If you’re going through a personal injury, one of the best things that you can do is to hire a Toronto personal injury lawyer to guide and assist you through the process. The first thing that people experience after going through a slip or a fall is a feeling that they could have done something to prevent the slip or fall from happening.
In a lot of cases, most people can’t do much to stop a slip or fall, and a lot of the time, the slip is caused by something that is completely outside of your control. And then there are times where a slip or a fall is nothing more than just carelessness. In cases where a slip or a fall is a result of something else, that’s where you will want to consult with a Toronto personal injury lawyer.
A personal injury resulting from a slip or a fall might seem like something that shouldn’t require further action, but you might be entitled to compensation.
Slips And Falls – What Are They?
A slip or a fall that results in personal injury typically refers to someone slipping on another person’s property. If you have proof that you slipped on someone else’s property due to their neglect of maintaining the property, then you could potentially have a case.
Severity Of Slips And Falls
The severity of slip and fall injuries can get pretty extreme, while other cases can seem pretty mild. Slip and fall injuries can potentially land people in the hospital and having to miss weeks from work. Slips can lead to broken bones that take months to heal, and this can negatively impact a person’s ability to support themselves.
How Often Do Slips And Falls Occur?
Slip and fall injuries that lead to fractures are very common in older people, and they make up over 90% of the cases of people over 65. Hundreds of thousands of people make a trip to the hospital every year for slip and fall injuries.
If you’re not sure if your case is a legitimate slip and fall injury, it’s best to consult with a Toronto personal injury lawyer for more information. It can be very difficult to navigate the field of personal injury law, and not everyone is aware if their case is a valid one. It always helps to look at some examples of what constitutes a slip and fall injury.
If someone that owns a property hasn’t maintained the surfaces of their floors for ages and the flooring starts to become loose as someone is walking on it, then that could lead to a personal injury lawsuit from someone that was walking on the surface.
Another example might be someone that is walking on a staircase that isn’t sturdy and stable. In the majority of cases, the property owner would already be aware of the condition of the staircase, and if someone gets severely injured from walking up the staircase without knowing its condition, then you can see why things can turn into a lawsuit pretty quick.
Evidence
In cases involving slip and fall injuries, proof is usually required to reveal that the owner of the property already knew about the hazard that led to the personal injury. The proof might be fairly evident in some cases, but other times, it can be very hard to get the proper evidence for something like this.
If there have been other people in the past that have mentioned things about the hazard on the property, then the owner of the property most likely knew about it. Sometimes getting the right proof is a difficult process, and in those situations, it helps to have a personal injury lawyer on your side.
Property Owners And Hazards
If you’re not able to find evidence of the owner of the property being knowledgeable about the hazard, it’s usually assumed that the owner should have been aware of such a thing. No property owner is going to be actively using uneven and unstable stairs if they know they aren’t safe to use.
If you’re in a situation like this, you’ll want to see if you can prove that the hazard was already present for a while. Every property owner should be fully aware of the potential hazards on their property. Signage should be put up around areas of the property that are deemed unsafe to be walking around on. If the property owner states that they weren’t aware of the hazard for a long period of time, then that is negligence.
Slipping and falling on a very slippery patch of wet flooring on someone else’s property might not have a bunch of evidence from previous people, but it doesn’t take much of an inspection to reveal that the patch of wet flooring has been there for a while if there is slippery mold growing all over it.
Carelessness
Another thing that needs to be proved is that the injury wasn’t directly a result of the carelessness of the person that was injured. The hazard might have been there for quite a while, but if someone is trespassing on a property with a hazard on it, then the property owner will, in most cases, be let off the hook.
An example of this is entering a restricted area that has signage all over the place stating that it is an area that is only for employees. If someone walks into an area like this and slips and falls and it results in an injury, the owner of the property won’t be at fault for that.
Slips And Falls
Slip and fall injuries can sometimes get complex and complicated. If you’re walking on an extremely icy property that belongs to the city and you fall on it, then that case might be against the municipality because they are the ones responsible for maintaining the upkeep of their property.
Following a slip and fall case, you’ll want to consult with a personal injury lawyer and file a claim within two years. After two years, you usually won’t be able to file a claim for it.
