Slip-and-fall accidents happen every day, ranging from minor slips at home to serious falls in grocery stores, restaurants, office buildings, staircases, and parking lots. When a dangerous condition on someone else’s property is to blame, the property owner may be held liable for the injuries that follow. Here is what you should know about how these falls happen, who is responsible, and the injuries they can cause.
Slip-and-fall accidents by the numbers
Falls are one of the leading reasons Americans end up in an emergency room, accounting for millions of visits a year according to national injury-surveillance data. The cost is heaviest among older adults, where a fall is a common trigger for a hip fracture, a head injury, and a long loss of independence. Most falls happen at home, but a large share occur in stores, restaurants, office buildings, and other places open to the public, and those are the ones that raise questions about who is responsible.
The exact figures vary by source and by year, so treat any single number as an estimate rather than a fixed fact. What is consistent across the data is the pattern: falls are common, they are expensive, and both the risk of falling and the risk of a serious injury climb sharply after age 65.
Common causes of slip-and-falls
Slip-and-fall accidents can occur randomly in a variety of locations, such as grocery stores, restaurants, and office buildings, and the culprit is often an uneven or slippery surface that poses risks that could have been minimized had the at-fault party acted responsibly. Common causes of slip-and-fall accidents include:
- Inadequate lighting
- Missing or misplaced warning signs
- Debris on floors
- Wet or slippery flooring
- Uneven flooring or stairs
- Broken tiles
- Holes in flooring
- Cracked pavement
Not every fall is someone else’s fault, though. A property owner is generally liable only where a dangerous condition existed, the owner knew or should have known about it, and the owner failed to fix it or warn you. That is why the details matter so much, and why it is worth having a personal injury attorney look at what actually caused your fall before you assume you do or do not have a claim.
Slip-and-fall accidents on staircases
Nearly everyone in the United States uses stairs at some point in their day-to-day lives, and slip-and-fall accidents on staircases can occur just about anywhere. Many are minor. Others are not, and stairs are unusually good at producing severe injuries because a fall on them involves height, momentum, and hard edges. Stair falls send roughly a million Americans to emergency rooms each year by common industry estimates, and they are a meaningful share of fall deaths. As with falls generally, both the odds of falling and the odds of a serious injury rise considerably after age 65.
While falls on stairs often come down to a simple loss of balance, many result from dangerous physical conditions on or around the staircase. Common examples include:
- Broken or loose railings
- Debris or objects on the stairs
- Weak or cracked treads
- Wet or slippery stairs
- Stairs that are too steep or too narrow
- Missing railings or guards where a building code requires them
- Poor lighting in a stairwell
- Inconsistent riser heights, which break a walker’s rhythm
If any such or similar conditions contributed to your slip-and-fall accident, you may have a viable claim against the property owner.
Parking lot slip-and-fall accidents
Although walking through a parking lot may seem like a simple, straightforward task, there are many parking lot slip and fall accidents that occur each year. These falls can be costly, and the medical bills add up quickly. Parking lot owners owe visitors a duty of reasonable care, which means finding and fixing hazards a reasonable owner would catch, not a guarantee that nobody will ever be hurt there.
Several things in a parking lot can cause a slip and fall. Uneven or crumbling pavement can catch a foot, and spilled oil, loose gravel, or trash can turn into an obstruction. Both are the kind of condition a lot owner is expected to find and fix through regular maintenance.
Winter ice is the exception, and it surprises people. Illinois follows what courts call the natural accumulation rule: a property owner generally has no legal duty to remove snow and ice that accumulated naturally, and slipping on an ordinary patch of winter ice usually is not enough on its own to support a claim. The reasoning is that owners cannot realistically keep every surface clear through an Illinois winter.
What can support a claim is an unnatural accumulation, meaning ice or snow the owner’s own conduct created or made worse. Common examples include water that pooled and refroze because of a defective downspout or bad drainage, a slick patch left by plowing snow into a pile that melted and ran across a walkway, or an icy spot the owner created while clearing the lot and then left. An owner who takes on snow removal and does it carelessly can also be liable for the hazard that careless work created. The Snow and Ice Removal Act (745 ILCS 75/2) adds another layer for residential property, protecting owners and occupants from liability for injuries caused by the snowy or icy condition of a sidewalk resulting from their own removal efforts unless the conduct was willful or wanton. Whether a given patch of ice was natural or unnatural is a fact question that often decides the case, so photographs taken the day of the fall are valuable.
Injuries from slip-and-fall accidents
While these falls often result in minor injuries such as bruises and scrapes, their unexpected and surprising nature can also cause more serious injuries, such as broken limbs, dislocated joints, traumatic brain injuries (TBIs), and damage to the neck, back, or spinal cord. Falls on the hard concrete pavement of a parking lot can be especially serious, with victims reporting concussions, broken or fractured bones, spinal or neck injury, and traumatic brain injury. Staircase falls, too, can cause long-term injuries if not treated properly, such as:
- Back injuries
- Broken bones, especially hips among older adults
- Internal bleeding or organ damage
- Spinal cord injuries
- Traumatic brain injuries
Who is liable?
Property owners have a duty of care to inspect and maintain their premises to ensure that all guests and visitors are reasonably safe. Unfortunately, however, they do not always commit the necessary time and effort to address potentially-dangerous conditions until it is too late. If you are injured in a slip-and-fall on another person’s property, that person – as the property-owner or the party responsible for its upkeep and maintenance – may be held liable for your injuries if his or her negligence was the proximate cause of your accident.
Depending on the circumstances of the case, the victim may sue the property owner of the apartment or business where it occurred, or the operators of the property, if it is rented. Because liability is not always clear-cut, it is important to speak with an experienced personal injury attorney who can determine who may be responsible for your injuries.
Illinois rules that decide these cases
Three Illinois rules shape almost every slip-and-fall claim, and two of them are deadlines that can end a case before anyone looks at the merits.
The first is time. In most cases you have two years from the date of the fall to file a personal-injury lawsuit in Illinois (735 ILCS 5/13-202). If you fell on property belonging to a city, village, park district, school district, transit agency, or other local public entity, that drops to one year (745 ILCS 10/8-101). People are often surprised by this one, because a fall on a municipal sidewalk, at a public library, or in a park district lot looks no different from a fall at a grocery store.
The second is fault-sharing. Illinois uses modified comparative negligence: your damages are reduced by your own share of the fault, and if you are found more than 50% at fault you recover nothing (735 ILCS 5/2-1116). This is exactly where the defense goes in fall cases, arguing that you were distracted, wearing the wrong shoes, or ignoring a wet-floor sign. Being partly at fault does not end your claim, but it does reduce it.
The third is notice. You generally have to show the owner knew about the dangerous condition or should have discovered it in time to do something. A puddle that had been there for hours, a railing reported broken weeks earlier, or a hazard the owner created are all far stronger than a spill that happened moments before you walked through it. This is why reporting the fall in writing, photographing the condition, and asking whether surveillance video exists all matter on day one.
Contact 844-SEE-MIKE
If you or a loved one has been injured in a slip-and-fall, 844-SEE-MIKE can look at what happened and tell you honestly whether there is a claim worth pursuing. We are a Chicago-based injury firm representing people and families across Illinois, we will keep you informed at every step, and we are prepared to try a case when an insurer will not deal fairly. You pay nothing unless we recover money for you. This article is general information, not legal advice.
