Willow Grove Slip and Fall Attorney

Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, is a community in Philadelphia’s northern suburbs that reported a population of 15,726 as of the 2020 census. Willow Grove is home to the Willow Grove Park Mall, a three-story shopping mall with over 130 stores and restaurants. In some scenarios, an unsafe condition can make someone slip, fall, and suffer injuries inside a large shopping center like the Willow Grove Park Mall.

A qualified attorney can walk you through what to do if you suffer injuries inside a department store or other location. Contact our Rosen Justice Injury Lawyers team to talk to a slip and fall lawyer today.

Overview of Slip and Fall Cases

In Pennsylvania, property occupants and owners must keep their property reasonably safe. If negligent property maintenance causes someone else’s injury, the occupant or owner may be liable for losses caused by the injury. To recover compensation, the injured party must file a premises liability lawsuit against the person whose negligence caused their injury. Examples of where a slip and fall might occur include:

Inside a department store,
In a parking lot,
Inside a grocery store,
On an escalator,
On a stairway,
Inside a restaurant,
Inside a shopping mall,
At an amusement park, and
In a parking garage.

The obligations a property owner owes individuals on their property depend on the status of the visitors.

What Should I Do If I Slip and Fall on Someone Else’s Property?

The embarrassment of falling in public might tempt you to run away from the incident scene and never tell anyone what happened. Unfortunately, you will likely lose any relevant evidence for your slip and fall claim if you leave the store without preserving information about your injuries.

Tell Someone About Your Fall

You should notify the property owner, occupant, or manager about your fall as soon as possible. Doing so allows them to obtain surveillance footage, if available, and create a report about the incident. It also gives the owner or manager the opportunity to remedy the issue, so no one else falls and suffers an injury. The manager should complete a report to document your injuries and the cause of the accident. Ask the manager for your report copy for your slip and fall attorney.

Document Information About Your Fall

As stated above, the manager will likely remedy the condition that caused your fall once you notify them, as they should. Thus, you should act quickly by taking photographs and videos of the area where you fell. You can also gather statements from witnesses and request surveillance footage from the store.

If you leave the scene before you document the circumstances of your fall, you may lose your chance to document them altogether. If you do not retain any information about the incident, your attorney may struggle to recreate the scenario for a judge or jury.

Seek Medical Treatment

Once you document your fall and notify a manager, you should seek medical attention for injuries sustained. The physician who treats you at the emergency room or urgent care clinic will document your injuries in their medical reports. Your Montgomery County slip and fall attorney will request a copy of your medical records to establish proof of the injuries you suffered and the costs you incurred from those injuries.

Can a Slip and Fall Lawyer in Willow Grove, PA, Help Me Prove Liability?

Negligence comprises four parts: duty of care, breach of duty, causation, and damages. You must prove all four elements to prevail in your claim.

A property owner’s duty of care changes based on the injured party’s status. An invitee is someone who visits a location to transact business, like a shopper at a grocery store. Property owners owe invitees the highest duty of care. That means they must remedy any condition they know or should have known was dangerous and post warnings for open and obvious dangers.

Property owners owe licensees a marginally lower duty of care than an invitee. A licensee is someone who enters the property with permission but does not give the property owner a benefit by being there. They must warn licensees of any dangerous conditions that are not obvious to the naked eye.

Property owners do not owe any obligations to trespassers, but they must refrain from inflicting intentional harm.

A property owner can breach their duty in several ways, including:

Failing to post caution signs on a newly mopped floor,
Not including adequate lighting in poorly lit areas,
Leaving nails or screws exposed, or
Failing to clean up spills in a timely manner.

The injured party must prove that the property owner’s negligence, instead of some external factor, caused their injury. The property owner may try to claim a third party’s misconduct caused your fall instead of their negligence. A qualified slip and fall lawyer can help show the direct link between the property owner’s negligence and your injury.

What Kind of Losses Can I Recover After a Slip and Fall Accident?

You cannot file a lawsuit if you did not suffer harm. A slip and fall accident can lead to thousands of dollars in losses. You can incur medical bills to diagnose and treat your injury and miss out on wages because you cannot return to work.

Slip and fall settlements help reimburse you for the economic and noneconomic damages you suffered. Economic losses include monetary losses incurred from the slip and fall accident. The following are some examples of economic damages:

Medical bills,
Rehabilitation services,
Lost wages,
Emergency room costs,
Loss of future earning capacity, and
Property damage.

Economic losses are easier to prove with documentation like receipts and invoices. A slip and fall lawyer can help compile your economic losses for your case.

Noneconomic damages represent abstract and difficult-to-quantify losses the victim incurs from the slip and fall. Examples of noneconomic damages include:

Emotional distress,
Mental anguish,
Loss of enjoyment of life,
Disfigurement or scarring, and
Pain and suffering.

It is often hard to assign a dollar value to noneconomic losses. Your slip and fall attorney can consult economic experts to assign a monetary value for your noneconomic losses.

Contact a Willow Grove Slip and Fall Attorney at Rosen Justice Injury Lawyers

We have extensive experience helping injured plaintiffs recover in premises liability claims. You need the best slip and fall attorney in Willow Grove to fight for your rights and negotiate aggressively with the responsible party. We are confident that our slip and fall attorneys have what it takes to recover a settlement on your behalf. If the opposing party fails to give you a fair offer, we will not hesitate to go to trial.

Our Rosen Justice Injury Lawyers team has experience proving a property owner’s negligence to secure a settlement for our clients. A slip and fall claim lawyer can help you by:

Calculating the value of your losses,
Negotiating with the opposing party or an insurance company for a fair settlement offer,
Locating witnesses to give a statement about your accident, and
Preparing your case for trial, if necessary.

If you or a loved one suffered injuries in a slip and fall accident, contact our office today to talk to our slip and fall attorneys in Willow Grove.