Individuals injured in slip and fall cases can suffer anything from a few bumps and bruises to genuinely harrowing, life-altering injuries. When the injuries are substantial and result in missed work, medical bills, or other substantial losses, the person who was hurt in an accident on someone else’s property may seek to recover compensation to help pay for their expenses arising from that accident. Generally speaking, in order to receive that compensation the individual will need to show that the party responsible for maintaining the premises where the accident took place was at fault. To discuss your legal strategy for proving fault in a slip and fall case, reach out to an experienced New Hampshire slip and fall lawyer with Friedman & Bresaw, PLLC. Call our office at 603-707-4800 to schedule a no-cost consultation.
Civil Torts
Personal injury cases fall within a category of jurisprudence known as civil torts. Civil torts, to offer a somewhat simplified definition, are faults by one party – either improper actions or failures to take appropriate actions – that cause some form of harm or injury to another party. Civil torts law allows for the aggrieved party to file a petition or complaint with a court, seeking remedy in the form of compensatory payments known as damages. Generally these damages are designed to offset the harms or injuries suffered by the party seeking remedy. Although some states also allow for punitive damages, designed to punish defendants (the accused parties) for especially egregious conduct, RSA 507:16 prohibits punitive damages in personal injury cases “unless otherwise provided by statute.”
Technically speaking, civil law in the United States acknowledges three types of civil torts that can be applied to personal injury cases:
- Intentional torts, in which the tortfeasor (the person at fault for a tort) is found to have knowingly or deliberately created the conditions under which another party suffered damages
- Negligent torts, in which the tortfeasor did not deliberately cause harm to anyone but carelessly neglected to take appropriate and reasonable steps to prevent foreseeable harms
- Strict liability, a relatively unusual set of torts in which neither intentions nor the degree of care taken affect the tortfeasor’s responsibility because they have an absolute responsibility to prevent harm under the circumstances (defective product cases are the most common example)
The overwhelming majority of premises liability cases, including those arising from slip and fall accidents, allege torts based on negligence, rather than attempting to prove intentional torts or to argue that the case allows for application of the strict liability.
Elements of Negligence
In everyday conversation, “negligence” is sometimes used as a synonym for “carelessness.” In legal contexts, however – and especially in civil torts – negligence has a more technical meaning. To prove negligence in a personal injury lawsuit, the party seeking compensation (the plaintiff) must prove each of the following elements:
- Duty of care: The defendant can only be held liable for negligence if they legally owed the plaintiff a duty of care, which the Supreme Court of New Hampshire has held is defined by the nature of the relationship between plaintiff and defendant and by the foreseeability of the harms involved.
- Breach of duty: If the defendant’s duty of care (toward the plaintiff) was not breached, then there was no negligence and therefore no fault.
- Damages: In the absence of loss or injury, there is no need for compensation.
- Causation: The defendant only owes the plaintiff compensation for damages if the defendant’s conduct was the reasonably foreseeable “proximate cause” of the plaintiff’s damages.
Some jurists and legal sources, like Cornell’s Legal Information Institute (LII) treat “cause-in-fact” as a separate item to be proven in torts based on negligence, while others prefer to consider it as part of “causation.” In essence, cause-in-fact provides for the possibility that the defendant may owe the plaintiff damages if the defendant’s actions set off a series of events that led to the plaintiff’s injury even though the defendant did not directly harm the plaintiff – if and only if it can be shown that the events in that sequence would not have occurred if not for the defendant’s original breach of their duty of care with respect to the plaintiff.
Slip and Fall Premises Liability
Slip and fall cases are a specific type of personal injury case known as premises liability. In a premises liability case, generally speaking, the plaintiff is alleging that the defendant owed them a duty of care based on the defendant’s ownership (or in some instances, “control”) of the premises where the plaintiff’s injury occurred. In a slip and fall case, this usually means that the plaintiff alleges that the defendant either created conditions that posed a foreseeable risk of harm on their property or failed to address such conditions. Either circumstance could be grounds for arguing that the defendant breached their duty of care toward the plaintiff, provided that the plaintiff (or their attorney) is able to prove to the court’s satisfaction that the defendant owed the plaintiff that duty of care.
How easy or difficult proving the duty of care is likely to be in a particular slip and fall case can depend on a few circumstances, including:
- Were the premises open to the public? Courts often construe duty of care toward guests more broadly when the premises are (or were at the time of the incident) open to the public, as in the case of a retail business or an office that regularly admits clients or prospective clients for meetings, than when the property in question is (or was at the time of the incident) maintained for private use, such as for a personal residence.
- Did the plaintiff have a legitimate purpose on the property? Extenuating circumstances may sometimes apply, but generally speaking an illegitimate purpose for entering the premises (such as trespassing, or an intent to burglarize) tends to weigh against the plaintiff’s right to compensation in a slip and fall case.
- How reasonable and foreseeable were the plaintiff’s own actions? The Supreme Court’s decision in Macie v. Helms (2007) established that “[t] scope of the duty of care […] is limited by what risks, if any, are reasonably foreseeable.” Typically for individuals injured in slip and fall accidents this means that courts may be less likely to award damages when they find that the plaintiff in the case was engaged, at the time of the injurious incident, in conduct the defendant could not reasonably have foreseen.
In some instances this last point may come up in light of the calculation of damages even if the duty of care is satisfactorily proven and the case is won. New Hampshire is one of several states that provide for the compensatory damages awarded in personal injury cases to be adjusted based on the degree to which the plaintiff contributed to their own injuries. So-called “comparative fault” states vary in how they frame the “tipping point” for liability; in New Hampshire, RSA 507:7-d establishes that, although “contributory fault” does not bar a plaintiff from recovering damages as long as their share of responsibility for those damages is not greater than that of the defendant – but the same article also instructs courts to reduce the damages awarded in proportion to the plaintiff’s degree of fault in their own case.
Discuss Your Slip and Fall Case With an Attorney
If you have suffered bodily injury as the result of an accident that took place on someone else’s property, you may have grounds to recover compensation to help pay for your medical care and other expenses caused by the accident. The availability and amount of compensation available in slip and fall cases can vary, depending on the circumstances of the case. Schedule a consultation to discuss your own situation by calling the New Hampshire premises liability attorneys with Friedman & Bresaw, PLLC today at 603-707-4800.
