Las Vegas casinos receive millions of visitors annually. Whether they come from other countries or other states or live locally, these visitors eat in restaurants, shop in stores, stay in hotel rooms, and gamble in the casinos. Everywhere they go, they risk slipping, tripping, and falling.
Slip and fall accidents might sound like a hustle to rip off a casino. But these accidents are real and can cause serious injuries. The hotel or casino operator would bear responsibility if they acted in a way that created an unreasonably hazardous condition for guests or failed to take reasonable action to address hazardous conditions.
How Falling Accidents Happen in Casinos and Hotels
Falling accidents take two forms. Elevated falls happen when you fall from one level to another. You suffer an elevated fall when you fall off a ladder. Casino or hotel guests rarely experience these types of falls.
The second form — same-elevation falls — happen when you fall on the same level due to a footing or flooring problem. These types of falls have two causes:
Slip and Fall
A slip and fall accident occurs when the friction between your feet and the floor drops. Without traction, your feet slip, and you lose your balance. You can suffer an injury in the ensuing fall.
In the most common situation, the accident happens while walking. Your feet slip forward when they lose traction, and you fall backward. Since you cannot catch yourself during a backward fall, your hips, back, and head hit the ground.
Some common causes of slips include the following:
- Liquid spills
- Polished floors
- Gravel or sand
- Rain puddles
- Wet pool decks
- Mist from cooling misters
- Dropped food
Unfortunately, with tens of thousands of guests and employees in casinos, these conditions and the ensuing slips happen often.
Trip and Fall
A trip and fall accident happens when something interferes with the motion of your foot. Your momentum causes you to lose your balance. Since you cannot move your foot, you cannot stop yourself from tumbling.
A common scenario in casinos and hotels happens when your foot catches on something. As you fall forward, you throw your hands out to catch yourself. When you hit the ground, the impact injures your hands, wrists, knees, chest, and face.
Some possible causes of tripping accidents in hotels and casinos include the following:
- Loose rugs
- Curled, torn, or bulging carpet
- Objects on the floor
- Unmarked steps
- Potholes
- Uneven or raised concrete walkways
- Raised thresholds
- Missing or broken handrails
Unlike many slipping hazards, tripping hazards are not transient. For example, when a hotel has a step down from the lobby to the casino, the operator cannot claim it was unaware of the step.
Injuries You May Suffer When You Fall
The injuries from slips and trips will differ because of the differences in how these accidents happen. Slipping accidents cause your back and head to strike the ground. Some common slipping injuries include:
- Head trauma
- Brain injuries, such as concussions
- Neck and back strains and sprains
- Broken ribs
- Broken hips
- Fractured vertebrae
- Herniated or bulging discs
Tripping accidents cause your front or side to hit the ground. Some injuries you might experience after a tripping accident include:
- Facial fractures
- Hand, wrist, or arm fractures
- Wrist injuries
- Knee injuries
- Head trauma and brain injuries
- Chest injuries, including broken ribs and torn cartilage
Depending on the type of injury you suffer, you may require several weeks to heal. After healing, you may require several months of physical therapy.
Hotel and Casino Liability for Falls
The idea behind injury claims is that you should not bear the cost of injuries caused by someone else’s actions. In this case, you should not be responsible for paying medical bills and losing wages when a casino or hotel could have prevented your injuries by exercising due care toward its guests.
To prove liability for slips and trips, your lawyer must meet the four elements of negligence:
- Duty of care
- Breach of duty
- Causation
- Damages
The relationship defines the duty of care. As an invitee onto the premises, the property owner or manager must exercise reasonable care in finding and fixing hazardous conditions. Invitees include tourists who do not intend to spend any money and have entered the public areas of the casino hotel lawfully.
Invitees do not include trespassers. This means the operator does not owe you a duty of care if you enter areas not open to the public or enter the casino after it bans you.
A breach of duty happens when the operator fails to exercise reasonable care in making its property safe for invitees. Some ways to prove a breach of the duty of care include showing the operator or its employees did any of the following:
- Created the hazardous condition
- Failed to fix a hazard it knew or should have known about
- Did not warn invitees about a hazard it knew about or should have found
Causation means the hazard played a role in your injury and was the type of hazard that would foreseeably cause an injury.
Finally, your losses come from the expenses arising from your injury and the impact of the injury on your quality of life.
Contact a Las Vegas Slip-and-Fall Accident Lawyer
Slips, trips, and falls happen frequently in casinos, restaurants, shops, and hotel rooms. Contact Morris Injury Law for a free consultation if you suffer an injury after falling in a Las Vegas casino or hotel.
