Personal Accidents/Injuries

Premises liability accidents mainly occur in commercial settings such as grocery or retail stores, gyms, recreation centers, parking structures, or hospitals, but they can also occur on public property or in private residences. Legal remedies are generally available to you if you have been injured in a slip, trip, and fall accident despite where the accident occurred.

Oregon premises liability lawsuits tend to turn on the specific facts of each individual case and they require a prompt and thorough investigation of the fall-related accident. If you slip into a store or restaurant in Oregon, the question of the property owner’s liability will turn on whether the owner knew or should have known of the dangerous condition on the premises. Factual evidence that will be important includes:

Defective Condition or Foreign Substance: Is the defective condition that caused your injury a broken step that has been in disrepair for months or drainage from a leak in a water cooler that started this morning? A broken step that remains in disrepair is called a “static condition”, which a business owner generally will be presumed to know exists and have a duty to repair. A spill or leak is something that may change or emerge suddenly. A property owner’s liability for this second type of hazard will typically turn on the duration of time that has passed since the condition emerged and the maintenance practices in place by the property owner for discovering, preventing, and cleaning up hazards.

Duration of the Hazardous Condition: If a spill occurs only moments before a person slips, it will be difficult to prove that a property owner was liable for any accidents resulting from the condition. It may be necessary to establish that an employee witnessed a foreign, slippery, or sticky substance on the floor and failed to clean it up in order to hold a property owner liable. Conversely, if a spilled liquid or sticky substance has remained on the floor for a substantial period of time, a business owner or property owner may be presumed to have constructive knowledge of the danger even if no employee was aware of the dangerous condition. Property owners operating a business have an obligation to conduct reasonable maintenance procedures to keep their floors and premises clear of debris or foreign substances. For this reason, the more time that has elapsed between the time when a dangerous condition came into existence and the time of an accident due to that condition, the more likely the property owner will be found liable for negligence.

Surrounding Conditions: Hazardous conditions such as a broken and uneven floor tile, a spilled beverage, or a missing stairway guard-rail may all create a basis for liability in Oregon if the property owner did not take reasonable care to warn of the danger or to correct the hazardous condition. However, your premises liability must also develop additional evidence supporting a finding that the business owner did not take reasonable care to protect against slip and fall accidents. Pieces of evidence that reasonable care was not taken include but are not limited to the following:

• Poor lighting or non-working lights
• A history of similar accidents in safety reports for the business
• Evidence of related prior emergency medical calls to the property
• Past lawsuits or settlements related to negligent maintenance of the premises.
• Negative safety reports or findings from inspections
• Existing slip and fall maintenance procedures and policies
• Compliance with safety regulations (i.e. building codes)
• A business’ actual practices of performing inspections and cleanups of spilled substances
• Analysis from surveillance videos
• Expert analysis regarding the degree of slip resistance in flooring (this is formally called a floor’s friction coefficient)

This is an abbreviated list of the kinds of investigation that are required to build a case in premises liability that will allow you to successfully recover damages available if you have suffered from a serious slip, trip, and fall accident in Oregon. Thorough expert investigation and analysis are required to flesh out your case and to provide you with the best chance of prevailing under Oregon law. The experienced premises liability attorneys at Dwyer Williams Cherkoss Attorneys, PC use innovative and sophisticated litigation strategies and conduct an exhaustive investigation in order to ensure that your recovery is maximal.