Milwaukee Slip and Fall Accident Lawyer

Slip and falls are one of the leading causes of injuries throughout the country. In these instances, if a reasonably careful property owner could and would have prevented the harm, the victim may have a valid personal injury lawsuit and claim to recover money damages.

To win a slip and fall lawsuit, the plaintiff must prove four key elements: duty, breach, causation, and injury. Duty and breach are largely dependent on why the victim was on the property and how the standard of care is defined. Your lawyer can help you identify whose negligence caused your accident and how much you could recover in a subsequent lawsuit.

To get the facts about your potential recovery after someone else’s negligence caused your accident, call Wruck Paupore’s seasoned Milwaukee slip and fall accident attorneys at (219) 322-1166 for a free initial case assessment.

Proving Negligence for a Slip and Fall Accident Lawsuit in Milwaukee

In some instances, a person may suffer injuries from a slip and fall through no fault of anyone else. However, if another party could and should have prevented the accident, they could be found negligent by a Milwaukee court and ordered to pay damages based on the victim’s injuries.

To win a case on a theory of negligence, you will have to prove four key elements: the defendant owed the victim a duty of care, the defendant breached that duty, the breach caused the accident, and the accident resulted in compensable injuries.

Duty of Care

In order to be liable, the defendant in a slip and fall case must have owed the injury victim a legal duty of care. Property owners owe duties to anyone who they invite onto their property. How the duty is defined is based on the capacity in which the guest comes onto the property. These differences are covered below, but for more information on property owners’ legal duties of care, reach out to our Milwaukee slip and fall accident attorneys.

Breach of Duty

Once you have established what legal duty the defendant owed you, you must then show how the defendant failed to meet that duty. Typically, this is done by showing what other reasonably prudent people or entities would have done differently in similar situations.

Causation

Proving that the defendant breached a legally owed duty is not enough to win you compensation. You must also show that the defendant’s breach caused the accident and your injuries. The cause of injury must also be a foreseeable consequence of the defendant’s breach of duty.

Injury

This may seem obvious, but the final step to winning your case is showing that you suffered injuries as a result of the slip and fall. These injuries must have resulted in harms for which the defendant could compensate you. The best way to do this is through medical records and a detailed accounting of the expenses you incurred through treatment and rehabilitation.

Duties of Property Owners and Managers in Milwaukee

Property owners do not owe the same duties to everyone that steps onto their property. To help distinguish between duties, you can separate types of guests into three different categories: invitees, licensees, and trespassers.

Invitees

Invitees are those guests whom the property owner invites onto the property for mutual gain or business purposes. These include retail store customers, restaurant patrons, and people who go to entertainment facilities like movie theaters or sports arenas. Property owners owe a duty to these individuals to exercise ordinary care in keeping the premises safe.

Licensees

Licensees are guests who are permitted onto the owner’s property without a business purpose. The classic example of a licensee is a dinner party guest. Homeowners owe lesser duties to licensees. To satisfy a duty to a licensee, the property owner must exercise reasonable care to prevent foreseeable injury from a hazardous condition about which the owner knew (or should have known).

Trespassers

Even though trespassers, by definition, are those who enter a person’s property without permission, the property owner is still bound by legal obligations. Property owners may not knowingly create traps that would purposefully injure a trespasser. In cases where a child wandered onto another person’s property because of something interesting on the land, like a pool or tree house, trespassers may be liable for hazardous conditions under the doctrine of attractive nuisance.

Third Party Liability for a Milwaukee Slip and Fall Lawsuit

In many cases, the actual owner of the property where the slip and fall occurred may not be the one responsible for causing the accident. Property owners may shift their legal duties to others through contract. This can complicate matters, so you will want the help of a seasoned Milwaukee slip and fall lawyer to help you determine who to name in your lawsuit.

If a commercial property owner leases the space to a retail tenant, the lease agreement will contain an assignment of duties to each party. For instance, a strip mall property owner might make the store owner that leases the lot responsible for maintaining the inside of the property but retain responsibility for maintaining the sidewalk and parking lot.

Property owners may also contract with other services to provide maintenance services for their property. A common example might be when an owner hires a snow removal service to ensure that walking paths on the premises are free of ice and snow.

Regardless of how clear you may believe liability is for your case, you should always discuss the various duties and potential defendants to your lawsuit with a diligent Milwaukee slip and fall attorney.

Wruck Paupore Can Get You Compensation After a Milwaukee Slip and Fall

To get a free initial case assessment, reach out to the dedicated Milwaukee slip and fall lawyers at Wruck Paupore by calling (219) 322-1166 now.