Legal Issues When People Fall on Sidewalks

Slips and falls on sidewalks tend to be relatively common–not because sidewalks are themselves inherently dangerous, but just because so many people walk on them–and tend to do so, no matter what the weather. But that begs the question of whether or not anybody is liable, when you fall in a dangerous condition on a sidewalk.

Who Owns the Sidewalk?

The first thing to do in sidewalk fall accidents, is to ascertain who owns and controls the sidewalk where you fell.

We tend to think of sidewalks as always being owned and controlled by government entities, and they often are–but not always. They may be owned by stores, commercial property, or homeowners associations.

If they are owned by a city, county or municipality, there are procedures to sue the government, and special procedures they must be followed to sue the government for liability. You also need to know what city entity actually owns the sidewalk–county, city, or some other government agency, because the notice that you must legally provide of your injury and your claim before you are allowed to go to court with your claim, must go to the correct governmental agency.

What Caused the Defect?

Ownership of the sidewalk is one issue, but then there is ownership of whatever it is that may have caused the sidewalk to be dangerous.

For example, the city may own, and maintain a sidewalk–but an adjacent business may own a giant tree right next to that sidewalk, whose roots may have pushed the sidewalk upwards, cracking it.  Sometimes there are contracts between a municipality or business, and private companies, to maintain sidewalks.

Open and Obvious

One problem when suing for sidewalk accidents, is that in many cases, the defects on the sidewalks are open and obvious–that is, they are readily apparent to anybody looking, and that is a strong defense to slip and fall claims. Large, obvious cracks in a sidewalk may be so large that the Defendant will argue anybody looking could and should have seen them.

That means that you must demonstrate that in fact, the condition you fell on was hidden, concealed, or at least, not readily apparent to someone who was looking.

Notice Problems

There are also notice issues. If it just starts snowing, and you fall 5 minutes after the snow started, it would be hard to say that whoever owns or controls that sidewalk had any notice that a dangerous condition exists or that they had time to inspect and repair or clean it.

Weather Related Conditions

Like open and obvious conditions where they will blame you, the victim, for not seeing the hazard, they will do the same thing if your fall is because of inclement weather–they may blame you for walking in that weather, or walking with improper shoes for the weather conditions.

Injured on a sidewalk or walkway?  Call our Boston personal injury lawyers at The Law Office of Joseph Linnehan, Jr. today at 617-275-4200 for help after any kind of accident.