What To Do After a Slip and Fall in a Store

If you slip and fell in a store, it’s important to, first of all, take care of yourself—make sure you’re okay—but report it to the store. Uh, if you have your cell phone there, snap photos. Determine what you slipped on because it’s important. Because in a slip and fall case, there’s a notice requirement.

So, for example, if you’re going through a grocery store and you’re going through the produce section, and somebody drops a grape right in front of you, it falls, and you slipped on it—the store is not responsible for that because the store had no notice. Now, if that grape sat on that floor for six hours and nobody from the store went up and down the aisle to check it, then the store is responsible.

So there’s a notice requirement that is part of every slip and fall case in Pennsylvania that we have to help prove, and to do that it’s best to take photos of the area and make a report so that the manager knows about it. Because oftentimes in a case they’ll claim, “Well, he or she didn’t make a report for three months afterwards. At that time we had no availability to investigate.” You know, that’s a defense they put up—they can argue that to the jury—and that’s why you want to report it to the store manager that day.

Hopefully, you don’t have to be taken out in the ambulance or something—then they’ll surely know about it—but if you can snap some photos of what you felt caused you to slip and fall, that’s the best thing you can do at the scene.