In March 2016, a woman was walking towards her dormitory at Florida A&M University. She was carrying groceries and just wanted to get home. However, as she tried the main pathway, she noticed it was blocked by a locked gate. She had to take a different path — one that was not properly maintained. And, as you can probably guess where this story is headed, the woman fell and broke her ankle on the uneven path.
Because of the extent of her injury, the woman had to drop out of school to fully recover. Florida A&M came back with about as tone-deaf a response as you can expect: they revoked her financial aid and she lost credit for that semester.
The woman is now suing Florida A&M for failing to maintain a safe pathway to her dormitory. The lawsuit references the locked gate on the main pathway, which the woman claims is evidence that the area sees a lot of foot traffic. If that’s the case, the university should have been much more proactive in their efforts to maintain the paths around the area and, thus, to protect their students from potential harm.
This is the reality with slip and fall accidents: they can change your life, often in unexpected ways. The victims of these accidents have every right to pursue litigation if their cases involved negligence on the part of a building manager, company or entity that is supposed to ensure their safety.
Source: Tallahassee Democrat, “Former student suing over fall at FAMU,” Karl Etters, May 3, 2017