Mʏᴇʀs & Cᴏᴍᴘᴀɴʏ
Reframing a Slip and Fall Case as a Building Code Violation
Slip and fall cases seem like they'd be easy. But they're disproportionately complicated.
One of the problems is showing exactly how slippery the surface was at the time of the fall and how much notice the defendant had before the fall happened.
Slippery conditions are usually transient.
What I like so much better are fall cases involving Building Code violations.
Building Code violations existed before the fall and stay in the same condition after the fall. They're objective and geometric. They're easy to explain to jurors.
We represented a man who was injured when he slipped and fell down a set of stairs at the house where he rented a room. During the fall he broke his ankle.
We opened a claim with the property owner’s insurance company.
The insurance company was quick to point out:
Our client fell down the stairs while he was trying to leave the house to go to the casino in the middle of the night.
Our client knew the stairs were slippery (he’d previously notified the landlord about the condition of the stairs).
Our client should have either avoided them or been more careful negotiating them.
The stairs were made of pressure-treated lumber. Not super slip-resistant. But at the same time not something that would shock the conscience of many jurors.
I drove out to the home in Everett. Admittedly I was harboring some resentment because traffic was bad and I didn't think this was going to be a great case.
Then I saw the stairs. The client had told me all about how slippery they were, how he had complained to the landlord, etc.
But he hadn't told me how many risers there were in the stairs. I was elated. There were four risers!
That isn't something that would make most people super-happy. But to me it was hitting a jackpot.
Why? Because four or more risers means there needs to be a handrail.
And the absence of a handrail means that how or why the client lost their balance doesn't matter. It doesn't matter whether they slipped, tripped, misjudged where they were stepping, etc. What matters is there wasn't a railing they could use to catch their balance.
We didn’t let the insurance company shift blame to our client. It didn’t matter whether the client knew that the stairs could be slippery. The lack of a handrail meant the insurance company was on the hook.
We settled the case for the property owner’s policy limits in less than three months.
Two claps for the Building Code providing the kind of protection tenants need and bringing certainty to an area of law that can be frustratingly slippery.