Slip and Fall Cases are Tough says Fairfax Attorney Ben Glass

I must get at least three calls a week by people who have been injured after a fall. Many of these cases involve falls on slippery substances.

Can these people recover compensation for their injuries, lost wages, medical bills and pain?

The law is that a property owner is only responsible to someone who is injured if that property owner was careless.

Generally, in a slip and fall case it means:

1. The property owner actually caused the substance to be on the floor. This can happen through a careless employee or through a device, such as a freezer, that leaks.

2. If the property owner did not cause the slick substance to be on the floor, then the substance must have been on the floor long enough for the property owner to have reasonably known about it AND not done anything about it.

This means that, in the case of a store such as Giant or Safeway, the mere fact that the floor may be slippery does not mean you will recover. It may have been that just a minute before hand a child or other customer accidently spilled something.

If the property own did not know about the spill then he can't be careless, or "negligent" by failing to clean it up.

One more factor for Virginia cases. The law of "contributory negligence" says that if you are in any way responsible for your own injuries, you cannot recover. So part of the reason why you fell is that you were not looking where you were going, you cannot recover for your injuries.

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