Establishing Responsibility in Denver Slip and Fall Cases
Common defendants in slip and fall cases in Denver arise from apartment complexes and condominiums. Other common defendants in slip and fall cases are customers slipping and falling on substances on the floor of a store if the store personnel are not diligent in checking and cleaning spills that occur. This lack of maintenance is often due to lack of sufficient personnel. Establishing responsibility in Denver slip and fall cases is an instrumental part of recovering damages for your injuries. If you have sustained an injury and a slip and fall accident, consult a skilled slip and fall attorney that can attempt to help you establish liability in your personal injury case.
Evidence Used to Establish Responsibility
The best evidence for establishing responsibility in Denver slip and fall cases is the incident report. A lot of people do not want to fill out an incident report, but reports can be a great source of information because store employees or representatives of that company typically write down detailed and important information, like what had caused the slip and fall.
A lot of times they will merely write customer fell on water puddle on the floor, and in instances like those hopefully, the employee also took a photograph. Photographs can be equally helpful in establishing liability.
Steps to Take Following a Fall
Once they have slipped and fallen, the accident victim should fill out an incident report. It is tough to establish liability or even establish that somebody slipped and fell if they have not filled out an incident report.
The first thing an attorney does in a slip and fall case is send the potential defendant a letter indicating that the plaintiff slipped and fell on the premises on this date, and ask the potential defendant to provide information. If their response is that they have no record of this event occurring, the case may fall through.
Documentation the Victim Should Collect
The person should take as many photographs as possible at the time of the incident because over time, a person’s memory starts to fade. It is better to have something permanent as to what it was on the floor. This is what the person slipped/tripped on, and this is what the weather was that day, as opposed to having to describe it later.
Also, the injured person should collect any witness information if there are any people around. A slip and fall situation often happens without a witness, but if there are people around, if people assist the injured person, it is important to get contact information for all of those people so they can testify as to what the conditions were or what kind of injuries they observed; if the injured person looked to be in pain or whether they seemed okay. This information may not make or break a case, but it does either add value or decrease value to a claim.
Role of Witness Testimony in Establishing Responsibility
Witness testimony plays a big role in any case, because sometimes they are able to testify that multiple times before they walked on this path and it was fine, and then on this date, they slipped and fell. They could testify that the conditions were drastically different or that they saw the actual slip and fall happen. The witness can testify that the person was acting in a safe manner, that they did everything they could to avoid slipping, and that there was no way to avoid slipping in that area.
How Does a Slip and Fall Lawyer Prove Who is the Responsible Party?
If the defendant is an apartment complex, someone is usually delegated the task of cleaning the sidewalks or remediating the hazardous conditions. Usually, a third-party sidewalk shoveling business has contracted with the apartment complex to perform these duties, one of the non-delegable duties which means that there is going to be some type of liability. This third-party contractor will undoubtedly be responsible for its appropriate share of the recovery.
If the defendant is a large store, like Walmart, it probably owns the land, the store, and is the operating company for the store. Other large stores that are attached to malls, like Macy’s, would have a separate landowner and a separate operating company. The legal owners can be found through a search of the property assessor’s page or tax records of the listing of corporate entities on the State website. Establishing responsibility in Denver slip and fall cases can be difficult with larger stores but a skilled slip and fall attorney can help. If an individual has been injured in an accident, they should consult a qualified personal injury lawyer that can attempt to help them prove liability and recover damages.
