I'm Griff Tonkin, and I'm one of the partners here at Arthofer & Tonkin Law Offices. We're exclusively a personal injury law firm, which means all we do is represent people who've been hurt by the negligence of others. Today, I have a video for you, and what I want to talk to you about is a slip-and-fall case.
Now, these cases are often vigorously litigated by the insurance company that defends the business or the establishment where a slip-and-fall occurred. The argument is always, well, you should have watched where you were going. If you were looking where you were going, you wouldn't have fallen.
This is all your fault. That's the standard argument in cases like this. Well, I'm a child of the 80s, and one of the cartoons that I liked as a kid was Transformers.
And there was a line in the Transformers cartoon from that era, more than meets the eye. Well, slip-and-fall cases often are more than meets the eye. Today, I'm going to talk to you about a case that arises out of Siskiyou County.
Our client was traveling from her home in Washington to visit family in Southern California. Along the drive, our client stopped in Siskiyou County at a hotel. As she was moving from her car to the assigned room, she had to step across a section of snow, and she slipped and fell.
Now, you might be thinking, well, yes, snow can be slippery. But there's more than meets the eye. What we did is we sent an investigator, and we collected pictures from the area where our client fell.
It turned out that this particular motel had moved ornamental trees and fancy planters onto the walkway. And the reason they had done that is the roof over the walkway would protect those expensive items of landscape. But the other thing that it did is it forced customers off of the walkway and over a snowburn.
The motel had a snow policy, which required them to clear snow. Well, in this instance, on the day of the time when our client fell and really suffered a very terrible lower leg injury, which required multiple surgical interventions, the snow had been cleaned up in the morning but not again in the afternoon. And as the day wore on, it got warmer and more snow slid off the roof.
Despite the fact that the motel was aware that this happened and that they had dealt with it in the days prior to this incident, they did not deal with it on the day of this incident. So we've got walkways that are blocked. We've got snow that's fallen off the roof that the hotel knows about.
And then we've got temperatures that have dropped well below freezing shortly after sunset. So that's no longer snow on the ground, but now it's ice. And our client has no way to get to a room except to step over an ice berm.
And in this instance, she fell and broke her leg. Initially, liability was denied by the insurance company for the motel. However, we litigated.
That means we went to a lawsuit on behalf of our client. And as a result of our vigorous litigation, we were able to obtain a very favorable resolution for our client in that matter. So if you've been injured in a slip-and-fall or trip-and-fall incident, give us a call here at the Arthofer & Tonkin Law Offices.
We'll consult with you about your case at no cost. And we'll see if there's more than meets the eye to your claim as well.
