Many people assume that if someone is injured on another’s property, the property owner or occupier and their insurance carrier are automatically on the hook for the injury claim. Nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, slip and fall cases are among the toughest for the personal injury claimant to win.
The Court of Appeals released two slip and fall appellate opinions on the same day recently. (Neither was our case). The injury claimant lost in each case.
The McDonalds case.[1] No, not that McDonalds case. A customer picks up an order, fills his drink at the self-serve station, then leaves. He spills some of his drink on his way out – around from the main dining area, inside a hall, near one of the exits. A few minutes later a man comes out of the bathroom and slips in the spilled liquid and is injured. He sues McDonalds.
In Washington personal injury law a business has a higher duty to monitor and maintain safe conditions when the business chooses a self-service mode of operation. This is because by choosing a self-service mode of operation the business increases the risks customers will create spills/hazards, and this increased risk in inherent in the business mode of operation and is foreseeable. Even with a self-service mode of operation, the business is not automatically responsible for personal injury (or, in legalese – the business is not strictly liable).
The Court of Appeals upheld the trials court’s dismissal. The courts noted that here the injury was not related to the self-service mode of operation, as the drink spillage and the slip and fall injury happened not in the general area of the self-serve beverage station, but across the dining area, around a corner, and down the hall from it.
Also, the customer was injured within only minutes of the spill. Generally, to prove constructive notice of a hazard the customer must show that the hazard was present long enough that the business should have discovered and removed it and/or warned.
The grassy knoll.[2] No, not that grassy knoll. A shopping center renovates its parking area. The new layout features a preexisting concrete stairway with four steps leading from the new parking
area to the front entrance of a movie theater, connecting with a concrete walkway that circles the complex. Next to the stairway, a landscaped grass strip slopes down from the concrete walkway to a lower sidewalk, a drop-off lane, and a parking lot.
Patrons soon start taking short-cuts down the grassy slope, rather than be bothered to walk the extra distance to the stairs. Businesses in the complex note a least one person falling on the grassy slope.
[1] Jones v. McDonald’s, unpublished (No. 70412-5-1 June 16, 2014).
[2] Christman v. Eastgate Theatre, Inc., unpublished (No. 69623-8-1 June 16, 2014).