Premises Liability
Slip and Fall Injuries Are More Serious Than People Think
Slip and fall accidents happen every day in grocery stores, restaurants, parking lots, office buildings, and workplaces across North Alabama. A wet floor with no warning sign, a cracked sidewalk, a poorly lit stairwell, an icy walkway that should have been treated — these are not random accidents. They are the result of property owners failing to maintain safe conditions for the people on their property.
Under Alabama law, property owners and business operators have a legal duty to keep their premises in a reasonably safe condition. When they know about a dangerous condition — or when they should have known about it through reasonable inspections — and fail to fix it or warn visitors, they can be held liable for injuries that result. This area of law is known as premises liability, and it covers a wide range of situations from slippery floors in a Huntsville supermarket to crumbling steps at an apartment complex in Decatur.
Alabama is one of only a handful of states that follows the pure contributory negligence rule. This means that if a property owner or their insurance company can argue that you were even one percent at fault for your own injury — that you should have seen the hazard, that you were looking at your phone, that you were wearing the wrong shoes — they will try to use that argument to deny your entire claim. This makes slip and fall cases in Alabama uniquely challenging. Insurance adjusters are trained to ask leading questions and gather statements designed to shift blame onto the injured person.
If you were injured in a slip and fall on someone else's property, do not give a recorded statement to an insurance company before talking to an attorney. Call DeFatta Law Firm today for a free, confidential consultation.
