Slip & Fall
Premises Liability Cases in Georgia -
The "Catch 22" in Georgia
law which heavily favors Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Publix, Kroger
and other large corporations.
Craig Hardegree, Esq.
Many customers are under the
impression that if they slip and fall in a business, the
business owner is automatically responsible for any
medical expenses incurred in connection with the fall,
simply because the fall occurred on the business property.
Georgia courts follow the
“superior knowledge” rule when determining whether a
premises owner is responsible for someone slipping and
falling on a foreign substance (water, banana peel, etc.)
while on the business property. Usually, in order for a
person who falls to prevail on such a claim, the person
has to show that: 1) the store owner knew or should have
known about the substance being on the floor before the
person fell and 2) the person who fell could not have
discovered the substance herself through the exercise of
ordinary care.
This rule is very protective
of the business owner and makes it extremely difficult for
the customer to prevail. The customer rarely has a viable
claim which will survive in court because of the
“catch-22” within which the law places the customer. If
the customer says that the substance on the floor was so
obvious that the store owner should have seen it, the
customer has then invited the argument that if it was so
obvious, the customer should have seen it as well. On the
other hand, if the customer says that the substance was so
hidden or camouflaged that the customer couldn’t have
possibly seen it before slipping on it, then the customer
has given the owner a great argument that if it was so
hidden, there was no way for the store owner to have known
about it in time to clean it up before the customer fell.
Formerly, most such cases were
simply dismissed by the courts, without ever getting to a
jury, if the customer failed the litmus question on the
second prong of the rule. If the customer admitted that
she could have seen the substance had she been looking
down at the floor, the case was dismissed. The courts
reasoned that a person was not being as careful as she
could have been if she wasn’t looking down at the floor at
all times. A few years ago, the Georgia Court of Appeals
issued a ruling saying that the law in Georgia would no
longer require a person to be constantly looking at the
floor, recognizing the reality that most people are
looking at merchandise while in a store. For a time after
that, more slip and fall cases were allowed to proceed on
to a jury, instead of simply being dismissed by the court.
Recently however, a new trend has emerged
where the courts are again dismissing most slip and fall
cases before they ever reach a jury, this time on the
first prong of the rule. With the new litmus question, if
a customer states that there was no way she could have
seen the substance before she slipped in it, then the case
is dismissed on the theory that there is no way the
customer would be able to prove to a jury that the store
owner should have seen it; hence, there is reason for the
case to go to a jury.
If you have been
involved in a car wreck, auto accident, truck collision, motor
vehicle crash or any other personal injury case and you live in
the cities of
Carrollton, Bremen, Bowdon, Villa Rica, Temple, Hiram, Dallas,
Douglasville or in Carroll County or Douglas County or in the
Counties of
Haralson, Paulding or Clayton, please
contact
our Douglasville Personal Injury Law Center for a free consultation
with a personal injury lawyer.
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