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800-487-8669This company was awesome. They were very helpful and made sure I received the medical and financial treatment that I needed and deserved. Everyone was very kind and patient through the very stressful process. If you are ever in an accident and are injured, don't call anyone else but them. They are the best!
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Legal Help for the Injured
Slip and fall accidents in Dayton cause hip fractures, broken wrists, and head injuries far more often than people expect, and the medical bills arrive before the property owner’s insurer has returned a call. The law gives you the right to recover what a fall caused by someone else’s negligence has cost you.
When you have an experienced Dayton slip and fall lawyer on your side, you can focus on healing while someone else handles the claim. At KNR, our personal injury attorneys in Dayton and our statewide team of Ohio slip and fall lawyers investigate the property, identify every responsible party, and pursue full compensation. Consultations are free, there is no fee up front, and there is no fee at all unless we recover for you.
Contact KNR at (937) 427-4048 today.
We're Award-Winning & Highly-Skilled Attorneys
Whether you were shopping at a grocery store on Wayne Avenue, walking through a shopping center on West Third Street, or crossing a parking lot off Wagner Ford Road, a slip and fall in Montgomery County can happen anywhere a property owner lets a hazard sit. These are the places our Dayton slip and fall lawyers see most often.
Spilled produce, tracked-in rain at the entrance, a freezer case leaking onto the aisle, and boxes left in walkways are the classic store hazards. Big-box stores and grocery chains have inspection policies and surveillance systems, and both matter to your claim. The store’s own sweep logs and camera footage often show how long a hazard sat before you fell.
Landlords are responsible for the common areas they control: stairwells, hallways, entryways, parking areas, and walkways. A broken step, a burned-out stairwell light, or an unsalted sidewalk at a Dayton apartment complex can support a claim. The rules on when injured tenants can sue a landlord draw the line at the areas the landlord controls.
Restaurant floors get wet from the kitchen door to the restroom, and bar patios and steps get crowded and dark late at night. In the Oregon District and along Brown Street near the University of Dayton, falls on spilled drinks, uneven brick, and poorly lit steps are common. The property owner and the business operating there may both be responsible.
Potholes, crumbling curb stops, oil slicks, unmarked changes in elevation, and untreated ice cause a large share of Dayton falls, and figuring out who is to blame for a slip and fall in a parking lot is often the first legal question. The lot may belong to the business, a separate landlord, or a management company, and a contractor may be responsible for snow removal.
Falls inside a hospital, rehab facility, or nursing home are handled differently. If the fall happened because staff failed to follow a fall-prevention plan or left a patient unattended, the claim may be treated as a medical claim with a shorter one-year deadline. If it was a wet floor or a broken handrail in a public hallway, it is an ordinary premises claim. Either way, call early.
Falls on public sidewalks and in city-owned buildings raise immunity questions that private-property falls do not. Ohio law protects cities and other political subdivisions from many claims, with exceptions for certain physical defects on public grounds. These cases can be pursued, but they require a lawyer who knows how the exceptions work, and the two-year deadline still applies.
Not every fall in Dayton is the property owner’s fault, but many are the direct result of carelessness or a policy no one follows. The hazards behind most claims are:
Dayton winters bring freezing rain, overnight refreezes, and the freeze-and-thaw cycle that turns a wet parking lot into a sheet of ice by morning. Falls on ice cause some of the worst injuries we see, especially hip and wrist fractures among older adults.
These cases are harder than most slip and fall claims because of how Ohio treats what the courts call natural accumulation. As a general rule, a property owner in Ohio does not have to clear snow and ice that accumulated naturally, and is not liable when someone falls on it. The claim usually turns on whether the ice was an unnatural accumulation, meaning something the owner did or failed to do made it worse: a downspout that drains across the walkway, a plowed pile that melts and refreezes in the path to the door, a leaking gutter over an entrance, or a hazard the owner knew about that a customer could not have seen. A lease or a snow removal contract can also create a duty the general rule would not.
Because the facts decide these cases, evidence has to be gathered fast. Photographs of the ice, the drainage, and the surrounding area, the weather record for that day, and the property’s snow removal records can make or break the claim, and the ice itself is gone within hours.
People tend to assume a fall causes bruises. In our experience, a fall on a hard surface is more likely to cause one of these:
If your injuries have taken a toll on your work, your mobility, or your daily life, you may have grounds for a claim. What matters is not how the fall looked but what it cost you.
In the minutes and days after a fall, the evidence that proves your case is at its most fragile. Do what you can of the following, and let us handle the rest:
Fight for Everything You’re Owed
Dayton’s slip and fall accident victims have the right to be made whole for the financial harm inflicted upon them. Some of the recoverable damages you may be entitled to after being injured in a slip and fall through no fault of your own include your:
Ohio does not make a property owner pay for every fall on their property. To recover, you have to show the owner was negligent, which comes down to three things.
Either the owner or an employee created the hazard, knew about it, or it had been there long enough that a reasonable inspection would have found it. A spill that happened thirty seconds before you fell is a harder case than a leak that had been dripping onto the floor all afternoon. Sweep logs, maintenance records, prior complaints, and video establish how long the hazard existed.
