Slipping on a wet floor can lead to some fairly serious injuries. Lots of people make claims for personal injury compensation from slipping in supermarkets, shops, restaurants, and all sorts of places.
I’m sure you’ve noticed before that wet floor signs are deployed in areas where there have been spillages or areas prone to a wet floor; perhaps from adverse weather. So what happens if you slip on a wet floor and there was actually a wet floor sign present? Can you still make a claim?
“Reasonable Steps”
The law that generally applies in public places is the Occupiers Liability Act. This imposes a duty on the occupier of a premises (i.e. someone who is in control of an area) to take all “reasonable steps” to ensure that lawful visitors to their premises are not injured. The key phrase when it comes to the law in this kind of situation I will reiterate – all “reasonable steps”.
So the big question I suppose is this – what is classed as taking reasonable steps? Well deployment of a wet floor sign likely falls within this category. It’s a way of reasonably warning people that the floor is wet and thus poses a danger to you. So if you are unfortunate enough to slip within the vicinity of a wet floor sign, it is highly likely that the other side will try and defend your claim.
Your Rights
So turning now to the question in the title – if they defend the claim based on the deployment of a wet floor sign, can you still claim?
There are a few things we can take in to account. When the sign was deployed is one; another is how close to the spillage was the sign. Something else to consider was whether it was visible or not. To give you a few examples – if you slip on the end of an aisle and there is a wet floor sign right down the opposite of this aisle (I’m talking proper supermarket aisles here) then this may not be reasonable.
Another example – you slip but the wet floor sign is around a blind corner. From your approach angle, it cannot be seen.
We have had situations where a person has slipped and staff member has candidly placed a wet floor sign next to them whilst they are lying on the ground in a rather unemotional way! Obviously this would be difficult to maintain as a defence, and we often try and get CCTV as soon as we can to show how long a sign has been there for as well. This is one hugely important reason as to why you should initiate your claim for personal injury compensation as soon as you can.
Making a Claim
For advice about how we can still offer you a 100% compensation agreement, call our free claims helpline on 0800 634 75 75 today.
