When you’re making a grocery run at a California supermarket or shopping at a Walmart or Walgreens, you’re usually focused on finding the items on your list. Milk, eggs, cereal, and bread are top of mind. But with each step you take, you may be inching closer to an invisible puddle on the floor.
Spills and leaks can be allowed to sit for hours until you or a family member come along to end up in a slip-and-fall accident. You may suffer a broken bone or hit your head to take a traumatic brain injury.
Store owners may quickly point out that they had a bright yellow “wet floor” sign nearby and tell you that they aren’t liable. Fortunately for victims, that’s not always true in California slip-and-fall cases.
Contact a California Slip-And-Fall Lawyer for a Free Consultation
If you or a loved one are injured in a slip-and-fall accident in a store or business, the costs of recovery should never fall to you alone. Victims can file injury claims and receive substantial support for their hardships, even in a case where a wet floor sign was out.
A California slip-and-fall accident lawyer collects evidence on your behalf to make sure a store owner or corporation can’t deny their liability. Contact a skilled attorney serving California victims for a free, no-obligation case consultation.
California Slip-And-Fall Dangers
There are plenty of public places in California that host lots of foot traffic. And “unexpected hazards” like soft drink spills and broken jars on supermarket aisles are always going to happen, sometimes hourly or daily. People have mishaps and their children can leave messes behind.
A business employee may simply be doing a weekly mop on the floors when a client comes around the corner and loses footing on the slick tile. When left to sit out, these hazards can threaten the safety of anyone passing by.
A slip-and-fall backward can leave people with a broken hip, a fractured wrist, or a head injury. Victims will wonder if they’ll have to pay their doctor bills by themselves. A corporate owner representing a grocery store chain or gas station minimarts may point out that wet floor signs were used. Their corporate lawyers will insist this means the company bears no responsibility for a patient’s recovery costs. But a wet floor sign doesn’t mean business owners are automatically blameless in a slip-and-fall tragedy.
Wet Floor Sign Liability in California
Landlords at an apartment complex or city employees at a government building frequently utilize wet floor signs while surfaces are being mopped and cleaned. The signs often come out at any business where hazards have been left on the floor. They hopefully warn the public to be more cautious, but the signs don’t mean that anyone who travels by and gets hurt is completely at fault for their own injuries.
Property owners and operators at stores and businesses owe all customers, tenants, employees, and clients a “duty of care”. California law demands that the owner of a gas station convenience store or a home and garden mega mart protect their customers. This legal duty, which may involve a warning sign, extends from the parking lot all the way to the back aisle.
Owners are responsible for the hazards they create and the hazards created by employees. Owners and their employees are also supposed to monitor all day long for hazards like spilled coffee caused by the general public. When a puddle forms, proprietors must spot it in a reasonable amount of time and take immediate action to remove the hazard.
First, they may place a wet floor sign in the area to catch a customer’s attention and hopefully prompt them to avoid the wet area or show more caution. But the wet floor sign won’t protect the property owner from liability in every situation.
These are just a few of the circumstances that still leave property owners liable despite having a warning posted out:
- The sign wasn’t visible. The sign may have fallen flat. Caution tape may have fallen down. The dangerous spot may have been in a poorly lit area where a sign couldn’t be seen.
- A wet floor sign wasn’t sufficient. In some cases, a hazard will be so dangerous that a wet floor sign didn’t really cover the danger. Perhaps an aisle should have been completely closed, depending on the threat. Perhaps an icy sidewalk should have been blocked off. A wet floor sign isn’t meant as a safety marker for every sort of hazard.
- A wet floor sign wasn’t followed up by action. After the wet floor sign is placed, managers and employees are supposed to act to mop up or clean messes. A wet floor sign may sit by a puddle that is left out for a half hour or more. If you stride up and take a fall, it’s easy to show that the store should have taken further action beyond placing a caution sign.
