Los Angeles Injury Lawyer Blog

Personal injury lawyers at the Law Offices of Greenberg & Rudman LLP obtained a significant settlement in a slip and fall accident ankle injury case against a Los Angeles, California store owner who was negligent by allowing the stairs at the entrance of the store to be covered by slippery liquid.

A store which is opened to the public has a duty to make sure that its premises is safe for its customers, so as to avoid injury causing accidents. A store can have premises liability for injuries caused by a slippery floor in several ways. If the store causes the floor to be slippery, such as an employee spilling a liquid, or mopping the floor, and does nothing to warn its customers, that is negligence. Even if the store didn't cause the slippery liquid to be on the floor, it can be negligent if it knew the liquid was on the floor, or should have known that the liquid was on the floor because it was there for a long enough period of time that a reasonable inspection of the premises would have revealed it.

Our client slipped and fell as she was entering a Los Angeles store which included a butcher, and sold raw meat to the public. As she climbed the two steps into the store, her foot slipped in some liquid, and she lost her balance and fell to the ground, fracturing her ankle so severely that she required surgery.

The public entrance to the butcher was located in the back of the store, and was the same entrance the store's employees used to bring raw meat in from a refridgeration unit located behind the store. We were successful in uncovering that when the store employees would bring the raw meat in, slippery liquids would drip on the two stairs leading into the store, and the employees did not clean it up.

Because we were able to prove the store employees were negligent by causing the stairs to be slippery, we obtained a significant six figure settlement for our client.