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Hartford Slip and Fall Lawyer

After a fall, it is easy to replay the moment and wonder whether you should have noticed the wet floor, patch of ice, broken step, or uneven pavement before you were hurt. However, property owners and occupiers in Connecticut have a legal duty to maintain their premises in a reasonably safe condition. What matters is not simply that you fell. A slip and fall claim requires determining what caused the dangerous condition, who controlled the property, what they knew or reasonably should have known, and whether they took reasonable steps to address the hazard or warn you about it.

If you’ve been injured in a fall on someone else’s property, the Hartford slip and fall lawyers at Rob Levine Law can answer these questions for you and pursue the compensation you deserve for your losses.

Find out what your case is worth.

How Rob Levine Law Can Help After a Slip and Fall in Hartford

The hazardous condition that caused your fall may not remain there for long. A spill can be cleaned, ice can melt, a loose stair can be repaired, and surveillance footage may eventually be overwritten. Our Hartford slip and fall attorneys work to preserve available evidence and determine how the dangerous condition developed before those details are lost.

Depending on the circumstances, we may obtain photographs and video, witness statements, incident reports, surveillance footage, inspection schedules, maintenance records, and weather reports. If police or emergency responders came to the scene, we can also obtain the police report or other available records documenting what happened.

Our team of Hartford personal injury attorneys also identifies who owned, occupied, controlled, or maintained the area where you fell. Once we understand what happened and who is responsible, we’ll build a claim, handle all communications with the insurance company, and negotiate for a full settlement. If the insurer fails to make a fair offer, we’ll aggressively litigate your case and take it to trial, if necessary.

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Where Do Slip and Fall Accidents Happen and Who May Be Responsible?

Liability in slip and fall cases depends on the nature of the dangerous condition and your reason for being on the property.

Under Connecticut premises liability law, the duty a property owner or occupier owes you can vary depending on whether you were invited onto the property, had permission to be there, or were there without permission. Customers, tenants, and guests are generally owed greater protections than trespassers, although the specific duty of care depends on the circumstances.

Nursing Homes

A fall in a nursing home can involve a range of factors. If a resident slips on a wet floor in a hallway or common area, the investigation may focus on who created the condition, how long it was there, and whether staff should have discovered and addressed it.

Other nursing home falls may involve different questions altogether. A resident who needed assistance with walking or transferring, for example, may be injured if appropriate supervision or assistance is not provided. Medical needs, care plans, staffing, and facility procedures may be relevant in those cases.

Stores and Restaurants

Slips and falls in stores and restaurants commonly involve spilled liquids, recently mopped floors, tracked-in rain or snow, damaged flooring, poorly placed merchandise, or other hazards.

How the condition arose can be particularly important. Businesses are generally only responsible for hazards they knew about or should have discovered through reasonable care, so who caused the hazard and how long it existed are key questions in these cases.

Suppose an employee mopped the floor of a Farmington Avenue pharmacy but failed to place a warning sign. Since the employee created the dangerous condition, the business should have known about it. On the other hand, for a spill caused by another customer moments before a fall, a business may not have had enough time to discover and address the hazard, and may not be held liable as a result.

Government Property

Claims over falls on public sidewalks, inside government buildings, or on government-controlled property involve requirements that do not apply to ordinary claims against private owners and businesses.

For example, claims involving defective municipal roads or sidewalks have specific requirements, including a 90-day deadline to file a formal written notice of claim.

Private Property

A tenant who falls due to a loose stair tread in a shared stairwell at an apartment on Trumbull Street may have a claim against a landlord or property manager responsible for maintaining the common area.

Winter accidents can add another layer of complexity. Liability for icy sidewalks and walkways can depend on when the snow or ice accumulated, whether precipitation was still occurring, how the condition formed, who had responsibility for maintaining the area, and whether there was a reasonable opportunity to address it.

