Yes. California businesses are responsible for the safety of customers whenever they walk in…sunny…or cloudy. That means store owners and operators must mop up rainwater tracked in by customers at the front door. If this duty is ignored and you slip and get hurt, you can hold a business responsible for your recovery costs.
Holding Stores Responsible for Wet Floors
California premises liability laws hold store owners or corporate owners responsible when hazards on their property cause customers or clients to get hurt. This “duty of care” extends from the parking lot, along sidewalks, and across the entire floorspace inside.
On rainy days, those hazards might include water building up at the door as customers stream in. Each step can bring in more puddles to create a huge area that becomes a slip-and-fall nightmare.
Store owners, managers, and employees are required to monitor this hazard, mop it up as much as possible, and mark fall-risk areas with “wet floor” signs. They should also work to clean up oil spills and residue left in parking lots, so rainy days don’t create extremely slippery conditions as shoppers get out of their cars. A fall on hard pavement can cause major injuries.
Unfortunately, stores like Walmart or Safeway can get careless and forget to give this threat the attention it deserves. People can have their feet taken out from under them to fall on a hip or their backs to suffer a debilitating injury. They might extend their hands out to catch their fall, only to suffer broken fingers or a wrist fracture.
Local store owners and major corporations are responsible for helping people who suffer injuries due to rain-slicked floors. Unfortunately, businesses, especially those who can afford corporate lawyers, will fight to avoid blame. Store owners and their insurers will even try to blame a fall on the victim, leaving patients to pay all of their medical costs.
Preparing for a Slip-And-Fall Accident Claim After Slipping on a Rain Puddle
In most cases, the secret to forcing an insurance company to do the right thing and help victims is to rely on strong evidence.
If you have a skilled attorney representing your case, your representative will fully investigate your accident and the store involved.
However, your lawyer won’t have access to the evidence that’s usually all over the place on the day of your fall. It might be up to you to get proof of what happened in the moments after your accident before evidence is mopped up or cleared.
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
- Get witness contact information to pass along to your California slip-and-fall lawyer
After a scary fall, it’s important to visit your own doctor in the days that follow. Complete this step even if you’ve already been to the hospital.
Alert your doctor to what happened and get every pain checked out. In some cases, the pain of a serious injury may be invisible after the shock of a fall. It may be a day or two later that you suffer stiffness and pain from a hairline fracture or even head trauma.
Follow your doctor’s advice and go to physical therapy if necessary. Save all medical documents and invoices. Your lawyer will work with your doctor to prove how serious your injury is and determine how long you may need medical care.
Contact a California Slip-And-Fall Lawyer
If your slip-and-fall injury on a rainy day is more serious than some minor scrapes and bruising, you may need the protection of a lawyer. Stores will be able to afford teams of corporate attorneys, all looking for ways to blame you for your accident or downplay the injury you’ve suffered. Your Maison Law lawyer is a safeguard against this unfair treatment.
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 be holding an insurance company to.
Remember, a lawyer is often able to secure much more recovery help for you than you could earn handling your case yourself. If you require our help to get the maximum in injury support, you won’t need to pay any upfront money. We don’t get paid unless we win your case. Then, our fee comes out of the money an insurance company must provide for you.