- The wet floor wasn’t the only hazard. A slippery surface may be extra dangerous due to tile damage or a rolled-up rug. In these cases, a wet floor sign wouldn’t be sufficient to protect a business from liability.
- Comparative negligence. California uses the concept of comparative negligence in some slip-and-fall cases. It means that both the business and the injured victim can share in the blame for an accident. Both the owner and the victim are assigned a certain percentage of the responsibility for what happened. The presence of a wet floor sign may reduce the percentage of liability a store faces and leave a victim with a percentage of fault. But the owner could still be forced to reimburse the victim for a substantial portion of the recovery costs.
These and other exceptions to wet floor sign immunity make it possible for victims to receive the recovery support they need to heal and rebuild their lives. Proving the ineffectiveness of a wet floor sign will be much more likely with the help of a skilled California Slip-And-Fall Lawyer. Your lawyer will be gathering powerful evidence and testimony to show that a business or an employer or a landlord owes the victim compensation.
While it’s true that having warning signs out can reduce the liability for stores, when they don’t place signs out, your injury claim will get stronger. A lack of signs can show that a proprietor wasn’t monitoring for these hazards or didn’t take them seriously. Your attorney would demonstrate how the absence of wet floor signs is a clear case of negligence to help you win your case.
What To Do After a Slip-And-Fall Accident Involving a Wet Floor Sign
Your California personal injury lawyer will fully investigate your case, but there will be some evidence they won’t have access to. Your lawyer can’t be there in the moments after your fall. Strong proof of a store’s negligence will exist right there on the scene if you are able to gather it before it gets cleaned up.
Try to collect these details to help you earn the most from a slip-and-fall injury settlement:
- Call for an ambulance – Don’t move if you feel you can’t. Get checked out by paramedics. Go to the emergency room if necessary. If you are taken from the scene, ask someone with you to gather a few crucial pieces of evidence for you.
- Use your cell phone to get photos – Get pictures of the hazards that caused you to slip. Show the wet floor signs around or show that there were no signs. Take pictures from a distance to illustrate if the signs were placed where people could see them clearly. Get photos of any visible injuries.
- Alert a manager – The owner, a manager, a landlord, or an employer should be notified about your accident. Most businesses will have an incident report to write up. This report will serve as evidence of what happened.
- Get contact information from any witnesses – No one may have seen you fall but someone could serve as a witness to the obstacle that was present or if there were signs present or not.
- Keep evidence – Don’t throw out the shoes you were wearing in the accident. Keep any damaged personal items and clothing. Keep receipts from the business that show that you were there and what time you were there.
- See your physician – Get all pain and injuries diagnosed. Your doctor may recommend seeing specialists or completing physical therapy. Follow your doctor’s orders.
Your lawyer will be using this evidence and testimony from witnesses to show the business was completely or partially at fault for your slip-and-fall. Your case would seek to retrieve support for every medical bill you received. The lost wages you suffered while having to miss time at work should also be reimbursed. The physical pain and emotional trauma you endure in a fall and during a tough recovery must also earn compensation.
Contact a California Slip-And-Fall Lawyer
If you or a loved one are hurt in a slip-and-fall or trip-and-fall accident in California, find out what your injuries may be worth by talking to a skilled California attorney. A free case review is a great way to learn about the benefits you have available to you before insurance adjusters try to convince you that you are entitled to nothing at all.
They may claim that their clients aren’t liable because they placed wet floor signs around the hazard. But don’t worry. Victims can often still secure the recovery support they need even if a caution sign was present when they fell.
Contact an experienced California Slip-And-Fall Lawyer such as Martin Gasparian, the founder of Maison Law, for a confidential consultation. Mr. Gasparian firmly believes that every victim should be protected from the tricks used by the insurance industry. If you feel we can help you earn more in your slip-and-fall claim, you won’t need to bring any money with you. Maison Law doesn’t get paid unless we win your case for you.
