SLIPS, TRIPS, & FALLS

STRONG ADVOCACY FOR VICTIMS

Fighting for those harmed by property owner negligence

If you are injured on someone else’s property, you may have a claim against the owner or occupier of the premises. We say owner or occupier because it depends on who has legal possession of the property. That party is the one who is responsible to maintain a safe premises for you when you come upon those premises. 

In Georgia, the owner or occupier of the premises owes the highest duty to invitees, i.e., people who are invited onto the property to spend money. This means that when you go to a restaurant, grocery store, gas station, or other facility where you are invited to shop, the owner has a duty to you to exercise ordinary reasonable care to keep the premises safe. This involves routine inspections to ensure that there are no hazards and cleaning up or repairing hazards before you encounter them. Alternatively, if they cannot clean up or repair a hazard before you encounter the hazard, they have to put out a warning so that you can avoid the hazard. Note that you also have a duty to exercise ordinary reasonable care for your own safety. Thus, if a hazard can easily be seen, you do not have a claim, even if the owner/occupier was aware of the hazard. 

There are lesser standards of care to social invitees and trespassers.

We have dealt with almost every factual situation possible in the hundreds of slip/trip and fall cases that we have handled, including everything from rails that break on decks when leaned against, decks that collapse with everybody on them, leaks in roofs or restaurant equipment or elsewhere that cause liquid on the floor, spills of shampoo and other liquids where box cutters are used to open inventory in grocery stores, products falling on top of customers from high shelves where employees have stacked on one side of the aisle and pushed merchandise over onto the other side near the edge of the adjacent aisle, etc.