Wet Floor Accidents

Restaurants and retail stores in East Tennessee need to keep their premises clean in order to attract customers. Moreover, they also have an obligation to keep the property safe for customers. Sometimes businesses fail to pay enough attention to the possibility of accidents. If you were hurt in a wet floor accident, you may need to receive medical care and take time off from work. Getting compensation may be challenging without obtaining representation from a premises liability lawyer who has the experience and resources to protect your rights. Knoxville slip and fall lawyer Mark Hartsoe is ready to represent you with the tenacity that you deserve.

Different duties are owed to different types of visitors, depending on their reasons for being on the property. Generally, however, business invitees are owed a very high duty of care by property or business owners. A business invitee is someone who enters the premises for reasons related to the economic benefit of both the business and the visitor. For example, customers of banks, offices, gyms, restaurants, and stores are business invitees. A business needs to use reasonable care to make sure that the premises are safe or issue warnings about hazards.

Among other things, this means that a business should mop its floors after hours or put up warning cones to make sure that customers do not slip and fall. Similarly, it should be inspecting the floors regularly to make sure that there have been no spills that could cause a customer to slip. Oftentimes, the video surveillance footage is critical to establishing your claim. Many businesses keep video records for a limited time, so it’s important to act promptly.

In order to recover compensation as a slip and fall victim, you will need to establish the business' actual or constructive knowledge of the wet floor. Actual knowledge may be established in situations in which a business was mopping its floors according to a set schedule and failed to put up warnings. Other cases may be more ambiguous because the owner may not have created the dangerously wet floor. For example, if another customer spilled water while shopping, the store may not know about the wet floor. However, constructive knowledge may be established in such a case if the condition lasted long enough that the business reasonably would be expected to have discovered it.

If you have been seriously injured (needing surgery, for example), and the property owner failed to take reasonable steps to correct a dangerous condition that they knew about or should have known about, call Knoxville lawyer Mark Hartsoe.

Serious injuries may result from a wet floor accident, including fractures, spinal cord injuries, and brain trauma. Experienced Knoxville slip and fall attorney Mark Hartsoe is ready to represent you if you have been hurt because a business or another property owner failed to take the proper precautions. Call the Hartsoe Law Firm at 865-804-1011 or contact us via our online form to schedule a free consultation. Injury lawyer Mark Hartsoe represents victims throughout East Tennessee, including in Knox, Blount, Monroe, Loudon, Jefferson, Grainger, Cocke, Campbell, Hamblen, Greene, Anderson, Cumberland, and Fentress Counties.