Articles Posted in Premises Liability

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There have been some cases in the news recently about claims for personal injuries after slip and fall accidents against national retailers and hotel chains.  In one case, a customer in the retail store H&M in Pennsylvania slipped and fell on a wet floor at the entrance.  In another case, a guest at a Hyatt hotel in Houston slipped and fell on a wet floor after it had been mopped by an employee.  In both cases, the injured victim claims that the property owner failed to take reasonable steps to prevent the accident and their resulting injuries.

The injuries sustained in a slip and fall accident can be very serious.  Often times these injuries can involve fractured or broken arms or legs, but can also include a head injury or even a broken neck.  Needless to say, these injuries can have a devastating affect on the injured victim as well as the injured person’s family.  Compensation for these types of injuries can include not only compensation for the medical bills and any future treatment, but also compensation for lost wages and loss of services and companionship to the victim’s family.

The Atlanta area, and the state of Georgia as a whole, is home to a countless number of retailers, restaurants and hotels where thousands of patrons and guests frequent on a daily basis.  At all of these types of properties, the owner or occupier of the property has a duty to exercise reasonable care to make sure the property where the customers or guests will be is safe.  This undoubtedly includes the floor surfaces within the property.

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When you have suffered an injury as the result of a slip and fall accident, you may be able to file a claim for compensation. However, Georgia law has a provision called comparative negligence that essentially allows for a reduction of your compensation if it is found that you, the injured party, were responsible for your accident and injuries.

In any slip and fall accident claim, merely suffering a slip and fall accident on another person’s property is not sufficient for you to recover compensation for your injuries. You must be able to prove that the property owner was negligent in his duty to exercise reasonable care and caution in ensuring the premises are safe.  If the owner can prove that he could not possibly have known of the hazard on his property or the risk it posed, you may not have a successful claim.

Georgia’s comparative negligence laws make the burden on the plaintiff or the injured party bringing the claim even heavier.  These laws allow for property owners to claim that an injured party was at least partly responsible for his injuries. This allows the property owner to reduce his liability in the accident.

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While Halloween is a holiday, second only to Christmas, to which kids (and kids at heart alike) look forward to, it is also rife with opportunities for personal injury. From decorations to costumes to food safety, to be forewarned is to be forearmed. For many adults, some of the most fun to be had comes from adorning their homes with decorations. While waxing sentimental about your childhood as you erect life-size Ghostbusters on your front lawn, it is also important to keep in mind the safety of the children (and parents) who will soon be knocking at your door.

Although darkness is an integral part of Halloween, it also obscures vision and provides cover to latent dangers. For that very reason, make sure children wear reflexive tape or carry flashlights so motorists may easily spot them on the roads. Accompany small children on their treat-seeking excursions, encourage older children to trick or treat in groups, educate them all on the rules of the road, discourage accepting candy from or getting into cars with strangers and establish solid curfews. Discourage children from cutting through neighbors’ yards or unfamiliar areas where hazards, such as uncovered potholes or felled trees, may not be immediately evident. If you expect to be visited at your home by miniature “ghouls” and “ghosts” this season, be sure to scan your yard, walkway, steps and front porch for obstructions, holes and other objects that may cause problems or slip and fall accidents.

Make sure your children know to wait until you have a chance to inspect their candy hoard before eating. If you are dishing out treats, avoid purchasing items with small parts or candies that present a choking hazard for small children. The same rule applies when selecting costumes. Also look for materials that are labelled as flame-retardant.

Make sure your children know to wait until you have a chance to inspect their candy hoard before eating. If you are dishing out treats, avoid purchasing items with small parts or candies that present a choking hazard for small children. The same rule applies when selecting costumes.
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When sports fans enter sports arenas, the one thing that is the furthest from their minds is the possibility of a slip and fall accident. Instead their minds are on things like their favorite players, the winning odds, consuming inglorious amounts of stadium food and libations, and experiencing a level of camaraderie with perfect strangers that only a sports event could invite. However, experienced personal injury attorneys are aware of the very real possibility that a devastating accident could occur at a ballgame, successfully curbing even a die-hard fan’s every attempt at enjoyment. This is because recent years have seen a spike not only in traditional slip and fall accidents at these venues, but also in accidents of a more fatal kind.

