Confidential Settlement After Airport Slip & Fall

The Champion Firm Wins Confidential Settlement for Client Who Injured Knee in Slip and Fall at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport

In October 2017, our client was flying back home to Virginia when he had to catch a connecting flight at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. While walking through the airport, he slipped on a puddle of water and fell. The fall resulted in our client dislocating his knee and tearing his meniscus and medial patellofemoral retinaculum. After our client endured months of treatment to recover from his injuries he had incurred nearly $70,000 in medical bills.

The Champion Firm was referred this case by an out-of-state law firm who needed an Atlanta personal injury law firm to pursue the case in Georgia. The Champion Firm filed a lawsuit in the State Court of Clayton County against the Atlanta Airlines Terminal Corporation, which is the entity that manages the airport, and ABM Aviation, which is the company that provides janitorial and maintenance services inside the airport.

One of the main challenges to proving the case was showing that the defendants knew, or should have known, that the water was on the floor. Slips and fall cases in Georgia require that the plaintiff show that the defendant had actual or constructive notice of the hazard that caused the fall. This can be challenging when the fall involves a foreign substance that somebody spilled on the floor. In this case, we had no direct evidence of how long the water had been there before our client fell. However, Georgia law provides that, if a defendant failed to follow reasonable floor inspection procedures, then the plaintiff is relieved of the obligation to prove how long the substance was on the floor. As a result, our focus of the lawsuit was showing that the defendants lacked reasonable procedures regarding the inspection of the floor.

After taking depositions and obtaining documents from the defendants, our legal team was able to show that the defendants did not follow reasonable floor inspection procedures the day our client fell. This allowed us to obtain a confidential settlement for our client.