What you Need to Do After a Slip and Fall
A slip and fall is painful, but you might not know where to begin. Do you take pictures? Call the cops? File lawsuits.
For starters, you should obviously call 9-1-1 to make sure that the injuries are taken care of. As business owners though, you should be ready for litigation, especially if you’re the owner of the business.
Here are a few things to do after slip and falls so that you can handle the settlement before it gets worse.
Get Photos
Please make sure that you have photos of what happened. Record all signage or warnings.
That way, it will help prove who is at fault here, and whether there is enough dispute of this.
You should also ensure that employees on the scene take this too, especially if you didn’t see the situation. If it was because of wet floors, get the signs, and also take pictures of what the person was wearing on their feet too.
Get the Incident Forms and Witness Statements
You should have incident or accident forms already filled out including what they said, when they were saying this, what emotions they have, and any important tidbits of this. These statements are imperative for litigation since they help see EXACTLY what happened in the situation better than evidence would do.
Incident forms and witness statement forms are important since they say exactly what occurred.
These include:
- Personal information of who got injured
- Gender and age of the person who got injured
- The weather outside
- What the person was doing before the fall
- Signatures for the person who was injured to sign and validate.
Always make sure your employees ask too:
- Was there anything left on the floor?
- Was there issues walking around?
- Have you put those shoes on before?
Once this is done, get the statements of every employee and any witnesses that are there, and keep the documents on hand, since you will need them.
Keep Surveillance Video
Finally, make sure you’ve got surveillance video set up so that if an incident does occur, you have the exact time stamp, and any footage that’s associated with the lawsuit itself.
Oftentimes, the camera footage is typically erased once the lawsuit is finished up.
So, the best way to prevent that from happening is you want to save the exact footage from the incident at hand immediately when this happens.
If the cameras aren’t able to record the exact moment of the fall, you should be able to still use this. That’s because it can tell you exactly the conditions of the fall.
For example, if the footage shows that there is bad weather or maybe the owner didn’t take care of the ice and snow when it happened, that will tell a different tune of the claim, and can effect of course, just what you’re about to get into in terms of settlement and what’s been going on.
Remember, if you have the footage, you can of course, really make a difference, and it’s the difference between getting the settlement you deserve and of course, not doing so as well.
Remember if you do have this in place, you can have proper defense in the event of litigation.
This is simple to implement, involving training some employees and also property recording this.
By avoiding liability and litigation, can help solve settlements much better. As a business, you don’t’ want to deal with that, so this is a great way to prevent it before it happens.