Washington Premises Liability Attorney

This video features Rebeccah Graham, a Personal Injury attorney based in Washington.

What to Do When Injured on Someone Else’s Property

Video Transcript: 

Rebeccah Graham: 

Everyone has a duty to keep their premises safe for ordinary use.

Rob Rosenthal: 

So if you're hurt on someone else's property because of their negligence, can you sue? How do you get help? We're gonna get the answers to those questions and a lot more right now as we ask the lawyer. Hi again, everybody. I'm Rob Rosenthal with askthelawyers.com, and my guest is Washington State Attorney, Rebeccah Graham. I wanna remind you, right off the top, if you'd like to ask questions of your own, just go to askthelawyers.com and click the button at the top that says 'Ask a lawyer' and you can do it right there, or you can call the phone number that's on the screen when we're talking to Rebeccah. Rebeccah it's good to see you. Thank you for making some time to answer our questions.

Rebeccah Graham: 

Alright, thanks. Good morning. Good to be here.

Rob Rosenthal: 

We're talking about what lawyers like to call premises liability. So let's start with the definition. What is premises liability? Explain that.

Rebeccah Graham: 

Sure, so premises liability is basically when you're injured on someone else's property, a business, a home, a residence. Oftentimes, it's a business though, so a business like an office building, hotel, museum, any time you are on someone else's property, those are premises, and so a lot of people call those cases slip and fall, and that doesn't really capture the... Sort of makes it seem like it's somebody's fault, the person who fell and was injured, so we try not to call those cases slip and fall, but we try to refer to them as premises liability cases. Essentially, the business has an obligation to keep their premises safe for the invitees, people who come to the business, or your home for example, you can also be injured in someone else's home. So everyone has a duty to keep their premises safe for ordinary use. And if...

Rob Rosenthal:

How common are these injuries? Let's say in someone's business, that sort of thing, how common are these type of injuries?

Rebeccah Graham: 

Yeah, I'd say that they're very common. People often are injured on someone else's property. What's probably less common, why we don't hear about this so often is that the injuries have to be fairly severe for someone to wanna do something about it. So for example, if you were walking down the sidewalk and you tripped, you fell, you scraped up your hands, you're not gonna do anything, that's just normal, that's gonna happen. But if you fell on the sidewalk, you tripped, and of a defect in the sidewalk that the municipality didn't take care of, and you broke your nose, you hit your head, you knocked out your teeth, you've got a claim, and you might wanna talk to a lawyer about that claim. So those are less common, but those are the types of cases that lawyers typically will get involved in.

Rob Rosenthal:

Can there, in some of these cases, be even more severe injuries? I would think in those kind of thing, if you hit your head or maybe you have some sort of head injury that could get pretty serious.

Rebeccah Graham: 

Absolutely. We have seen cases where injuries are catastrophic, for example, we've had one case where a gal slipped in vomit that had been left on the floor of a hotel for way longer than it should have been, and she fractured her hip, she needed immediate surgery the next day, and then she... After... Because she was... She wasn't in her 20s or 30s, she was in her early 60s, that injury didn't heal very well, and so she's gonna walk with a limp for the rest of her life, so that's pretty serious. We also see people who fall and they have a pretty serious brain injury, we call those colloquially concussions, but really, they're serious brain injuries and they can have devastating impacts on people that affect them for the rest of their lives.

Rebeccah Graham: 

So oftentimes, we see fractured wrists, fractured arms, sometimes a fractured hip, a fractured leg. I have a former client who fell down some stairs, fractured both of her elbows and broke her nose and also had a serious brain injury, that really affected her ability to do her job. So these injuries can be serious, very serious, they not only can be serious where in terms of fractures or brain injuries, but especially for elderly people, those types of injuries ultimately can lead to their demise and their death. So we take those cases seriously, we prosecute them very aggressively, and we try to get justice for those people who are injured when some business failed to do its job and take care... And make their premises safe.

Rob Rosenthal: 

Rebeccah, obviously, you can't know for sure if you don't see the people, but do you suspect that maybe there's people that probably would have had cases, but in some of these situations, "Oh, I'm embarrassed, I fell, I'm embarrassed, I just wanna get out of here and get away from the situation." Do you suspect that maybe that happens sometimes, where they probably should have followed up.

