(235+)Your trip to a restaurant may turn into a nightmare quickly when you are injured in a slip and fall accident. If you have a bad fall at a food establishment, you could end up dealing with serious physical injuries that come with significant costs.
The good news is that you may be able to hold the restaurant responsible for your fall injuries if you make the right legal moves. If you slip and fall at a restaurant, you need to contact an experienced lawyer at Gibbons & Crichton, Personal Injury and Accident Lawyers. These claims are not always the easiest to win. Schedule a free consultation with us now.
What Are Common Slip and Fall Hazards at Restaurants?
Restaurants are often among the more dangerous places for slip and fall accidents.
One of the more obvious dangers in a restaurant is when a server drops a dish or spills something on the floor. Food can be extremely slippery, no matter the ingredients. The server or other restaurant employees must immediately clean up any spills to prevent a dangerous situation. Grease and certain foodstuffs can present a particular danger to customers.
People continuously come in and out of restaurants in all weather conditions. Patrons can track moisture and other substances on the soles of their shoes. Even if a patron is the source of the slippery conditions, the restaurant owner still must keep the premises safe. At the bare minimum, preventing a fall at a restaurant should mean placing wet floor signs in obvious areas and setting down anti-slip mats.
Unfortunately, the busy nature of restaurants means that spills and other hazards go unaddressed for an extended period. There are no excuses that would allow the restaurant owner to evade the duties that they owe you, as long as you were a legal visitor.
The Restaurant Owner Owes You a Duty of Care
As the patron of the restaurant, the owner owes you a duty of care to provide reasonably safe premises. While there are times that accidents do happen, the restaurant owner must also take steps to keep you from danger.
There are two ways that a restaurant owner may violate their duty of care in a slip and fall case:
The restaurant owner creates dangerous conditions, such as leaving debris in the middle of the floor or spilling something on the floor. Here, any employee of the restaurant would be considered acting on behalf of the owner.
Someone else creates the dangerous condition, and the restaurant owner fails to remedy it within a reasonable amount of time after they knew or should have known about it. The restaurant owner cannot pretend not to know about something. If a certain amount of time passes, the law would deem it as if the restaurant owner should have known about it.
Why Slip and Fall Cases Can Be Difficult
Slip and fall claims are among the more challenging types of personal injury lawsuits, but it is still possible for you to win. You will almost always be up against an insurance company that will make things as difficult as possible for you.
Unless you have solid and conclusive proof, you can expect the restaurant’s insurance company will either deny your slip and fall accident claim entirely or try to blame you for the injury. Even if the insurance company is willing to accept liability, they will deliberately underestimate your injuries in an attempt to save money. The only way to get what you deserve from the insurance company is to hire an experienced slip and fall attorney to fight for you.
One of the advantages to you in a restaurant slip and fall case is the fact that there may be many people who were around at the time of your fall accident. Many slip and fall cases are a matter of your word versus the defendant’s. When there are witnesses who saw what happened, they can break a tie, and back up your side of the story.
How Your Attorney May Prove Your Slip and Fall Accident Injuries
Your slip and fall attorney would be tasked with gathering evidence that could be used to prove your claim. You must have either a police report about the restaurant’s fall or contact information for witnesses who saw the accident.
In addition to this testimony, and the accident report, your attorney may use the following to prove your restaurant slip and fall claim:
- Video camera evidence that you would obtain from the restaurant in the discovery process
- Pictures of the scene of the accident
- Testimony from an accident reconstruction expert who would give their opinion on what caused your fall
What You Can Recover After a Restaurant Slip and Fall Accident
You can and should hold the restaurant responsible when they were to blame for your injuries.
An attorney can estimate the value of the damages that you would seek in a claim at a free consultation.
You could be entitled to the following damages in your slip and fall accident claim:
- Medical bills
- Lost wages
- Pain and suffering
- Embarrassment and humiliation
- Scarring and disfigurement
Your slip and fall accident injuries are entirely dependent on the nature of your injuries. There are a wide variety of outcomes in each slip and fall accident case, and hiring an experienced attorney could help you be in a position to achieve a better one.
Contact a Philadelphia Premises Liability Attorney Today
If you have been injured at a fall in a restaurant, or in any other premises, you may be able to file a claim for financial compensation. The Philadelphia slip and fall accident attorneys at Gibbons & Critchton, Personal Injury & Accident Lawyers can take on the insurance company when they try to deny you what you deserve.
Start your case by scheduling a free initial consultation with one of our attorneys, which you can do by calling us today, or messaging us online. You pay nothing upfront, and we are only paid if you win your case.
