Unexpectedly slipping, falling, or tripping while doing something as harmless and nonchalant as visiting a business or going shopping can result in serious injury. Yet, every year it is proving to be more and more challenging to demonstrate property owner negligence in trip-and-fall or slip-and-fall ‘premises liability’ lawsuits in New York City. Because the victim’s own liability is also factored into the fault determination in a slip-and-fall case, a full and fair settlement can be difficult to attain, unless the property owner liability is blatantly clear.
This is why hiring an experienced Personal Injury lawyer is a must for maximizing your recovery after a slip-and-fall or trip-and-fall incident.

In slip-and-fall cases, a high degree of liability is tied to the victim’s own oversight, which can make proving the property owner’s liability to a jury an arduous feat. Often a property owner will try to demonstrate that the victim was partially or fully to blame for their accident, which can reduce the damages a victim can recover by their percentage of fault.
To prove that is was actually the property owner’s fault for the accident that occurred, a victim will need to show by a preponderance of evidence that the property owner knew or should have known about a dangerous condition on their premises, yet still did nothing to repair the condition or give proper warnings about it, and this dangerous condition was the cause of the injuries sustained. Though these elements seem straightforward enough, unfortunately, in situations where the dangerous condition that injured you was located in a non-public had only existed for a short period of time, it can be very difficult to show that a property owner should have known about the condition. But our professional team of lawyers can help.