Grocery stores in the Columbia Area, such as Kroger and Food Lion, and home improvement stores like Lowe’s and Home Depot and superstores like Walmart are no strangers to accidents. Not only do hundreds of customers move through these stores every day, but they’re hectic environments because there’s a lot going on – shopping, cleaning, stocking, and so on.
Popular stores like the ones mentioned above are accustomed to slip and fall accidents, and injuries caused by falling merchandise. Sometimes, these accidents are caused by a careless customer, and other times they’re caused by a negligent employee. For the purpose of this article, we want to dive deeper into injuries caused by falling merchandise.
Falling Merchandise Can Be Dangerous
Stores generally do their best to keep their facilities safe for customers, but it’s nearly impossible to be perfect all the time. After all, stores can have young or untrained employees doing the stocking or cleaning. Or, a customer can be careless and create a dangerous situation for other customers – there are so many things that can go wrong.
During the holidays, for example, stores are usually open for extended hours and their customer traffic can virtually double if not triple. While that can be great for sales and our local economy, the hectic holiday season can increase the risk of merchandise falling.
Suppose a particular product is almost sold out and a customer can’t find a sales clerk to help him, so he climbs up and tries to get the merchandise off the shelf himself. As he’s reaching as far as he can to grab the item above, he accidentally knocks over another item that is extremely heavy. The item falls and hits an elderly customer in the head, knocking her down as she happened to be passing by at the wrong moment – these types of scenarios happen all the time, but often the cause of falling merchandise is a poorly stacked shelf, as opposed to a customer’s mistake.
Merchandise can fall at stores because:
- It was stacked too high
- It was improperly stacked
- It was knocked over by employees
- It was placed in too narrow of an area to hold the product securely
- It was knocked over by a customer or store employee
Falling merchandise at stores is not to be taken lightly. Imagine a 50-pound box landing on someone’s head? What if that person was a toddler or a frail person in their 80s or 90s? Even if the customer is healthy and in their 20s or 30s, the injuries can still be serious. When objects fall onto people in stores, they can cause serious, if not life-threatening injuries, including traumatic brain injuries, paralysis, and even death.
If you were injured by falling merchandise in a store, don’t hesitate to contact our firm to meet with a Columbia, SC personal injury lawyer to discuss filing a claim for compensation.