Published February 11th, 2021
Sidewalk trip-and-fall cases are very difficult to win. The local municipality always points out, correctly, that it’s impossible to monitor sidewalk conditions on every street in town all the time. So the challenge becomes to show not that they should have known about the defect, but that they actually did know about it.
Take the case of my client, a lovely middle-aged lady who sustained serious injuries after a fall on a sidewalk in Palm Beach County.
Through public records requests, we learned that the city manager where my client had fallen had written the Florida Department of Transportation twice complaining about hazardous conditions on the sidewalk in the area where my client later fell.
Twice, the Florida Department of Transportation replied to the City Manager by pointing out, correctly, that the defective sidewalks were the responsibility of the city, not the Florida Department of Transportation.
We took the video deposition of the City Manager, and put this exchange of correspondence in front of him and on the record, with the defense attorney sitting there powerless to stop us.
A six-figure settlement and the gratitude of a happy client ensued.
