Apportioning Responsibility in a Slip-and-Fall Accident

 Posted on November 08, 2017 in Blog Post

A slip-and-fall accident in or around an Illinois business may from the outside appear as a simple sequence of events. From a legal perspective, however, the question of liability for a slip-in-fall in which injuries are sustained may involve layers of complexity, depending on the presence or absence of notice of caution, employers, employees, independent contractors, and number of accident victims.

If you have been injured in a slip-and-fall accident at an Illinois bar, restaurant, grocer, store, or other business, an experienced Park Ridge personal injury attorney will assert your legal rights and determine where liability lays for the harms that you have suffered.

The Complexities of a Multi-Party Slip-and-Fall

Imagine you are walking into an Illinois restaurant for lunch while on your midday break from work on a rainy November day. At the same time that you enter the premises, umbrella in hand, a delivery truck driver is exiting, returning to his or her truck after delivering a shipment of food products to the restaurant. Being that the temperature is near freezing, the rainwater just around the entryway has begun to freeze. As you cross paths, you and the delivery driver loses footing on the slick patch – not completely, but enough to bump into you as you stand slightly off balance reaching to hang your umbrella and jacket on the coat rack. You lose your footing completely, slipping, falling, and suffering a concussion as your head slams onto the cold, slick surface below. Meanwhile, the delivery truck driver, not even looking back, is on the next stop.

Rushed to the ER in an ambulance, you don’t go back to work that day. In fact, you can’t work for more than a week while you recover from the concussion, in immense pain and unable to earn the wages you depend on. The restaurant says it’s not at fault, and the delivery driver is gone with the wind. When this scenario or another in which personal injuries result becomes reality, depend on an experienced Park Ridge slip-and-fall accident attorney.

Financial Damages for Slip-and-Fall Accident-Related Harms

An experienced attorney knows every detail of Illinois premises liability law and will apply it to the facts of your slip-and-fall accident. You may be entitled to financial damages for medical bills, lost income due to missed work, pain and suffering, and other harms or losses you have suffered. An experienced Park Ridge personal injury lawyer will fight for your legal rights.

Sources:

http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs3.asp?ActID=1865&ChapterID=50

http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs3.asp?ActID=2048&ChapterID=57