What are your legal rights if you fall on someone else's premises and get injured?
In British Columbia, an occupier of the premises must take reasonable care that a person on the premises will be reasonably safe in using the premises. An "occupier" is someone who has possession, or responsibility and control, of the premises. Usually an owner or tenant of the premises is considered to be an occupier.
If you fall and are injured, you must prove that an occupier of the premises did not take reasonable care for your safety to be entitled to compensation for your injuries. In other words, you must prove that someone was negligent.
If you can prove that an occupier was negligent, you will be entitled to be compensation from the occupier for such things as your pain and suffering, medical and other out of pocket expenses, loss of income, loss of capacity to earn income, and loss of capacity to perform housekeeping.
Although the law is easy to state, it can be difficult to apply in practice. For example, if you slip on a piece of fruit on the floor of a supermarket, fall and break your hip, is the supermarket legally obligated to pay you compensation? To answer that question, we would need more information. Does the supermarket have a system in place to clean up spills promptly? If so, what is that system? Was the system followed on the day you were injured?
If the supermarket required its employees to frequently inspect the floor at regular intervals and clean up spills, its employees did in fact check for spills, and they were not aware of the fallen fruit, then you would probably not succeed in a claim against the supermarket. The supermarket must act reasonably, not perfectly. The fruit may have been knocked over by another customer moments before you fell, and in those circumstances it would be unfair to make the supermarket pay.
On the other hand, if the supermarket did not have a reasonable system in place to check for spills, or if its employees did not follow the system, you have a good chance of establishing your right to compensation for your injuries.
In some cases, the courts have found that both the occupier and the injured person were at fault. A court could find that the occupier did not take reasonable care to avoid a hazard, but the injured person could have avoided fallen if he or she had been paying attention to where he or she was walking. This is called contributory negligence. Where a court finds that both the occupier and the injured person are negligent, then responsibility for the fall, and the compensation that the occupier is required to pay the injured person is apportioned relative to the degree of fault of each party. For example, if the occupier and injured person are each half responsible, then the injured person will receive one half of the compensation he or she would have been entitled to if the occupier were one hundred percent responsible for the fall.
By Stanley Rule, of the law firm Tinker, Churchill, Rule. |
