When to Contact a Calgary Slip and Fall Lawyer After a Slip and Fall Accident

Almost all of us can remember a slip and fall or trip and fall accident in our lives. In the best cases, you experienced minimal pain, soon forgetting that you even fell. On the other end of the scale, your accident may cause serious, lasting injuries. If another person or organization was responsible for maintaining the premises, or place, where you fell and were injured, consider speaking with one of our Calgary premises liability lawyers once you have attended to your immediate medical needs. You may be able to recover damages from the negligent party through the legal system. We regularly represent both slip and fall and trip and fall victims from our downtown Calgary office.

As we grow older, the risk of falling and the health risks from any resulting injuries steadily increase. The potential for long-term or permanent health consequences such as broken limbs and paralysis rises as well. A fall of as little as 1 metre could be fatal.

A slip and fall accident happens when you transfer weight to your forward-moving foot as you are walking, running, jumping, etc. If that moving foot hits a slippery surface like ice and then slips out from under you, you fall. Some slipping hazards are snow and ice on the street, liquids spilled on floors indoors, and moving from low-slip to high-slip surfaces.

A trip and fall happens when your forward-moving leg suddenly stops without a foot to land on, so you fall as the rest of your body continues to move. Some tripping hazards are abrupt height changes, such as a flight of stairs or a pothole, and objects placed in walkways.

For convenience’s sake, any reference to “slip and falls” for the rest of this article can be understood to mean “trip and falls” as well, since either type of accident and their resulting injuries are treated the same in legal terms. Read on to learn more about the duty that “occupiers” of properties owe to people who are lawfully using or present in those premises.

Seek Medical Attention After Your Slip and Fall Accident

We encourage you to see a doctor or other qualified medical professional as soon as possible if you have suffered a slip and fall. A doctor can diagnose the extent of your injuries (including things that may not be obvious to you, such as internal bleeding), prescribe an appropriate treatment plan, and give a prognosis on your future health and recovery prospects.

In terms of supporting a legal claim, the record of your visit will help to substantiate the accident itself. Meanwhile, the diagnosis and prognosis will provide evidence of the losses you suffered as well as your ongoing medical needs (plus the relevant costs to attend to them, like if you need to renovate your home to be wheelchair-accessible).

After this, we recommend talking to one of our lawyers at the earliest opportunity. Although you may ultimately decide against taking legal action, you will always be better off exploring your options sooner than later. In fact, if you wait too long, you may lose your right to seek any compensation from the parties who contributed to your slip and fall.

Do I Have Grounds to File a Legal Claim for My Slip and Fall Accident?

Your grounds to sue largely depend on where your accident occurred. Accidents that occur in one’s own home are not subject to premises liability (as you are an occupier of the property with responsibility to yourself). An exception is if you are an apartment, townhouse, or condo resident, in which case it may be appropriate to make a claim against your landlord, property manager, and/or strata or condo board. This is especially so if you slipped and fell in an area they typically maintain, like a building’s lobby or hallways.

Alberta’s Occupiers’ Liability Act (OLA) requires occupiers to keep their premises “reasonably safe” for the use of others.

You can pursue monetary damages from occupiers if they failed in this duty and you were then injured. Occupiers are defined as anyone who has physical possession of a property or anyone who has responsibility for and control over the condition of a property, activities taking place in it, and the people allowed to access it.

Occupiers could be private residential property owners, residential tenants, businesses (whether tenants or owners), property managers, contractors providing services like snow removal, or municipalities and other government bodies. Note that legal claims against your employer or a fellow employee are generally not possible since they are covered by workers’ compensation, but there could be exceptions depending on the specific facts of your case.

The occupiers’ duty is to maintain reasonable, not perfect, safety. If a slip and fall accident happened immediately after a hazard was created, like a spill on a store floor, but before there was a reasonable chance of cleaning it up, then a claim is much less likely to succeed than if the spill was left uncleaned for hours before someone fell. Along with proving there was a failure in maintaining safety, you must prove that the failure caused your accident. Without that link, your claim is bound not to succeed.

Your own actions will also be weighed in court. You have a duty to act reasonably safely. Choosing to run in an area that turns out to be icy instead of walking on an existing cleared pathway, for example, could be considered a contributing factor in your slip and fall.

A court may decide that you contributed to your own injuries and award lower damages or decline to award damages at all.

Legal Nuances in Slip and Fall Claims in Alberta

As noted above, you may sue any occupier, or multiple occupiers, who contributed to your fall (and thus your injuries) for the full amount of damages you suffered. In most instances, you have up to 2 years after your falling accident occurred to file a claim.

Bear in mind that if you intend to sue a municipality for failing to uphold its duty under the OLA, then you must inform it within just 21 days, or you forfeit your right to claim damages. Also, the level of care that municipalities must uphold at public properties they maintain is considerably lower than that of other occupiers, so few claims against them succeed.

Generally speaking, the OLA does not apply to accidents that occur on public sidewalks, streets, and highways. It further excludes aircraft and motor vehicles.

However, the OLA does apply to railway locomotives and railway cars, ships, and trailers (when used as residences, shelters, or offices). Fixtures that extend to public property or have been placed there by a private premises, such as a store’s exterior lights and signs, electrical poles, wires, and construction scaffolding, are also subject to the OLA.

Contact Our Calgary Slip and Fall Lawyers For Legal Assistance

Have you slipped or tripped and fallen on someone else’s property? Call us at 1-888-494-7191 to schedule a free initial consultation with a member of our Alberta legal team. Once we have learned about your falling accident, we can detail your options for recovering damages and guide you through the rest of the claims process as your counsel if desired.