Yes. Home improvement stores are responsible for the safety of customers in all weather. Home Depot must monitor for puddles forming at entrances on rainy days. They must mop as much as necessary to reduce the slip-and-fall hazard and place “wet floor” signs out. If they neglect this duty and a shopper gets hurt, the victim can seek full injury compensation.
Proving Home Depot Is Responsible for Your Slip-And-Fall Accident On a Rainy Day
Home Depot has a legal “duty of care” to its customers to protect them both inside and outside of their stores. This can include the parking lot, the garden center, and inside the warehouse. It also fully includes the front entrance on wet days.
The corporate owners are liable if they are negligent in this duty and leave floors wet and customers unwarned about the slipping hazard. Victims can have their feet taken out from under them to slam their heads on the concrete. They may suffer a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). Victims could reach out to try to catch themselves and break a wrist or fingers.
Home Depot is responsible for the expense of ambulance rides, emergency room care, and any physical therapy patients need. Unfortunately, victims must prove that Home Depot was responsible for the fall and Home Depot’s corporate lawyers can make that difficult. Lawyers and insurance adjusters may claim that the floors were dry and the victim was just clumsy or was wearing worn-out shoes.
It’s always helpful to have all the evidence you can when going up a major retailer/chain to try to get even basic help after an accident. Some of the most powerful evidence will be there at the scene of your fall in the minutes after it happens.
Contact 911 if you are hurt and need an ambulance, then if you feel up to it, try to collect as much evidence as possible on the scene:
- Take photos of the puddles, show visible injuries, note if warning signs were out, show the weather outside
- If you must leave for the emergency room, ask someone with you to take photos
- Notify a manager of what’s happened
- Allow a manager to prepare an incident report
- Don’t admit fault
- Don’t say you aren’t injured in case you later start to feel pain and discover an injury
- Get witness contact information to pass along to your California Home Depot Accident Lawyer
- Visit your own doctor in the days that follow and get all injuries and any new pain examined
- Contact a lawyer
If your injuries are serious and you think Home Depot is to blame, you’ll want to turn your case over to a lawyer. You can discuss what happened and a Maison Law attorney will tell you if you could earn more for recovery with the help of a lawyer. There’s no charge for this consultation.
If you do need legal representation, you’ll want to hand over your evidence to your attorney and allow them to get their own investigation underway.
Contact a California Home Depot Slip-And-Fall Accident Attorney
If you only suffer some minor bruising and soreness after a fall at a Home Depot, you might not need a lawyer’s help. But if you endure a more serious injury, it’s a good idea to be aware of all of your options with a California Home Depot slip-and-fall accident lawyer. A lawyer can often secure much more for you in a settlement claim than you could earn by handling the case yourself.
Contact Maison Law for a free, no-obligation consultation. It’s a no-risk way to find out what your injury is worth and what you should demand from unhelpful insurance companies. And if you feel we can help you earn more for your case, you don’t need to worry about finding the money to hire a lawyer. We don’t get paid unless we score a case victory for you. Then our fee comes out of the settlement Home Depot must provide to you.
