I have received more than a few calls from people looking to collect money damages for injuries resulting from a slip or fall at a business. Sometimes a case will have merit. Sometimes it won’t. I always investigate and try to help. However, the bottom line of Georgia law is that just because you fall on a business property doesn’t mean you can sue them and collect money damages.
A long line of Georgia cases have held that a merchant is not the insurer for his customers for all injuries that they suffer on his property. Gibson v. Consolidated Credit Corp., 110 Ga.App. 170, 138 S.E.2d 77 (1964). The cases hold that the basis of liability in a slip and fall case is the proprietor's superior knowledge of a perilous condition. What does that mean to a slip and fall victim?
Let’s say it is raining, or even snowing, and you fall walking into your favorite grocery store. When it is raining, the customer and the proprietor have equal knowledge that the floor near the door may be wet from customers tracking in water, thereby precluding recovery in many rainy day slip and fall cases. E.g., Gibson, 110 Ga.App. at 174, 138 S.E.2d 77. I recently successfully defended an uninsured owner of a beauty salon in a similar case where a customer slipped in her salon on a rainy day.
In Gibson, the archetypal case in this area, the court held that the duty of a merchant is only to protect others against an unreasonable risk of harm. Upholding summary judgment for the defendant in another case in which the plaintiff had fallen when she walked into the defendant's store while it was drizzling outside, the court held that the plaintiff should have known that the floor could be wet and that the store did not have knowledge of the wet conditions that was superior to the plaintiff. 110 Ga.App. at 179, 138 S.E.2d 77. The court noted, "everybody knows that, when people are entering a building when it is raining, they will carry some moisture on their feet, which renders the floor near the door on the inside damp to some extent ..." Id. at 173, 138 S.E.2d 77.
So when do you have a case? I recently won a settlement for a client that fell at a funeral home. It seems the funeral home had a veranda with some rocking chairs for the convenience of its guests. Unfortunately, the rocking chairs had been stolen on several occasions. To combat the thefts, the funeral home installed eye bolts at each end of the line of chairs and ran a chain between the eye bolts over the bottom of the chairs to secure them.
One night my client was coming for visitation. Apparently, the staff had removed the chairs this particular night. My client approached one door to the funeral home that was locked. She then walked to the next door across the path where the chairs had been and tripped over one of the eye bolts in the veranda floor. She suffered a rather severe broken wrist and required surgery. In her case, I was able to successfully argue that the funeral home had superior knowledge of the risk of fall from the eye bolts and that the eye bolts caused an unreasonable risk of harm that resulted in my client’s damages. She recovered her medical expenses and compensation for pain and suffering.
So to answer the question, do I have a case when I fall and hurt myself at a business, the answer is a definite maybe. The best way to find out is to call a lawyer for a free consultation. 404-401-7338
