By: Leonardo Lampret, Associate Attorney
The winter season is here, bringing snow, ice, and the hustle and bustle of the holidays. While it’s a joyful time for many, it’s also a peak period for slip-and-fall claims, as employees navigate slippery walkways, crowded entrances, and icy parking lots. For adjusters, carriers, and employers, this season requires extra vigilance. A proactive, investigative approach can help control claims costs, protect employees, and ensure that incidents are handled fairly and efficiently.
- Early Scene Documentation
Immediate and thorough documentation is critical when it comes to mitigating exposure. Adjusters should encourage employers to take detailed photos or videos of the incident site, capturing not only the immediate area where the fall occurred but also entrances, stairwells, hallways, lighting conditions, floor surfaces, and nearby hazards such as wet leaves, ice, or spills. In addition, adjusters should ensure that employers document environmental factors, such as weather conditions, snow removal records, or any maintenance logs for that area. Collecting witness statements promptly – from the claimant, co-workers, or passersby – helps preserve critical details that may fade over time. Detailed scene documentation creates a factual foundation for liability defense and provides evidence that may protect against potential exaggerated claims.
- Detailed Claim Investigation
Many slip-and-fall accidents occur without witnesses, making it essential to gather as much circumstantial evidence as possible to assess the credibility of the claim.
Therefore, adjusters should take a comprehensive approach when it comes to investigating, he incident. It would be highly recommendable to evaluate whether preventive measures were in place, such as warning signs, non-slip mats, or handrails, and whether employees were following safety protocols. One of the ways whether slippery surface was properly maintained is to check maintenance and cleaning logs to ensure proper procedures were followed. Examining prior similar incidents or absence of those can reveal whether or not hazard actually exist. By piecing together these details, adjusters and carriers can assist with mitigating by collecting evidence that would call into the question whether the accident actually happened.
- Check for surveillance cameras!
Leveraging technology strengthens investigations. Surveillance cameras, incident-tracking software, and floor-surface monitoring tools provide objective evidence of hazards and employee behavior are gold when it comes to defending the work-related accidents, and are most of the time the best evidence when it comes to mitigating exposure.
By acting promptly and methodically, you help strengthen the defense of each claim while preventing the situation from escalating into a claim that it should never have become.