Have you suffered a slip and fall injury at a rental property?  Here’s what you should know.

Slip and fall accidents are common and can lead to questions about who exactly is liable for the injuries and medical bills, along with missed pay and other costs. Knowing the cause of the fall is not always enough to figure out where liability lies because additional factors can quickly change the story surrounding the incident. This is especially true of rental housing, where people other than you are typically responsible for property upkeep.

Cause, Knowledge, Negligence and Reasonable Effort

The liability for a slip and fall accident depends on four things. One is the core cause; for example, slipping on a wet floor or tripping over the raised edge of a carpet. This can identify who is liable to an extent because, if you slipped and fell on, say, water that you spilled on the floor, that’s not going to be anyone else’s fault.

The next is knowledge of the problem. If you slipped and fell on a wet bathroom floor from a water pipe that had started leaking, but you and your landlord didn’t know about the leak until you fell, the landlord can’t really be responsible for your injuries. If they didn’t know, then they didn’t have a chance to fix the problem. The same goes for problems that you knew about but hadn’t contacted the landlord to complain. Liable parties need to have prior knowledge of whatever is causing a problem.

The third and fourth things are negligence and reasonable effort. If you told your landlord about a leak, and the landlord did nothing — and then you slipped — you could have a case against your landlord.

Instead of trying to figure out who is liable on your own, call Eisenberg Law Offices at 608-256-8356. Speak with one of our slip and fall attorneys to see if you have a case against someone else for your slip and fall injuries.