Just this week a Georgia fan attending an Atlanta Braves Game at Turner Field lost his life when he somehow toppled over a 42-inch railing to the players’ parking lot located some 85 feet below. EMS responders found the man unresponsive on the ground minutes later. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, toxicology reports by the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office attributed his death to blunt force trauma. The city of Atlanta has seen other, similar accidents. In 2008, a spectator died after falling 150 feet inside Turner Field and just last year a fan at the Georgia Dome suffered an identical fate.
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A small victory for property owners took place in the legal arena this summer. In July, Georgia’s Supreme Court upheld the validity of a key tort reform law that permits juries to consider “the fault of [a personal injury plaintiff’s] assailants and apportion the amount of the damages based on the percentage of all those responsible for the attack.” The court also said a jury can receive a special verdict form requiring it to decide how much the [property owners] and “the assailants should pay, should the jury find them liable,” according to a report in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

By an overwhelming vote of 5-2, the high court made this decision in response to a case involving an Atlanta Red Roof Inn hotel owner and a patron who was attacked on the hotel’s premises by persons unknown. The victim sued the “owners for failing to keep their premises safe and provide adequate security.” Property owners are, of course, delighted that the tort reform law has been upheld, as it drives down costs for what they often deem to be unfortunate circumstances over which they have absolutely no control. Personal injury plaintiffs’ attorneys are concerned, however, that this ruling will have the unfair result of preventing victims from being “fully compensated for their injuries.”
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Five years after a campus shooting spree left 33 dead and numerous injured, a jury has finally weighed in on a negligence suit filed by the parents of two of the deceased. This week jurors sided with the families, finding that Virginia Tech was negligent when it delayed warning students and faculty that a shooter was on campus. Attorneys for the plaintiffs argued that the events that ensued were reasonably foreseeable. Adequate warnings just may have prevented the injuries that ensued shortly after shooter Seung-Hui Cho barred the doors of Norris Hall and commenced with the remainder of his plan, which included killing himself. The family elected to file suit after rejecting their portion of a 2008 $11 billion settlement, choosing instead to pursue justice in memory of the two young girls’ who lost their lives, even though doing so meant they’d probably receive less money. (Washington Post)

Universities and premises liability is an ever-developing area of personal injury law. Similar to the case at hand, courts have increasingly held colleges liable for failing to exercise reasonable care in preventing invitees from being harmed by third parties. In assessing such cases, courts often examine several factors including whether similar attacks had taken place before and what security measures were put in place to protect those on campus from danger. Personal injury attorneys know adverse rulings usually result when the court finds that the school took inadequate safety measures.
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The safety of cruise ships is once again being called into question after a captain’s recent error led to a deadly crash in a reef. The Costa Concordia, which grounded of the coast of Italy before capsizing, has been making sensational headlines ever since. Officials are still endeavoring to discover exactly what happened in the moments leading up to the tragedy, but they do know that the captain abandoned ship, blatantly flouting the accepted code of ethics. So far he has been charged with manslaughter, causing a wreck and abandoning ship before ensuring the safe evacuation of the ship’s passengers. Over 100 people were injured and while the death toll is capped at 16, that number is expected to increase as the search for bodies continues. As Costa Crociere SpA awaits the advent of wrongful death lawsuits that are sure to follow, the company has preemptively decided to compensate uninjured passengers with 11,000 euro ($14,460) apiece, as recompense for lost baggage and psychological distress. Should the uninjured passengers elect to accept this amount, the chances are that they will be precluded from launching lawsuits of their own.

The Concordia tragedy has highlighted some prevailing and certainly troubling issues concerning cruise line emergency procedures and practices. Some personal injury attorneys believe that cruise line passengers will quickly begin to see changes when it comes to sailing safety rules, standards, and mariner training. Others are more than convinced that the tragedy is highly unlikely to prompt big changes anytime soon. There are several reasons for this disbelief, with cost being the primary, and understandable, challenge. In fact, David Loh, a maritime lawyer with Cozen O’Connor in New York and a former lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy, told a reporter at Reuters that imposing a heavier “level of training and certification [on ship crew] would be perceived as being quite onerous.”
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According to the ABA Journal.com, earlier this month, the Colorado Supreme court reversed a lower court’s determination that Wal-Mart Stores Inc. was entitled to a new trial, and approved a $10 million award to a truck driver who had to undergo multiple spinal surgeries as a result of the injuries she sustained after slipping and falling while making a delivery to a Wal-Mart store in Greeley, Colorado. According to Denver attorney Gregory Gold, who represented the plaintiff in the case, the award could be one of the highest slip and fall verdicts in the country.

