Do You Really Have A Personal Injury Case If You Trip On A Sidewalk?

So, if I do fall on a sidewalk, I have a potential case? There’s actually rules about a sidewalk and how much of a lip each portion of the sidewalk is allowed to have. Okay, and so, you know, you walk down a sidewalk, there’s the the cutings in there for expansion and to prevent cracking and all that. Over time, especially, you know, you get tree roots and everything else underneath sidewalks, they tend to to separate. There’s an allowable amount that a sidewalk can separate.

If it goes over that amount and it causes someone to catch their foot on that lip and trip, that person does have a claim. Now, most sidewalks are city-owned and so, that means you’re under the sovereign immunity statute whenever you’re suing a government entity that it’s much more difficult to do that than suing a private company. But that not always. I mean, you get sidewalks a lot of times on, you know, in private developments. You get them in malls, you get them in all kind of private situations where you wouldn’t be under that sovereign immunity statute.

So, if you do trip on a sidewalk, I always tell people, if you think you’re hurt, take photos because a lot of times those get fixed pretty regularly or they’ll get fixed right after you fall, miraculously and there will be no evidence on how separated it was. And so, two things, take photos and two, call a lawyer sooner rather than later. And I know our office will get someone out there to measure that sidewalk separation. I have two questions. Does that rule change state to state? It’s based on the building codes of that state. So, I’m not familiar with the other states, but I know in Florida what our building regulation is. And then my other question is I’ve seen cracks, where there’s almost spray paint like on it to bring awareness to that it being there.

Does that then count as an argument against you if you trip on it and it’s above the allowed space? So there’s two issues there. One is you technically when you trip on something like that you have two claims. You have a failure to warn and a failure to maintain. I always argue, okay, sure, your failure to warn argument is gone, but your failure to maintain argument is even stronger because they can’t come in and say, “We didn’t know about it.” You sprayed it. Yeah. You knew about it. You knew this thing was dangerous, and rather than fix it, you just took some orange spray paint and sprayed it on it.

So it doesn’t negate your claim, I would say. I would say it adds to your comparative. And that’s in terms of fault. It’s not black or white. There’s a percentage. And so when we’re talking about what percentage the person is responsible versus the sidewalk owner, you know, that spray paint is going to probably cause the jury to think a little bit more is on the person that tripped and less on the person that maintained the sidewalk.