Victims must show how the property owner caused their slip and fall to get fair compensation. Learn how to prove causation in a premises liability claim.
Fall-related injuries lead to over 8 million emergency room visits a year and are the leading cause of injury-related missed workdays.¹
When you slip and fall on someone else’s property, the property owner could be financially responsible. Seeking injury compensation usually means filing a claim with the owner’s insurance company.
To get a fair settlement, you need to prove you fell and that the property owner caused the accident. This means showing that a particular worn carpet, spill, or cracked surface resulted in your harm. Causation can also establish that it was an owner’s failure to remove a hazard that led to your injuries.
Causation has two parts: Actual cause and proximate cause. Victims have to prove both in any slip and fall case.
Proving the Actual Cause of Personal Injuries
Actual cause refers to the factual cause of an accident. It’s the thing that triggers an injury, like an icy sidewalk, a cluttered pathway, or the rotted floorboards that led to an incident.
“But-For” Test to Determine Cause
The But-For test is one way to determine if a property owner was the actual cause of a slip and fall injury. The but-for question is used to determine causation in many types of injury cases.
The but-for test asks:
“But for the property owner’s conduct (or hazardous condition) would you have gotten hurt?”
If the answer is “yes,” then the property owner’s conduct (or hazardous condition) was not the actual cause of your injury.
If the answer is “no,” then the property owner’s conduct (or hazardous condition) was the actual cause of your injury.
Example: Basket Is the Actual Cause of a Shoulder Injury
Lisa walks into a supermarket. An employee recently vacuumed the entryway. While cleaning up, he accidentally knocked over a stack of shopping baskets. Lisa doesn’t see the hazard and trips on one of the baskets. As a result, she falls and dislocates her shoulder.
Here, the basket is the actual cause of Lisa’s injury. But for the basket on the floor, would Lisa have gotten hurt in the supermarket? The answer is “no,” and the but-for test is satisfied.
Example: Restaurant Excluded as Actual Cause of a Knee Sprain
Joe is walking in a parking lot. It’s winter, and there is a fast-food restaurant at one end of the lot. A convenience store is next to it. Unbeknownst to Joe, a person bought a bottle of water from the store, spilled it in the parking lot, then the water froze into a patch of ice.
Joe doesn’t see the ice, slips on it, and sprains his knee. He blames the restaurant for his injury.
Here, while it’s true the ice caused Joe’s slip, the restaurant was not the actual cause of Joe’s injury. But for the fast-food restaurant’s conduct, would Joe have gotten hurt? The answer is, “yes.”
Someone purchased water from the convenience store, and not the restaurant. Further, that person spilled the water, and low temperatures took care of the rest. The fast-food chain was not responsible for Joe’s fall or his injuries.
Not all but-for tests work well for slip-and-fall claims. Sometimes more than one factor contributes to a person’s injuries.
Consider an incident where an intoxicated patron named Frank is injured in a fall after slipping on a spilled drink in Curly’s Tavern. There’s no question that Frank slipped on a spilled drink. The tavern staff should have cleaned up the spill sooner.
However, it’s not accurate to say that but for the tavern’s conduct, Frank wouldn’t have been injured.
The facts reveal that Frank was so intoxicated, he was stumbling before he slipped on the wet spot. If he weren’t so drunk, he probably wouldn’t have crashed to the floor after a small slip.
The but-for test is not definitive in cases like Frank’s.
Substantial Factor Test for Causation
Because the but-for test may not give a clear determination of cause, some states use a substantial-factor test as an alternative when determining the actual cause in personal injury cases.
The substantial-factor test for slip and fall claims asks:
“Was the property owner’s conduct a substantial factor in causing the victim’s injury?”
If the answer is “yes,” then there is an actual cause. If “no,” then there is no actual cause.
Example: Restaurant Conduct Not a Substantial Factor in Sprained Knee
In the last example, Joe slipped on a patch of ice and sprained his knee. The ice formed because someone spilled water they bought from a nearby convenience store. A restaurant is next to the convenience store.
Joe tries to file an injury claim against the restaurant’s insurance company.
The insurance company will rightfully deny the claim because the fast-food restaurant’s conduct was not a substantial factor in Joe’s fall. The restaurant wasn’t a factor at all because it didn’t sell the water that ultimately caused the injury.
Proximate Cause in Slip and Fall Claims
Legal cause, better known as Proximate Cause, focuses on foreseeability. Foreseeability in a slip and fall claim means the property owners only have proximately caused an injury if they could have predicted that their actions would result in harm.