Rebeccah Graham: 

100%. Can you imagine yourself, you're walking down some stairs, you trip, you fall, you're banged up and you think, "Oh my God, it's my fault." And you don't wanna do anything about it. It's a natural instinct to feel embarrassed about what happened, and think that you did something wrong. Oftentimes we find is that the person who was injured really didn't do anything wrong, they weren't distracted, they were looking where they were going, they were paying attention, but for some real defect in the property, they would not have fallen and been injured. So I'll give you another example. I have a former client who was a volunteer at a non-profit agency, and she went to use the bathroom, and when she opened the door to exit to go to the area where the bathroom was, there was this large wooden strip that was holding the carpet together, kind of like you use a transition strip for carpeting, but...

Rebeccah Graham: 

And that's not a problem, but this wooden strip had some screws in it, and over time those screws had gotten loose and were sticking up by almost a quarter of an inch, and she caught her foot on that screw, fell forward, stopped her in her tracks and landed smack down on her knee, breaking her kneecap. And that was a devastating injury, and it was obvious after we investigated the case what had happened, she hadn't done anything wrong, but this business hadn't taken care of its basic safety, basic rule to provide a safe environment for its customers, its volunteers, anyone who's coming to its premises.

Rob Rosenthal: 

So one thing that occurs to me as we're talking about the fact is, a lot of times people are embarrassed and they just wanna get away from the situation, if that happens and let's say it's a few days down the line and then maybe their injuries were more serious than they thought, or maybe they talk to people that go, "You know what, you might have a case," is it too late then to contact if it's been a few days or... And obviously, time is of the essence, but could they still have a case and that could be proven?

Rebeccah Graham: 

Of course. I mean, we never see people the day that it happens, right? They're often... They're going to the hospital, they're in surgery, we never see them right away. So the important thing to do though is to take action somewhat quickly 'cause we wanna make sure that we can preserve the evidence of why they fell. So if they fall and then the business fixes the problem right away, then it's difficult for us to recreate that. But oftentimes, businesses have video and they have security surveillance. And so, we often wind up being able to obtain surveillance video from the business itself that shows exactly what happened.

Rebeccah Graham: 

So the case I'd told you about where my client slipped in vomit, well, that was a hotel, a fairly high-end hotel and they had video surveillance. Now the trick is that they don't keep that video surveillance forever although they should, especially when they know that somebody's been injured, which they did in that case. In another case, we had where our client fell at a museum, again, they had video surveillance. Not only did they have video surveillance of her falling, but we were able to obtain through a lot of effort on our part, video surveillance where other people had fallen as well in the exact same spot, so that's really compelling evidence. So it's not too late, it's really never too late. I mean, we can always try and see but it is best to act more quickly, not to wait because sometimes the evidence that we need to prove our claim is destroyed. And so, we wanna be able... If you contact a lawyer, the lawyer immediately sends the business a letter saying, "Please preserve any evidence that you have regarding this incident."

Rob Rosenthal: It would seem to me that sometimes, Rebeccah, the public has a misperception about these kind of cases that we're talking about, this premises' liability, and they like to say, "Oh, that's a frivolous lawsuit." What's your answer to that?

Rebeccah Graham: 

You know, I don't think it's ever frivolous when someone breaks a bone because a business failed to do its job and create a safe environment, I don't think that's frivolous. I think what might be frivolous, what people think is, oh, somebody got coffee spilled on them for example, if we'll take that case, and they had a little scalding and no big deal. But when we look into these cases, the injuries... If they come to me and I decide to take their case, it's not because they got a little scalding. If they come to me and I take their case, it's not because they were scraped up or they had a bruise for a few days, if they come to me and we take their case, it's because they had significant catastrophic injuries that required rehabilitation for months and those are not frivolous cases, those affect people's daily life and they affect people long into the future, oftentimes, for the rest of their lives.

Rob Rosenthal: 

Lots of really helpful information, Rebeccah. Thank you for making some time to answer our questions, I appreciate it.

Rebeccah Graham: 

You bet. Thanks so much for having me. It was great to talk to you.

Rob Rosenthal: 

That's gonna take care of this episode of Ask the Lawyer. My guest has been Washington State Attorney, Rebeccah Graham. Remember, if you'd like to ask Rebeccah questions of your own, just go to askthelawyers.com, click the button at the top of the page that says 'Ask a lawyer' and you can walk right through the very easy process right there, or you could call the number that was on the screen when we talked to Rebeccah. Thanks for watching, everybody. I'm Rob Rosenthal with Ask the Lawyers.

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