Slip and Fall Lawyers in Delaware County: Proving the Owner Knew

Notice is the case

Falling and being hurt is not enough. Pennsylvania asks whether the property owner knew, or should have known, about the hazard and failed to deal with it. There are three routes:

• They created it. An employee mopped and left no sign, or stacked something that fell.
• Actual notice. Somebody told them, or an employee saw it. Prior complaints and previous incidents in the same spot are gold.
• Constructive notice. It had been there long enough that a reasonable inspection would have caught it. This is where most cases are won or lost, and it is why how long the spill had been there matters more than how large it was.

A puddle that appeared 30 seconds before you walked through it is usually not a case. The same puddle with dried edges, cart tracks through it and footprints around it is a very different one, which is why photographs taken immediately are worth more than any statement made later.

The video is the evidence, and it does not last

Nearly every commercial property records video, and most systems overwrite on a loop, commonly within 30 days and sometimes less. It will show how long the hazard was present, whether staff walked past it, and what actually happened rather than what the incident report says.

Once it is gone it is gone. A preservation letter early is often the difference between proving constructive notice and arguing about it.

What to do before you leave

1. Report it and insist on a written incident report. Ask for a copy. If they will not give one, note the name of who took it.
2. Photograph the hazard before it is cleaned up, from several angles, including one wide enough to show the location and any missing warning sign.
3. Photograph your footwear. The defense will raise it. Get ahead of it.
4. Get witness names and numbers, including other customers.
5. Get treated, and say where and how it happened.

Snow and ice, and the hills and ridges doctrine

Pennsylvania applies a rule that surprises people. During an ongoing storm and for a reasonable time afterwards, a property owner is generally not liable for the natural accumulation of snow and ice. To recover you usually have to show the snow and ice had unreasonably accumulated in ridges or elevations that constituted a danger, that the owner knew or should have known, and that this is what caused the fall.

The doctrine does not apply where the ice was not a natural accumulation: a downspout discharging across a walkway, a refreezing pattern caused by poor drainage, or ice created by the owner’s own clearing. Those are ordinary negligence cases, and they are often winnable where a straightforward storm case is not.

What status you had on the property

An invitee, a customer in a shop, is owed the highest duty, including reasonable inspection. A licensee, a social guest, is owed less. A trespasser is owed least. Most cases we see are invitees, and the inspection duty is precisely what makes constructive notice provable.