As reported by TheDenverPost.com, this case began when Holly Averyt, a 41 year old truck driver, slipped and fell on ice and grease on December 13, 2007, as she delivered a load of food to a Wal-Mart store. TheDenverPost.com also reported that as a result of her fall, Averyt ruptured a disk in her back and had to undergo several surgeries, which left her unable to work. According to her attorney, after her fall in December, Averyt had to undergo three spine surgeries, one on her neck and two on her back. Also according to her attorney, because Averyt was unable to return to work, the truck that she lived in was repossessed, and she incurred about $500,000 in medical bills.

Gold, Averyt’s attorney, took her case to trial last year, and was successful in convincing a jury that Wal-Mart knew about the grease spill, did nothing to clean it up and then lied about it in court. According to TheDenverChannel.com, Gold presented city documents showing that some grease from the store’s deli didn’t get trapped in a device designed to keep it from getting into the sewer. He argued that the overflow caused a 185-foot slick of grease into the parking lot and the truck ramp area, which accumulated for seven days.

At trial, Gold claimed that the ramp to the store’s loading dock was covered with used cooking oil and other greases that Averyt she could not see. According to Gold, she tried to report the fall to a Wal-Mart employee who met her at the receiving door, but he refused to take her report. Although Wal-Mart denied that Averyt fell at the store and also denied that a grease spill ever occurred, Averyt’s lawyer presented evidence at trial that Greeley city officials had investigated a complaint about grease coming out of a manhole cover near the Wal-Mart building in the store’s parking lot. City inspectors who went to the Wal-Mart found a blockage in the store’s grease interceptors. According to TheDenverPost.com, a man who identified himself as the store manager said the problem had been going on for a week.
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Although Georgia’s Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that a motel does not have a legal duty to check on a guest’s welfare at his wife’s request, the decision did leave open the question of whether the court may impose on hotel owners the duty to summon medical aid for a guest actually observed to be in distress, according to the Fulton County Daily Report. Accordingly, this area of premise liability appears to be continuing to evolve. For those of us who handle wrongful death cases, it seems clear that a motel has the responsibility, at the very least, to summon medical aid if they are aware of a person in distress.

The majority opinion explained its reasoning, referring to the failure of Georgia hotel night staffers to check on a man who died of heart failure after his wife’s repeated pleas from Texas as an issue of “humanity and morality,” not legality. Her husband was found the next morning by a maid, able to speak but unable to move from the floor. He died a short time later. While the Court acknowledged the tragedy of the event, to rule for the plaintiff, it said, “would be an epitomization of the adage ‘bad facts make bad law.”

The decision to grant the motel’s motion for summary judgment came despite testimony from the widow detailing her numerous failed attempts to alert motel employees to her husband’s plight. It also came despite a favorable autopsy from a cardiologist that revealed her husband might have survived had he received medical treatment that night.

This decision is particularly interesting to wrongful death attorneys who know it is a long-settled duty of innkeepers to maintain the safety of hotel premises for visitors. While I can understand the Court’s reasoning in light of case law precedents, I disagree with the court’s decision not to change that precedent. The FCDR reports that case law cited by the plaintiff’s counsel seemed to suggest that this duty applied solely where the operator of a premises knew the guest was in imminent danger because he had observed it himself. In addition, holding the motel liable would also give rise to public concerns about interference with guest privacy, something the legislative body is reluctant to do.
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As a personal injury attorney here in Atlanta, Georgia, I’m of the opinion that there’s a lesson to be learned from every case. The motto of the story I share today is fairly clear: Stick to the plans.

It was all there. The 2009 construction permits and blueprints for the elevator in the Massachusetts Mall called for the installation of barriers between the steps and the plexiglass divider. But there was no such barrier there this March when the momentum of the escalator pulled a 4-year-old boy between the gap and to his death while his parents and mall patrons looked on. Now, the mall, its owner, the construction company and the escalator corporation face a sweeping negligence lawsuit, according to The Boston Globe.

During my research, I found the escalator company is one that has come under fire before. In October of 2009, a faulty component of one of their escalator’s at the St. Louis Blues Stadium is believed to have caused it to malfunction. Several steps buckled and collapsed into each other resulting in a three-story slide for some fans. Thirteen people were injured in that accident.

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