Slips, trips and falls in Orange County (link to page) are an almost everyday occurrence. Unfortunately property owners who have a duty to eliminate hazards or situations that can foreseeably contribute to injury many times do not. A potential hazard becomes real when a person actually slips, trips or falls as a result of this type of negligence. According to OSHA statistics, fall protection is the most-cited violation in the workplace.
However, slips are not limited to outsiders to a business. They can and do affect employees. Once more, and employer has a duty to see that potential hazards in the workplace are removed and that employees remain safe. One major cause of slips and falls is wet or slippery surfaces, which, according to one study, accounts for 25% of all slip and fall injuries and it’s easy to see why
What may not be evident and what is surprising to many is that the vast majority of slip and fall accidents have human error as a contributing factor.
Slip and fall injuries may have a human error factor
Safestart, a workplace safety education and training company conducted a survey of over 1,200 safety professionals and found that ninety-five percent reported human error as a factor in workplace accidents. Human error often contributes to workplace injuries like trips, slips or falls. The hazard may have existed prior to the accident, but it was facilitated many times by an error in judgment.
Some examples given by Safestart include things like workplace tidiness, delay in reporting a slippery area and even how quickly people move throughout the workplace. Any of these things can be a contributor to a fall or other injury but employees’ perception of them as risk factors is often nonexistent. This makes it harder for employers to find solutions to minimize risks.
I have found in the twenty-eight years I have been helping people get justice by pursuing slip and falls and trip falls that the safety procedures set up by supermarkets, restaurants, malls and other retailers are lacking. Many property owners have policies that pay “lip service” to safety, claiming to perform “zone defense” regarding potential slip or trip hazards where employees are supposed to be scanning the floors and looking for spills, products that have fallen on the floor or other trip hazards in the aisle of their respective stores. Unfortunately, these claimed strategies, such as “zone defense”, are not effective in practice and under the law are inadequate. A significant case in the long line of premises liability cases was the Californa Supreme Court case, Ortega v. Kmart Corporation, Ortega was a case where the injured person slipped on milk on the floor of the Kmart store and was seriously injured. The California Supreme Court said:
“A store owner exercises ordinary care by making reasonable inspections of the portions of the premises open to customers, and the care required is commensurate with the risks involved. (See Bridgman, supra, 53 Cal.2d at p. 448, 2 Cal.Rptr. 146, 348 P.2d 696.) If the owner operates a self-service grocery store, where customers are invited to inspect, remove, and replace goods on shelves, “the exercise of ordinary care may require the owner to take greater precautions and make more frequent inspections than 475*475 would otherwise be needed to safeguard against the possibility that such a customer may create a dangerous condition by disarranging the merchandise” and creating potentially hazardous conditions. (Ibid.) “However, the basic principle to be followed in all these situations is that the owner must use the care required of a reasonably prudent [person] acting under the same circumstances.” (Ibid.)”
The Court went on to hold that injured person can establish liability against the property owner if they can prove constructive knowledge sufficient that a jury could find the dangerous condition was present long enough to find the property owner negligent for the slip and fall. The Court held:
We conclude that plaintiffs still have the burden of producing evidence that the dangerous condition existed for at least a sufficient time to support a finding that the defendant had constructive notice of the hazardous condition. (Perez, supra, 200 Cal.App.2d at p. 561, 19 Cal.Rptr. 372.) We also conclude, however, that plaintiffs may demonstrate the storekeeper had constructive notice of the dangerous condition if they can show that the site had not been inspected within a reasonable period of time so that a person exercising due care would have discovered and corrected the hazard. (Bridgman, supra, 53 Cal.2d at p. 447, 2 Cal.Rptr. 146, 348 P.2d 696.) In other words, if the plaintiffs can show an inspection was not made within a particular period of time prior to an accident, they may raise an inference the condition did exist long enough for the owner to have discovered it. (Ibid.) It remains a question of fact for the jury whether, under all the circumstances, the defective condition existed long enough so that it would have been discovered and remedied by an owner in the exercise of reasonable care.
Another statistic cited in the report is that a workers’ mental state can vary over the course of the day. Rushing to complete a task or being tired or frustrated can alter a worker’s state of mind such that they are not thinking as clearly as they might. This altered mental state can increase the risk of slips or trips in the work environment. After eliminating physical safety hazards, companies should also address human factors like those listed above.
Of course, workplace safety should always be a top priority, but for those persons who are not employed by a company but merely visiting one of its locations the burden on a company is double to foresee and eliminate situations that could lead to the injury of one of their customers or visitors. Our experience is that workplace safety is lacking in the actual policies that are set to paper and further deficient when those flawed policies are put into practice by the employees of the business or retail store. I have worked with professional engineers over my legal career to evaluate the safety procedures that were in place and the safety of flooring surfaces in stores, water parks, sidewalks, apartment complex and business sites. Many attorneys lack the background experience, expertise in this area of the law and the resources, such as engineering experts in order to be successful in slip and fall and trip and fall cases. One of the best predictors for future success is past performance. Our firm has decades of successful results in pursuing slip and fall and trip and fall matters.
Orange County: Larger Population, Greater Number of Slips and Falls
The North Orange County Chamber of Commerce lists no less than eighty-eight manufacturing firms as members. Given Orange County’s large population coupled with a high number of manufacturing firms it stands to reason that companies in this area need to make safety job number one. For companies that have a lot of customer interaction (like grocery stores) they need to constantly be proactive in assuring a safe, hazard-free environment.
When human error becomes a factor (for example, not addressing a wet surface in a timely manner) then it’s the customer who suffers when this lack of judgment results in their slipping, tripping or falling.
Once a trip and fall occurs, no amount of hindsight is going to reverse the affects or eliminate the injury. The damage has been done and a person’s life may have been irrevocably altered. Because of the complexity oftentimes of contributing factors, it’s necessary to enlist the services of a competent personal injury attorney to help assess fault and to hold those responsible who played a role in a client’s injury.
If human error played a role in a slip, trip or fall, and a company did not address this in their overall approach to safety, it is another factor in the negligence of the company or property owner.
If you suffered an injury as a result of a slip and fall or trip and fall in any Orange County city, do not hesitate to call Kyle Scott Law in Tustin at 714-544-460 or Toll Free: 866-757-0959. You consultation is free and we charge no fee until we win your case. If you are hurt, we can help!