Toronto Injury Lawyer Blog
Slip and Fall season in Ontario continues. Most of the slip and fall cases we see have to deal with winter conditions, like snow, sleet, slush and ice. They are common occurrences in cold weather climates, especially when temperatures have been consistently below the freezing mark for extended periods of time.
So what do you do after a slip and fall?
This edition of the Toronto Injury Lawyer Blog will attempt to give you a checklist of things to do after a slip and fall. While no such list can be completely exhaustive because each case is different, we’ve attempted to narrow down the most important things to do when after a slip and fall case happens.
As with all personal injury cases, the first and most important thing to do is to get the medical attention and care you need. Your safety and health are top priority, and should not be sacrificed. This means getting medical care following your accident and not refusing treatment which has been offered. Why do we mention this? Too often we see people following accidents think that everything is “ok“, only to find out down the road that things are not “ok“. Insurers take advantage of this by suggesting that your injury was not directly as a result of your slip and fall. Rather, your injury is related to something completely different. They try to create the narrative that had your injury been very serious, legitimate, or directly caused by the slip and fall; that you would have sought out medical attention right away, or not refused treatment. Therefore, your injuries must be related to something else not tied to the subject accident. See how that works!
Pictures Pictures Pictures! Taking photos using your smartphone is an excellent way to gather evidence, right at the source, in order to build a successful slip and fall case, right after the slip and fall happened. Before we had cameras on our smartphones, this was more difficult. We had to attend at the scene long after the accident happened. In the older days with a film camera where we needed to wait for the images to be developed! But now, the photos can be taken and shared with your personal injury lawyer right away. Those photos will serve as the best and most relevant evidence of what the scene of the slip and fall looked like at the time of the slip and fall itself. If there was a patch of ice, you no longer need to guess at its size or location. Just take a photo of the hazard which caused the slip and fall so that your personal injury lawyer, and the insurer, won’t have to do any guesswork. If the scene of the fall was that bad, then the photos will speak for themselves. Waiting on getting the photos of the accident scene is a mistake. It’s a mistake because snow and ice melt. Memories of where the fall took place fade. Or, perhaps the scene gets cleared up by a winter maintenance contractor later that day such that the scene of the slip and fall is now completely unrecognizable from the time which you slipped and fell.
Don’t forget to take pictures of the footwear which you were wearing at the time of your slip and fall. This is important because the insurer, Judge and Jury will want to know if the footwear was appropriate given the winter weather conditions. Take for example the person who was wearing flip flops in the snow vs. the person who was wearing winter boots. An insurer will seek to pin a larger portion of contributory negligence on the person who was not wearing appropriate footwear vs a person who was. They will seek to argue that the accident could have been avoided had proper footwear been worn, or perhaps the injuries would not have been as severe had the person been wearing proper footwear. Photos of the Plaintiff’s footwear is required in order to build the case.
Remember where you fell. This seems obvious, but it’s very important. Different Defendants will be responsible for different places. You want to make sure that you are identifying the correct party in the lawsuit. It will be difficult for your personal injury lawyer to identify the right Defendant, if you cannot recall where you fell. Sometimes, remembering a general area isn’t sufficient. Being unable to recall whether or not you fell on a public sidewalk vs. private property completely changes the nature of your slip and fall case. There are different laws which apply for slip and falls on public sidewalks, vs. slip and fall cases on private property. This is why knowing exactly where you fell is very important for your slip and fall case.
Report your slip and fall accident if there an owner or employee, or an agent for the property owner nearby. Incident reports can be very helpful. At the very least, they will serve as proof that you did in fact slip and fall and sustained an injury. The police will not investigate your slip and fall. But a private security guard, or employee will likely do so and complete an incident report. You would be surprised at all of the useful information which can be contained in these incident reports. At the very least, you are letting the property owner know that what happened to you was so significant that it needed to be reported. It was not so insignificant that you went on with your day like nothing ever happened.
Speaking of reporting. Here is another reason why you want to report your slip and fall accident. Because there are notice requirements in slip and fall cases. If those notice requirements are not met, then a Defendant may bring a Summary Judgment motion to have the case dismissed on account of the Plaintiff’s failure to satisfy those notice requirements. There are a lot of cases on such issues. Here is a recent case released January 13, 2025 where a Municipal Defendant sought to strike out the Plaintiff’s case for failing to satisfy the notice provision for a municipal slip and fall. These motions prevent a Plaintiff’s case from getting successfully to trial and having a hearing on the merits. Instead, the Defendant seeks to have the case dismissed based on a technicality.
