You hear about slip and fall accidents all the time. But how common are they really? According to the National Floor Safety Institute (NFSI), slips-and-falls account for 1 million emergency room visits, or 12% of total falls.
So yes, they are a common problem.
For senior citizens, they’re also a leading cause of injury-related death. You don’t want to find yourself facing a wrongful death lawsuit because of a simple, and preventable slip-and-fall accident.
How can you protect your business from a lawsuit?
Here’s what to do:
Identify, Fix and Warn About Dangerous Conditions
According to the NFSI, most slip-and-falls happen on hazardous surfaces, both indoors and outdoors – 55%, in fact.
So if you’re a business, when you clean floors, make sure you put up appropriate warning signage. Fill in those potholes and cracks. Look for and repair/improve anything that could be labeled a dangerous condition.
And if you’re a patron of a business, watch out for dangerous conditions in parking lots or inside of stores. Because, you’d rather not go through all the stress and hassle of a slip-and-fall case and the associated physical suffering and financial disruption it leads to.
Make Sure Employees Do Not Create Dangerous Conditions
An injured victim can win a premises liability case against a business in Texas (provided he or she was an Invitee such as a customer shopping at a grocery store) if they were injured by an unreasonably dangerous condition that the business had actual or constructive knowledge of and failed to warn the person of and/or make safe.
It is important to remember that actual knowledge of a dangerous condition will be presumed if a store employee creates the dangerous condition at issue. For example, if a Walmart employee mops the floor and doesn’t display a “wet floor” sign, said employee would have created the dangerous condition and actual knowledge will be presumed. Accordingly, businesses should instruct its employees to be mindful of the safety of its guests and to take steps to prevent creating dangerous conditions that could injure someone.
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