A slip and fall injury can cost you thousands of dollars in medical bills. If you slipped and fell on someone’s premises, you may assume that all you need to do is sue them to get the compensation you deserve. However, these cases can be very challenging without help from accident lawyers in NYC.
What You’ll Have to Prove in Court
There are four things that need to be proven in slip and fall cases: duty, notice, dangerous condition, and damages. If you decide to defend yourself in court, you’ll need to ensure you have sufficient evidence to present.
Owner Duty
Duty refers to the identification of property owners and their responsibility to maintain the premises. This includes addressing any areas of a property that may cause injury or harm via reasonable means. Proving duty can result in arguments being raised about whether the property owner either had control or should have had control of the premises.
Proving duty can become more complex where the property owner and manager are two different people because it then becomes an issue of determining who controlled the property when the slip and fall occurred.
Sufficient Notice
Notice can be established in a slip and fall case if it can be proven that the property owner knew about the hazard but didn’t act in a timely manner to correct it or chose to ignore the problem altogether. This can be difficult because you will need to understand standard practices enough to prove that the owner deviated from them.
Dangerous Conditions
Even though you may have the medical bills and injuries to show that a dangerous condition was present when you became injured, you still need to prove this in court. This will involve being able to prove that an unnecessary hazard was caused by the property owner’s negligence.
In addition to the above, you must also be able to prove that the property was used for the purposes for which it was intended.
Amount of Damages
A successful slip and fall case is also one where you have provided adequate evidence of your damages. This will require you to prove that the dangerous condition at a property was responsible for your injury.
Win Your Slip and Fall Case
Failing to prove even one of the items above, or forgetting to bring a single piece of evidence with you, can result in a lost case. What’s worse, slip and fall cases can increase in complexity very quickly, which can cause confusion that can catch you off guard unless you are experienced.
If you want the best possible chance of winning your slip and fall case, the solution is finding professional representation with a New York injury attorney who knows how to obtain a successful outcome. The Dearie Law Firm knows what evidence is necessary to prove your case and get you a fair settlement. Get our team of experienced attorneys on your side; call (212) 970-6500.