What to Do If a Personal Injury Happens at a Retail Store

When going out for some retail therapy at a retail store or two, you never expect to end up nursing an injury for your trouble. But thousands of people every year with good intentions subsequently have an arm in a cast or suffer a life-altering back injury after walking into a retail store.

What should you do if this has just happened to you?

A duty of care applies on both sides of a situation where a customer (or prospective customer who hadn't completed a purchase yet) was injured inside a store.

The store manager and employees are responsible for ensuring that the premises are safe for people to walk around inside. This means the floors are dry after being mopped down the night before, the shelves are not overly stacked where product boxes may fall on customers, and the fixtures and fittings aren't going to suddenly collapse.

Also, being a responsible person while in the store is important too. If you've been rushing around and slid on a wet floor, you may have less of a case than if you were walking sensibly and slid on it.

First of all, inform the nearest member of staff that you've been injured and ask for the store manager. Sometimes, junior staff members are in their first job and lack the knowledge of what to do. By asking for the manager, a seasoned employee can get to you as soon as possible.

Get the manager to begin a claim for an injury on the premises. All retail stores should have established procedures to follow and the manager should have received training on it. Help them by providing the information required for them to file a claim successfully.

While you cannot record the incident, it may have been caught on their CCTV system. Ask for a copy of the recording and if you're still ambulatory, record a playback of the video on your smartphone too.

Where there's evidence at the scene like a wet floor, broken product boxes or displays, take photos of these for future reference. If you tripped on something, photograph the item and also where it originally was, so it can be pictured as it was before tripping over it.

Even if you seem to have only suffered minor injuries, get checked out at a hospital. You never know if you're still suffering from shock and the injuries are more severe than they appear. A hospital can perform some basic checks and may run some X-rays or other tests to be sure.

It's important to get in touch with a personal injury attorney in Hazleton PA to represent your interests. They will have dealt with many local injury cases before, possibly including some that occurred inside a retail store. If you've forgotten to do anything important, they can doubtless provide advice to follow next. Afterward, discuss with them how a claim can proceed and whether you may have a compensation case.

By following a good procedure after you've been injured, it's possible to get better sooner, protect your rights, and confirm if you have a valid compensation claim too. Failing to do so makes all these things less likely.