Construction Sites

A dangerous condition at a construction site can injure visitors, pedestrians, contractors, and workers. The type of claim available depends heavily on why the injured person was there.

A visitor or pedestrian injured by an unsafe walkway, debris, or another property condition may have a premises liability claim against one or more responsible parties. Meanwhile, if the injured person was working at the site, workers’ compensation typically provides the exclusive remedy against their employer. However, if a third party is responsible for the hazardous condition, the worker may be eligible to pursue a personal injury claim.

How Can Being Partially Responsible Affect Your Compensation?

A property owner’s insurer may argue that you should have noticed the condition that caused your fall. You might hear that you were looking at your phone, walking too quickly, or wearing the wrong shoes. Those arguments do not automatically eliminate your ability to recover compensation.

Connecticut has a modified comparative negligence law, under which you can generally recover compensation as long as you are not more than 50% responsible for the accident. However, your recovery will be reduced by your percentage of fault. If you are 51% or more responsible for the fall, you are barred from recovering any compensation.

What Other Factors Could Affect Your Slip and Fall Claim's Value?

Your share of the blame is only one factor that can affect what a slip and fall claim is worth. Other key factors include the nature and severity of your injuries, the effects on your life, the strength of the evidence, and the available insurance coverage.

In a claim, you generally can seek compensation for your medical expenses, future treatment, lost wages, reduced earning capacity, pain and suffering, and other accident-related losses. A fractured wrist that heals after several weeks may affect someone very differently from a hip fracture requiring surgery and months of rehabilitation.

The available evidence matters as well. Photographs showing the condition, surveillance footage capturing the fall, medical records connecting the injury to the accident, and documentation of missed work can all help establish the extent of your losses.

A Hartford slip and fall attorney can evaluate how the injury, evidence, insurance coverage, and any disputed fault come together in your particular claim.

Calculate the Value of Your Case

Use our free personal injury settlement calculator to determine how much your case may be worth. This calculator is designed to give you a value with a range based on thousands of case we have settled.

Why Choose Our Hartford Slip and Fall Lawyers for Your Claim?

If you’ve been hurt in a slip and fall accident on someone else’s property in Hartford, you need a tireless advocate who will pursue the full compensation you deserve. At Rob Levine Law, we take an aggressive approach backed by the strictest ethical standards. Our firm has a long track record of advocating for those in need—we’ve helped more than 50,000 people and recovered over $2 billion in disability benefits and injury compensation.

We believe in fee transparency, so we explain our fees upfront. We charge a standard 33% contingency fee for personal injury cases, reduced to 25% for police, fire, rescue, and military first responders. And Win or No Fee™, with our Fee Free Guarantee®. You also won’t have to worry about affording our legal representation because you won’t pay us anything unless we recover compensation for you.

Call (888) 791-9135 or contact us online for a free consultation with a Hartford slip and fall attorney.

Hartford Slip and Fall FAQs

I Just Fell and Am in Severe Pain. What Is the First Thing I Should Do Before Leaving Where I Fell?

After a slip and fall, your health and safety come first. Seek immediate medical attention rather than trying to gather evidence yourself.

If you can do so safely, report the accident to the property owner or manager and photograph the condition that caused you to fall before it changes. Get contact information from anyone who witnessed what happened and ask that an incident report be created.

Not necessarily. The effect of signing something depends on what the document actually says. An incident report confirming when and where you fell is very different from a release of liability or settlement agreement. Also, anything signed under duress is likely unenforceable. A slip and fall attorney can review the document and determine whether it affects your ability to pursue compensation.

The Connecticut statute of limitations generally requires that a claim be filed within two years of the accident. If the harm was immediately apparent, you may have up to two years from discovering the injury to file suit, but no more than three years after the incident. However, if you fell on public property, you must submit a notice of claim to the appropriate government entity within 90 days after the accident.

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Office Location

Hartford, CT

750 Main St Suite 326,
Hartford, CT 06103

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