When You Slip and Nobody Sees You Fall, Can You Still Build a Successful Personal Injury Case?
Posted on: 19 July 2016
What happens when you slip and fall on something wet on the floor of a store or office building and nobody sees you go down? The owner's insurance company (or the owner) may suggest that without witnesses, you don't have a potential injury case—but that's not really true. There are a lot of ways to get evidence in a slip-and-fall accident even when there are no witnesses around to see you fall. Here are some options.
1.) Make use of cameras.
Studies suggest that you could be caught on surveillance cameras more than 75 times a day—which means that even if human eyes weren't on you when you took your fall, electronic eyes might have been watching. There may be video cameras hiding in the ceiling where you fell, most likely as part of the building's security services.
2.) Keep your clothing.
There's no doubt that the owner of the store or office is going to clean up whatever liquid you slipped on, and you may not have the slightest idea what it actually was. More than likely, however, you landed in some of it. Your clothes may be able to be tested to determine exactly what was on the ground where you fell, and the size of the stain may give some indication of how much liquid was on the ground. Similarly, the shoes you had on when you fell might also contain evidence in the groves on their bottoms or the fabric on their tops.
Make sure that you take off the clothes and shoes that you were wearing when you fell and put them in a paper bag to preserve any evidence that's on them. It's important to remember that wet evidence always goes in paper containers in order to keep evidence from degrading.
3.) Talk to emergency responders.
While nobody saw you take the fall, somebody probably helped you back up. If you were hurt in the fall, when you yelled out in pain or called for help, the odds are very good that employees, other customers, or management came running to your assistance. That means that they saw you on the ground right after you'd fallen, and they can testify to your condition as you lay there. If you were unable to get up on your own and an ambulance was called, the EMTs who responded are also potential witnesses that can testify to your condition immediately after the fall. That sort of evidence can be just as compelling to a jury as the testimony of someone who actually saw you fall.
4.) Rely on your credibility.
Your case may also rely, in part, on your personal credibility. If you are clear and direct about what happened, how it happened, and the suffering you've experienced as a result, a jury may attach a lot of weight to your word alone. Juries understand that accidents don't all happen under ideal conditions—which means that sometimes a case comes down to how much they believe the word of each person involved.
Don't assume that you don't have any evidence just because you didn't take your fall in front of a crowd of people. Talk to a personal injury attorney such as one from GSJones Law Group, P.S. about the possibility of building your case with other available evidence instead.
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