When you are injured on someone else’s property due to their negligence, you could receive compensation through a slip and fall claim. California property owners have a duty to keep their property safe for others using it.
Slip and fall accidents can be more serious than you realize. Some result in serious or life-threatening injuries, especially if you are elderly or have an underlying health condition.
Filing a slip and fall claim can be complex and requires you to prove negligence under California law. Here is some information you should know before you file your claim.
Statute of limitations
You must generally file your slip and fall claim within the statute of limitations, which is two years from the date of the injury or the date you realized you were injured. The time is reduced to 6 months if your slip and fall took place on government property.
It is extremely important to file your claim within the statute of limitations. If you do not, you typically lose your right to file a claim altogether.
If you do not realize you were injured until more than two years have passed since the slip and fall, you can file and cite the date you learned about your injury as the date the statute of limitations starts. However, a court could still deny your claim if it finds that you reasonably should have known about your injury earlier.
Your status on the property matters
You typically cannot file a personal injury claim after a slip and fall accident if you were a trespasser on the property. There are some exceptions to this rule.
You must have known that you were a trespasser. If there were no “no trespassing” signs and you believed in good faith that you were allowed to be on the property, you may be able to file a claim.
Additionally, if the property owner placed traps intentionally designed to harm trespassers, you could potentially file a claim for your injuries.
How comparative negligence could impact your compensation
Proving negligence involves showing that the property owner did not exercise reasonable care to keep their property safe or they did not warn about any dangers. These dangers must be non-obvious hazards that you could not have seen yourself and the property owner must have known about them.
You can still recover compensation if you were negligent yourself. California is a comparative negligence state.
This means that a court weighs the percentage of fault between each party and uses that to determine compensation.
For example, if you request $100,000 in damages and you are found to be 50% at fault for the accident, you will only recover $50,000.
The comparative negligence rule demonstrates how important it is to build a strong case for negligence after a slip and fall accident. Slip and fall accidents can unexpectedly alter your entire life. You have a right to file a claim for your medical bills, lost income and pain and suffering.