Attorney Brett Panter, the Senior Partner of Panter, Panter & Sampedro, was asked by his law school friend to handle a slip and fall case, at a medical facility where a patient suffered a significant permanent injury to her ankle as a result of a slip and fall incident. Slip and fall cases can be very difficult and Florida law and Florida statutes provide a plethora of defenses. Any practitioner must be very aware of the defenses and must be aggressive in their attack of the defendant in order to recover for their clients.
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Mr. Panter was asked to investigate an accident from March 2023. The key to the success in this case on behalf of his client was an early and aggressive investigation.
Our firm retains the best experts we can find in all areas of personal injury. In this case, we chose to retain an architect to do an on-site inspection as soon as the client retained us. The on-site inspection and the facts underlying the case revealed that our client was walking down the stairs from her bedroom on the second floor. Upon reaching the lowest step of the stairs, she stepped on tiled floor with her right foot, slipped, and fell on her right side causing a serious ankle injury.
The architect inspected the site of the fall and determined that the facility failed to provide a safe walking surface between and amongst the various levels of her residential unit. Our architect prepared a detailed report which we shared with the defense.
Early disclosure and full disclosure can often be very helpful. Some practitioners are afraid of that, but we at Panter, Panter & Sampedro feel that it is in our client’s best interests to investigate aggressively, provide, and share our findings with opposing counsel so they understand our theory of the case and more likely this strategy ends up in good and early settlement.
The conclusions of this case were that the conditions of the shared stairs failed to provide a consistent walking surface because it presented varying degrees of traction for users. What is meant here is that the stairs were carpeted and the landing on the floor was a tile surface.
Our expert further concluded the incident location within the shared unit did not provide sufficient information to inform our client of the wet, slippery condition, she would encounter as she attempted to navigate the last and lowest step of the stairs.
Our expert finally concluded that any reasonable inspection of the landing for the purposes of maintenance and hazard evaluation would have reliably identified the slip hazard created by the wet landing.
Despite the statutory defenses and Florida case law, we were able to achieve an excellent settlement on behalf of our client.
Panter, Panter & Sampedro has been representing the victims of slip and fall accidents for more than 25 years. To discuss your slip and fall case, call (305) 662-6178.
