Slip and Fall Attorney in Waco, Texas

Texas law sorts visitors into categories. Customers and others invited onto property for business are invitees, owed the most. The owner must inspect and fix or warn about dangers it knew of or should have discovered. Social guests are generally licensees, owed a warning or repair only for dangers the owner actually knows about. Trespassers are owed little.

You generally must show four things. A condition posed an unreasonable risk of harm. The owner knew or should have known. The owner failed to fix it or warn adequately. That failure caused your injury. Knowledge is often hardest to show, so we look for proof of how long the hazard existed.

Grocery stores, restaurants, apartment complexes, parking lots and job sites controlled by a company other than your employer are common settings. Each raises different questions: sweep logs in a store, lighting and stairs at an apartment, drainage in a lot, contractor responsibility at a work site. We work to identify each party that may share responsibility.

Ask for an incident report. Photograph the hazard and any missing warning signs before the area is cleaned up. Get witness names and numbers. Keep the shoes and clothing you wore, unwashed. Store video is often overwritten in days, so we send a preservation letter right away and request footage and inspection logs.

Expect the insurer to argue the danger was open and obvious, that your phone distracted you or that you should have taken another route. In Texas, an open and obvious danger can mean the owner had no duty to warn, and any fault assigned to you reduces what you can recover; more than 50 percent bars it. We gather facts about lighting, placement and what a careful person would have seen.