let you wander into them unknowingly without the risk of legal ramifications. For example, if a bathroom sink has been leaking and making a puddle for a while, then the homeowner or renter should tell you about it so you can be cautious.

Commercial properties like retail stores, grocers, and bodegas owe patrons and shoppers a safe space free of slip and trip hazards. If you slipped and fell in a store in New York, then you could demand compensation from the store, which could mean going up against a major corporation in some cases.

New York City law requires anyone who owns, rents, or leases a property to take reasonable steps to clear the sidewalk of snow and ice, as long as it is not currently snowing. The amount of time you have to clear the snow or ice before you can be found neglectful of this duty depends on when the snowfall stops. In some cases, a property only could have only four hours to clear the property of these slip and fall hazards.

Notification about a spill in a grocery store could help prove the store’s negligence if someone slipped in it later and was injured. One of the only defenses that a grocer can use in a slip and fall accident case is that the staff reasonably did not have any knowledge of the spill and couldn’t have cleaned it before the plaintiff was injured. If there is evidence that the spill had been reported to a staff member, though, then that argument is weakened considerably. Working with an attorney can make it simpler to find and talk to potential eyewitnesses, such as a shopper who reported a spill.

Every slip and fall case has a unique worth because every case and its many elements are unique. No law firm can promise that your case is worth one amount or another. What is more important is that you work with a law firm that knows how to maximize the value of the case, whatever that value might be.

Accident reports are not strictly necessary for slip-and-fall accidents on commercial or public property—but they are incredibly useful. An official accident report will make it much more difficult for the property owner to deny that the accident happened.

A building code violation could be the most useful piece of evidence to use in your slip and fall case. Safety inspectors, judges, and juries all take building codes seriously. A proprietor that ignores these codes and makes trip or slip hazards due to that negligence could be pinned with most or all the liability if a tenant, guest, or visitor is hurt by it. Talk to your attorney right away if you think a building code violation occurred, so they can investigate it further, such as working with building code inspectors.

In New York, trespassers are not automatically disqualified from seeking compensation after slipping and getting hurt on someone else's property. The details in such a case are crucial, such as the severity of the hazard, where it was located, and how difficult it was for the trespasser to encounter it. Don’t write your case off before it begins just because you were unlawfully or knowingly trespassing when you were hurt. Talk to a New York slip-and-fall attorney.

A permanent hazardous condition is a hazard that is intrinsic or built into the design of a property, which are fairly uncommon outside of industrial properties. A temporary hazardous condition is a hazard that has occurred due to a defect or situation that can be reasonably remedied. Most slip and fall hazards are temporary hazardous conditions, such as a spill that can be cleaned up or a staircase without a handrail, which could be installed with a bit of manual labor. Property owners can be held liable for falls caused by either type of hazard.

For most slip-and-fall accident cases in New York, the state imposes a three-year statute of limitations that begins on the date of the accident. A briefer statute of limitations may exist depending on where you slipped, though. For example, slip and fall accidents on government property might be held to a brief 30-to-90-day statute. Don’t risk missing your window of opportunity. Call a New York slip and fall accident as soon as possible.

The owner of the parking lot could be liable for your injuries if you fell due to inadequate lighting. Oftentimes, liability in these cases does not fall on businesses with shops in that parking lot because they aren’t responsible for maintaining the outdoor lights, just adjacent sidewalks.