Myrtle Beach Trip and Fall – Shopping Center Parking Lot
The Myrtle Beach personal injury lawyers at the Stanley Law Firm represented a client who was injured in a shopping mall parking lot. Because of our experience in personal injury cases like this one, we were able to get a successful outcome for our client.
In this case, our client was going to shop at a Myrtle Beach area business which was located in a shopping mall. At the time, she was five months pregnant. During the late evening hours at dark, she parked her car in the parking lot closest to the business, walked around the front of her car, and tripped over a piece of concrete. It was later determined that this piece of concrete was from a broken concrete parking stop.
As a result of the fall, our client had significant abdominal injuries. She was treated at the emergency room and spent several days in the intensive care unit. The most significant issue in this case was that our client was five months pregnant and the fall and resulting personal injuries caused the premature birth of her son.
While our client eventually recovered from her injuries, her son had developmental delays at his birth such as holding his own bottle, crawling, pulling up and trying to stand. At the time of the fall, the long-range prospects for the son were unknown, although the son did make a full recovery and did not have any long term problems as a result of his premature birth.
In an effort to get a successful outcome for our client, the Stanley Law Firm hired a forensic architect to investigate the area where our client tripped over the parking stop. As a result of this investigation, our forensic architect determined that the parking lot had been altered months prior to the fall which caused vehicles to repeatedly run over the parking stop. The alteration of the parking lot and parking lot stops that was determined from the forensic architect’s investigation was a significant finding and allowed the personal injury lawyers at the Stanley Law Firm to establish that the shopping mall had prior notice of a dangerous condition.
Additionally, our forensic architect determined that the repeated run-ins by numerous different vehicles because of the modifications to the parking lot caused the parking stop to break into several pieces. Our client had tripped over one of those broken parking stop pieces.
As a result of the forensic architect’s findings, the personal injury lawyers at the Stanley Law Firm brought suit against the shopping mall owner and the maintenance company for the parking lot. During the discovery phase of this case, our firm took the depositions of numerous witnesses including a representative for the shopping mall, the maintenance company, several fact witnesses, and opposing experts.
Prior to the trial of this premise liability matter, the shopping mall owner and the maintenance company for the parking lot settled the mother and son’s cases for a six figure amount.
