Settlement for Elderly Woman Injured in Fall at Oak Creek Apartment Complex

Samster, Konkel & Safran's Milwaukee serious fall lawyers represented an elderly woman who slipped and fell on her way from her apartment in Oak Creek Wisconsin, as she was headed to her car in a separate garage structure at the apartment complex. The sidewalk which she would have normally used to walk from the apartment building to the garage was covered with piles of snow because the snow plows had cleared the parking lot behind the building and pushed the snow up towards the building and covering the sidewalk area. The client was required to walk out into the parking lot to get to the garage structure. Due to snowy conditions from a snowfall that morning,  and unaware of icy conditions under the snow, she fell in the parking lot, as seen in the photograph, resulting in a fracture to her hip, and requiring hospitalization, surgery and extensive rehabilitation.  The client laid on the parking lot for almost twenty minutes, but was finally able to use her cell phone to call a relative, who then came to the scene and called 911.  A claim was made against the apartment complex’s insurance company, alleging that Wisconsin’s Safe Place Statute. Section 101.11, Wisconsin Statutes, applied to this case and imposed a greater duty on the apartment complex owners and operators to maintain the premises as free from danger “as the nature of the employment, place of employment or public building, will reasonably permit.”  The case was settled, prior to a lawsuit being filed, for a substantial amount of money.