Why Liability Claims Get Denied

One of the most common reasons for denial that we see is based on liability. Once you get out of the basic fact patterns where, you know, one person rear-ends another person in a collision, it can start to get questionable about who’s at fault or if even just one person or company is at fault. A good example of this that’s very common is when people have falls in retail stores or grocery stores, and it almost always comes down to the same question: if there was something on the floor, should the store owner or their employees have seen it and cleaned it up, or should the injured person have seen it and avoided it? Or is the answer both? And anytime there’s uncertainty about a question like that, the insurance company is going to default to either a denial or to a very, very, very small offer of settlement that doesn’t fully compensate you for your damages. One of the big reasons you have to hire an attorney is to go through the facts and discover things like: What are the store’s policies on checking for spills or debris on the floor? How frequently is someone supposed to go around and clean those things? Did the person who was supposed to clean those things do them? How long had the spill or debris been there? And you’ll find different answers to those questions that mean, you know, you can or cannot recover. If the spill had only been there for about five seconds and you unluckily turned the corner right then, it may not be the store’s fault—even if it’s not your fault either. On the other hand, if the spill had been there for an hour and three employees stepped over it without cleaning it up, then it may very well be the store’s fault and not yours. Questions like that lead to denials.