In Ontario, a property owner must provide a visitor with a reasonable amount of safety. Still, the same visitor needs to use a reasonable amount of common sense, when moving around on the visited property.
Check to see if there was a video camera that was aimed on the area where you fell.
Most stores and restaurants have such a camera. Still, that facility does not store any footage for an extended period of time. Hence, it helps to visit the location of interest soon after the fall has taken place. Video footage would indicate whether or not a dangerous area, such as a wet spot, had been cordoned off, so that no person would venture onto that same spot. If a facility has failed to cordon off a dangerous area, then it deserves the blame for any resulting slip and fall incident.
Get the names and contact information for any witnesses.
You might need to contact the witnesses, if the property owner insists that you were guilty of contributory negligence.
What would be examples of contributory negligence in a slip and fall case?
Not wearing proper footwear: Sandals are not the best type of footwear to place on your feet, if you intend to visit a store or a restaurant. If you were to slip and fall, then that facility could easily suggest that you had refrained from donning the right type of footwear.
Not paying attention: While a property owner should warn a new visitor about any potential danger, someone that enters an area for the first time, should recognize the need to remain alert. Consequently, a visitor’s failure to pay attention could count as contributory negligence, if the inattentive visitor were to slip and fall.
What action should victim of a slip and fall incident not carry out?
Victims of such an incident should never post information related to their case on a social media network. That includes any pictures. Insurance companies pay some investigators to devote their time to visiting different social media networks. While performing those investigations, the company’s designated employees search for any recent pictures of someone with an ongoing claim. The Personal Injury Lawyer in Mississauga knows that the investigators hope to find a photograph that shows the claimant taking part in some activity that he or she should not be able to do, on the basis of the reported injury claim.
The posting of such photographs could supply the defendant’s defense team with valuable evidence. That team could use those posted pictures as evidence that the plaintiff had tried to deceive the legal minds that were serving on the defendant’s legal team. Smart plaintiffs do their best to keep a judge and jury from viewing that sort of evidence.
