Welcome and thank you for joining me. I am Gerry Oginski, a New York Medical Malpractice and Accident Attorney, practicing law here in the State of New York. Here is the straight truth about Trip and Fall accidents in New York. What is it you need to know when you fall on a sidewalk and suffer an injury?
First and most important thing is what is it the you've tripped over; was there an elevated sidewalk, was there a crack in the sidewalk, was there a construction that was going on and now they have created a hole that you didn't see and wasn't cordoned off with tape or with barriers. Was it your own clumsiness; was it something that you weren't paying attention to. This all plays a part in evaluating whether or not you have a valid case. In any Trip and Fall case, the attorney needs to know what the weather was like, whether you wear eye glasses? Why is that important, because they want to know whether you may have contributed to your own accident by not wearing eye glasses and not seeing where you were walking?
May be you were distracted and didn't see that there was some step or something else in the way that you should have recognized and now fell. Had you ever been by the sidewalk before? Did you ever had a chance to look down and see the problem? Did you ever have to walk around it to make sure that you didn't fall into it? These are all questions that an attorney needs to know.
So, how do we know and how do we prove whether or not a home owner, property owner had noticed, knew about the dangerous condition? Well, there are a number of ways to do it; one is called actual notice, the other is called constructive notice. So, what does that mean? Actual notice means that somebody has phoned or seen a defect and the problem and told the owner of the property about it. That's actually telling them. Look, you have a defect in the street or in the sidewalk, you must now fix it. If you don't, somebody could get heart. So now the owner is on notice of a potential problem.
The other way we prove notice is with something called constructive notice. In other words, if a condition is so old and existed for such a long period of time, we can usually impart to the owner of that property that they should have known about that dangerous condition and they should have fixed it within a reasonable period of time in addition to establishing liability which is showing that the order of the property is responsible.
We also have to show that you suffered a significant injury. Injury can't be minor or minimum; it's got to be significants, so that you are able to show that your injuries, not only from the time of the accident but till time of trial exist, but also that your injuries are significant enough that you'll probably have them into the future and they also need additional medical care to take care of those problems. That's it for today's video tip on the straight truth about Trip and Fall cases here in the State of New York. I want to thank you for joining me for a few minutes here in my office. I am Gerry Oginski. Have a great day!
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services