Example: Homeowner Not the Proximate Cause of Mail Carrier’s Injuries
Jane is at home, raking wet leaves. She piles the leaves on the ground near her front door. The leaves don’t block access to the door since there’s a gravel path from her driveway to the door.
Jane doesn’t immediately pick the leaves up. A week later, the leaves are still in a pile on her lawn. During this time, water from the wet leaves seeps down and eventually out onto the grass surrounding the pile.
A mail carrier goes to deliver a package at Jane’s door. Rather than walk along the gravel path, he walks through her front yard. As he walks past the pile of leaves, he slips on the wet grass, falls, and hurts his lower back.
The mail carrier files a claim with Jane’s insurance company. The insurance adjuster denies the injury claim on the grounds of causation.
Here, Jane was the actual cause of the carrier’s injuries. But for her conduct, would the person have slipped? The answer is, “No.” Was Jane a substantial factor in causing the injuries? Yes. The water would never have seeped onto the grass if Jane hadn’t raked the wet leaves into a pile and failed to pick them up.
But Jane’s conduct was not the proximate cause of the accident. A reasonable person couldn’t foresee someone slipping from a pile of leaves that weren’t blocking the main walkways to the home. Jane couldn’t have predicted the ultimate consequences of her actions.
Because Jane couldn’t have foreseen anyone walking across her lawn to reach the front door, she did not proximately cause the mail carrier’s injuries.
Intervening Causes Can Change Everything
An intervening cause happens after a property owner acted, and helped cause the victim’s injuries. In many slip and fall cases, the intervening cause will remove blame from the property owner.
Imagine a case where a grocery store clerk puts up a sign warning of a wet floor while he goes to get a mop. If a distracted customer lets her young child walk off with the wet floor sign, the next person to come along could easily slip and fall on the wet floor. The child’s action is an intervening cause of the injuries to the person who fell.
Grocery stores can be liable for injuries caused by falls on a wet floor if the store knew about the wet area and failed to clean it up or warn customers with a wet floor sign. The unauthorized removal of the wet floor sign was an intervening cause that removes the blame from the store.
An intervening cause can work to completely or partially remove a property owner’s liability for a fall injury.
Fall Injuries and Premises Liability
When a business or a government agency opens up a property to employees, guests, and customers, they take on a legal duty of care to keep that property safe. This responsibility emerges from an area of law called premises liability.
Private property owners have the same responsibility when it comes to invited guests, workers, and other legitimate visitors to the property.
Some owners may ignore the upkeep of their premises or deliberately decide against making necessary changes. As a result, poorly maintained areas and dangerous obstacles can cause slips, falling objects, and other hazards that injure people, sometimes severely.
Under premises liability laws, simply suffering an injury in a slip and fall accident is not enough to qualify for compensation from the owner of the property or store.
To receive compensation, you must prove four elements:
- A hazard on the property caused your fall
- The incident resulted in a real injury
- The property owner could or should have done something about the hazard
- The owner failed to correct the hazard that caused your fall
Causation is important because it shows a connection between a hazardous condition, a property owner’s negligence, and your injuries.
The owner is negligent even if they didn’t know of a hazard on the property, but should have known, such as through routine inspections.
Gathering Evidence to Prove Cause
If you want to receive compensation for your injuries, you’ll need to reach out to the business owner or homeowner you believe is responsible for causing your injuries. Most of the time, you’ll be filing a claim with the property owner’s insurance company.
Whether you’re dealing with a homeowner’s insurance company or a corporate liability insurance company, your claim won’t survive if it lacks proof of causation. You must be ready to show both actual and proximate cause.
Begin gathering important evidence immediately after a slip and fall and throughout your injury treatment and recovery. Save all your medical bills and look for evidence to prove the property owner is liable for your injuries.
Get Good Legal Advice From the Start
Even if you don’t plan to file a personal injury lawsuit, a slip and fall lawyer can help you understand the causes of your injury and estimate the settlement value of your claim.
Serious injury claims should always be handled by a personal injury attorney to maximize compensation. But even if you’ve fully recovered from minor injuries, you might still need a good attorney to get any traction with the insurance company.
Proximate and actual cause are just a few of the issues that may come up in an injury claim. Your attorney can gather evidence of causation you can’t get without a subpoena, like a store’s video footage on the day you were hurt, copies of building code violations, and prior incident reports about the dangerous condition that caused your fall.
Most injury law firms offer a free consultation to slip and fall victims. If you decide to hire a personal injury lawyer, they may agree to work on a contingency fee basis. This means your attorney doesn’t get paid until they settle your injury claim or win your case in court.
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