By Peter DePaolis
Attorney
Attorney
If a client and defendant are both negligent there may be contributory negligence involved. A common thing attorney David Schloss hears in slip and fall cases is that the person injured may have not been paying attention to where he or she was walking. He believes it’s unrealistic to think that a plaintiff would be looking down at his or her feet while they’re walking. What they argue in those cases is that the plaintiff’s conduct need only be reasonable under the circumstances. And the attorneys at the Koonz law firm are usually successful in those cases. Find out more about contributory negligence defense in this video with attorney David Schloss.
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Video Transcription
Contributory negligence refers to the idea that even if a defendant is negligent, if the plaintiff, our client, was also negligent, if they can prove that. If the defendant can prove that a plaintiff was contributorily negligent, that’s a defense to our claims. One of the things we also hear, in slip and fall cases, is the idea that the plaintiff, the person who was injured wasn’t watching where he or she was walking. I think it’s unrealistic to think that a plaintiff would be looking down at his or her feet while they’re walking, and so what we argue in those cases, and we’ve been successful in doing so is that the plaintiff’s conduct need only be reasonable under the circumstances. If we can convince the defendant or the jury or the judge that the plaintiffs conduct was not unreasonable under the circumstances then a contributory negligence defense does not apply. For more information please go to our website Koonz.com