You should always report your injury to the manager of the property

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Video Transcript:

If you’re injured on someone’s property, what should you do?

Hi, I’m Darrell Castle and I’m an attorney licensed to practice law in the state of Tennessee and the answer to that question is, you’ve got to make a report. You’ve got to let the owner of that property know that you were injured.

First of all, you have to get medical treatment, of course. If the injury is severe and you need immediate attention, you should always do that. But the owner of that property – whether it’s a store or a neighbor or whatever – has to be made aware of how the injury occurred. You’ve got to give a report.

Perhaps if someone else is with you, they can do this for you, but you’ve got to get the name of the person you’re giving the report to. Often times, at the place of business, they’ll have a report you’ve got to fill out or they’ll fill out for you if you’re on your way to the hospital.

And you can rest assured that if it’s in today’s word, the company will have videotapes of the incident so they’ll kind of know what happened.

You have to get medical treatment. You have to give a report.

Let’s say you’re injured in someone’s grocery store. You’re shopping and there’s spilled water on the floor and you slip and fall down – injuring your leg and you have to go to the hospital in an ambulance. Who pays for all that? Who’s going to be good for those medical bills, which might be severe? Sometimes you might need surgery and so forth. Those types of cases do happen.

Well, the owner of that store is responsible if he knew that danger existed, or in the exercise of due care, he should’ve known it existed. If he was properly monitoring the isles of his store, then he would know that one of his employees spilled that water or not.

So, let’s say you’re at your next door neighbor’s house. He invites you over to cook dinner on his deck. While you’re walking up the steps of his deck, the step breaks and you fall through and tear ligaments in your knee and have to have surgery.

Once again, you have to give a report to your neighbor about what happened. I don’t think you should be giving recorded statements and things like that without a lawyer – get a lawyer first.

But, your neighbor is charged with monitoring his property and making sure dangerous conditions don’t exist. Did he know about it, or in the exercise of due care, should he have known about it?

Those are the things you have to consider. Always give a report. Never give a recorded statement without your lawyer present.

You have to at least report the accident with the people who own the property. Let them know and make a record that the injury occurred and so forth.