Once an owner knows about a hazard, they have to repair it, block it off, or give an adequate warning. A wet floor sign that is placed after the fall, tucked behind a display, or not near the hazard at all does not count. A slip and fall with a warning sign is still a case when the sign did not do its job.
Property owners in Ohio regularly argue that the hazard was open and obvious, meaning a reasonable person would have seen it and avoided it, so no warning was owed. Insurers reach for this defense in nearly every fall case. It fails when the hazard was hidden, when lighting or a distraction kept you from seeing it, or when the circumstances gave you no safe way around it. Ohio also applies comparative negligence, so even if you are found partly at fault, you can still recover as long as your share is not greater than the owner’s, with your award reduced by your percentage.
After a fall, you may be unsure how to hold the liable party accountable. Expect the property owner and their insurer to argue that you were not watching where you were going, that your shoes were wrong, or that the hazard was obvious.
You need an advocate who has answered those arguments before. Our Ohio premises liability lawyers have handled falls in stores, apartments, restaurants, garages, and hospitals across the state, and our Dayton office knows the property owners, management companies, and insurers on the other side of these claims. We handle the investigation, the preservation letters, the medical records, and the negotiation, and you keep more of the recovery because we advance the costs.
Injuries
Client sustained an open compound fracture of their left tibia and fibula when she slipped on water in…
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What Makes KNR Special?
Since our inception in 2005, Kisling, Nestico & Redick has been dedicated to helping personal injury victims fight for the compensation they deserve after an accident affects their way of life. We have helped more than 10,000 people, and we’re ready to keep fighting for Ohioans and anyone who deserves compensation for their personal injury claims.
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Contact KNRWhat Makes KNR Special?
If you’ve been hurt because someone else’s negligence caused you to fall, you’ll need help from an experienced attorney. In Dayton, Ohio, reach out to KNR. We will advise you, review all your options, and fight to secure the maximum amount possible so you can recover physically and financially after a slip and fall.
Learn more about what to expect when you contact Kisling, Nestico & Redick. Schedule your no-cost, risk-free consultation today. Complete our online form or call (937) 427-4048.
While it seems like property owners and insurance companies should accept responsibility and pay for the harm done, they usually want to reduce or deny your compensation. Let us advise you and use every available resource to pursue the maximum compensation you deserve.
If the property owner used a warning sign, they might argue that there was no breach of the duty of care. However, that does not necessarily mean you do not have the right to sue. If the warning sign was not obvious or easily seen, or if the sign did not inform you of the risk in question, you may still have the right to compensation.
A wet floor sign helps the owner only if it was in place before you fell, near the hazard, and visible from the direction you were walking. Signs are often set out after a fall, left standing all day so no one notices them, or placed at one end of a spill that runs the length of an aisle. We look at the video, the sign’s location, and the store’s own policy on how signs are supposed to be used. If the sign was adequate and you should have seen it, the owner may have no liability at all; if it was inadequate, any fault assigned to you reduces your recovery rather than barring it.
After a parking lot slip and fall accident, you need to determine who is responsible for maintaining the parking lot in question. If the party responsible for maintaining the parking lot owed you a duty of care, they might be held accountable for your injuries when they breached this duty. That party may be the business, a separate landlord, a property management company, or a snow removal contractor.
Often, yes. Ohio landlords are responsible for keeping the common areas they control in a safe condition, including stairwells, hallways, entryways, sidewalks, and parking lots, and for making repairs they have been told about. If you fell on a broken step, in a dark stairwell, or on untreated ice at the building entrance, the landlord or the management company may be liable. Falls inside your own unit are harder unless the landlord knew about a defect and failed to repair it. Report the hazard in writing and photograph it before it is fixed.
After a slip and fall accident in Dayton you should seek medical care, document the accident scene and your injuries, gather witness and insurance info, and contact a slip and fall attorney to evaluate your claim.
Yes. If the property owner or manager in Ohio failed to maintain safe premises or warn of a hazard and you were injured in that slip and fall, you may hold them liable under premises liability law.
Under Ohio law, the statute of limitations for slip and fall injury claims is two years from the date of the fall. If your claim is not filed before the statute of limitations runs out, you will lose your opportunity to have your case heard by the civil court system. Falls inside hospitals and nursing homes that involve patient care may be treated as medical claims with a one-year deadline, so call early.
The open and obvious rule is a defense commonly utilized in slip and fall cases. Property owners may avoid culpability if they can show that the hazard in question was considered both open and obvious. The defense fails when the hazard was hidden, poorly lit, or could not reasonably be avoided.
Slip and fall injuries in Dayton can be serious and include broken bones, spinal cord injuries, traumatic brain injuries, neck/back injuries or herniated discs.
Many slip and fall accidents in Dayton occur due to uneven walkways, wet floors, snow/ice, poor lighting, debris in sidewalks or neglected parking lots.
The evidence in a fall case disappears fast: the spill gets mopped, the ice melts, and the video gets overwritten. Call (937) 427-4048 or 1-800-HURT-NOW, or contact our Dayton office online, for a free consultation. There is no fee unless we win.
