What Are the Nuances of Slip and Fall Cases in Utah? – Brian Hansen

Liability on a slip-and-fall case is very nuanced. Most personal injury attorneys hate these cases. They don’t want to touch them because liability is always gonna be an issue. And I’ve taken on my fair share of them and had, again, a lot of success with them. So there’s a few things though that lead to that success.

One is that there’s gotta be proper evidence. If there’s not good evidence, you know, we can’t win those cases. Evidence would be, is there evidence of what the dangerous condition was that caused you to fall? Is there a picture of it? Are there eyewitnesses who saw you fall and could come in and testify to what it was that caused you to fall? If we don’t have any of that, then it makes it very difficult if I don’t have a photo of what the, the dangerous condition was. Another thing that we always look at is, was the business put on notice. I have a lot of people that will call in and say, you know, I fell at this store three months ago and my back is still killing me. I might need surgery. Okay. Did, did you let them know? No, I was embarrassed and I left. Well, how are we gonna prove that they did something wrong if, number one, we don’t have evidence, and number two, if you didn’t put them on notice so that they could start that process of getting insurance involved? Those are kind of the two main things. We have to prove that there’s a dangerous condition that the property owner either knew about or should have known about and didn’t do what they should, didn’t take proper steps to warn about that dangerous condition. It’s as simple as, you know, if you have water on the floor, you put up a wet floor sign. And that’s really all a property owner needs to do. So if we can prove those things, we can often win these cases.

The other nuance that I do want to talk about, especially in Utah, is what we call the open and obvious rule or the open and obvious doctrine. It’s in case law and it basically says if you see a dangerous condition and still encounter it and don’t take proper steps to prevent yourself from falling, you’re at fault for that. And so that’s a key element that I have to know upfront. Did you know that there was water on the floor when you walked across that spot of the store? If they did, we lose those cases because of how the case law works here in Utah. So we have to know the details of the facts before we take on those cases. But once we’re solid on those facts, I can take care of those clients and win those cases.