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What You Need to Know About Winter Slip and Fall Accidents

What You Need to Know About Winter Slip and Fall Accidents

The winter months in Kentucky can be incredibly dangerous for both motorists and pedestrians. Slick roads, sidewalks, entrances, driveways, and other surfaces pose a serious threat to walkers.

Although some people associate slip and falls with minor injuries, they can lead to serious injuries such as back injuries, brain or head injuries, and paralysis. Slip and fall accidents can even be fatal. If you’re a property owner or manager, you need to do your due diligence to prevent slip and fall injuries through proper maintenance of your premises and adjacent sidewalks.

In this blog, you’ll learn about what you should do after a slip and fall accident and how to determine liability.

What to Do After a Kentucky Slip and Fall Accident

If you suffer from a winter slip and fall accident, you need to perform the following steps for your safety and legal case:

  • Seek immediate medical attention: Your main priority after suffering from a fall should be your health. Whether your injuries are minor or severe, you need to visit a doctor. Symptoms of injuries may not be noticeable until days or even weeks after the accident, so you need to consult with a doctor to ensure you receive all necessary medical treatments. If you experience a serious injury, call 911. Seeking medical attention is also important for your claim if you file a personal injury case.
  • Collect evidence: If you’re physically able, collect evidence while you’re at the scene. You can identify the cause of your fall, such as an accumulation of snow and ice. If there were any witnesses to your fall, you can write down their account of the event and collect their contact information. Additionally, you can take pictures of the source of your fall on your smartphone.
  • Report the accident: Notify the owner of the property or an employee as soon as possible after the accident. If it’s a place of business, you can request a slip and fall accident report. Make sure to also write down the name of the person you spoke to.
  • Don’t talk about the accident: You should avoid talking about the accident in detail with the property owner or another person on the property. Anything you say can potentially hurt your case. Additionally, you shouldn’t talk about your case on social media. You could post something on social media that the defense then uses against you. For example, if you posted about feeling well after the fall, the defense could use it as evidence to show that your fall wasn’t serious.
  • Contact a Kentucky slip and fall lawyer: A skilled slip and fall attorney can help you with your case. They’ll assist you in determining who was at fault so that you can bring legal action against the negligent party for compensation covering medical bills, lost wages, pain and suffering, and other damages.

Determining Liability in Winter Slip and Fall Accidents

Property owners are required to keep their premises safe for others. Under premises liability, a property owner could be held legally accountable if someone slips on ice or snow on their property.

But what about public property such as sidewalks?

The responsibility for clearing sidewalks and other surfaces of ice and snow depends on where you live in Kentucky. The majority of Kentucky city ordinances require property owners or those in charge of a property to ensure the safety of others on attached sidewalks. For example, Lexington Code of Ordinances Section 17-31(a) states that:

  • “The owner or occupant or any person having the care of any building or lot abutting in any sidewalk shall remove all snow therefrom within four hours after daylight and after the falling of snow has ceased. … Whenever the sidewalk, or any portion thereof, adjoining any building or lot on any street shall be encumbered with ice it shall be the duty of the owner or occupant or any person having the care of any such building or lot to cause such sidewalk to be made safe and convenient by removing the ice therefrom or by covering the same with sand or some other suitable substance.”

In Lexington, property owners or caretakers who fail to clear snow or ice can face a misdemeanor charge and a fine between $5-$100.

Contact Kentucky Slip and Fall Accident Lawyers

Determining who’s liable for your slip and fall accident can be challenging. It could be a private property owner or a local municipality that failed to properly maintain public or private sidewalks. Additionally, proving your claim is often challenging because of the “open and obvious” doctrine, which states if a person of average intelligence would have noticed the hazard during a casual inspection, the property owner isn’t liable for the injury. Ice and snow hazards are sometimes classified as “open and obvious” depending on the case.

For legal assistance with your case, contact the slip and fall lawyers at McCoy & Sparks Attorneys at Law. We’ll represent you in and out of court so that you receive the damages you deserve for your injury. Call us at 844-459-9467, or you can schedule a free case consultation here.