Episode 23: Michigan Slip & Fall Lawyers

iHeartMedia Detroit Metro President Colleen Grant interviews Attorney Tim Holland, one of the nation’s most in-demand legal specialists

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Welcome to Light Up to D afocus on what's happening in our community from
the people who make it happen.Here's your host, I heard Media Detroit
Market President Colleen Grant. Well,welcome to Light Up the D. This

(00:21):
is Colleen Grant. I'm your host, and I'm joined today by Tim Holland
IF Michigan Slip and Fall Lawyers.Tim has litigated over two hundred slip and
fall, trip and fall and premisesliability cases throughout Michigan. He is a
recognized national legal expert in the areaof premises leave libely law and has taught
in national webinars to thousands of attorneysthroughout the United States on successful settlement and

(00:44):
trial strategies on slip and fall cases. His website is fall law dot com.
Welcome Tim, Hey, thanks alot for having me today. Yeah,
I'm really glad you joined us.So the laws regarding slip and fall
and trip and fall have drastically changedrecently, Yes, definitely. We've had
a new case come out just lastweek from the Michigan Supreme Court. It

(01:07):
is called the Lsie Decision, andit drastically changes the way premises liability is
litigated. Here in Michigan. Sowhy don't we talk about what it used
to be and what it is now. Help us understand where we came from.
Certainly in two thousand and one,we had a decision that came out
called Lugo versus a Mare Attack,and that drastically changed slip and fall law

(01:33):
in Michigan. And the way itchanged it is this. It took the
decision making power out of the handsof juries and put it in the hands
of judges. So, rather thana jury deciding if a situation was dangerous
and the premises owner should be responsiblefor any injuries, it took that decision
and put it in hands of judges. So aren't verdicts usually from your peers?

(01:57):
Though, Well, that's where asa result of the Lugo versus Emeritech
decision, the cases we're not makingit to the jury. The cases were
being essentially dismissed by the judge pursuedto a doctrine of law that didn't exist
before Lugo. That doctrine is calledthe open and obvious doctrine. And what

(02:19):
that said again prior to last week, what that doctrine said is that if
the hazard that causes a person tofall is what's called readily observable upon a
casual inspection. It's the duty ofthe person walking to avoid it rather than
the duty of the premises owner tomake it save. So essentially, open

(02:39):
obvious became the gatekeeper to all premisescases because the judge then, right out
of the gate would have to decide, well, hey, if you could
have seen this hazard by simply lookingat it and avoided it yourself, then
you don't have a case. Well, that decimated premises liability and decimated these
cases for the life twenty years,and so it essentially eliminated it in many

(03:02):
ways, because if you think aboutit, almost every hazard that causes people
the fall is something that can beseen upon a casual inspection. And that's
where the judges really became the gatekeepers. Here. The judge would early in
litigation, the judge would make adecision, and if the judge considered the

(03:22):
hazard to be open and obvious,there's absolutely no recovery, no case.
You could have a fracture with surgeries, you could have died from one of
these falls. Open and obvious lugoout, no case. So help us
understand that, because one might go, hey, it's open and obvious,
like they should have seen it.Why would they not be responsible for that?

(03:44):
So we think that these cases exist, and they're certainly going to exist
in a different way than what's proposedthere or under the Lugo decision. Under
the Lugo decision, it's just simplya yes or no question. Could the
hazard be seen by looking at it? Or could it or was it hidden
that That was the only math thatwe had to do. Now under this

(04:05):
new decision, which is the Alsiedecision, now these cases exist where the
jury is going to have to considerall the factors, not just whether or
not the hazard was visible, butthey're going to consider factors like how dangerous
was it. We're policies and proceduresin place by the landowners to make premises

(04:28):
safe where their inspections happening, wereremediation where those happening. And so now
the jury is going to consider severalfactors and who is responsible foreign injury And
they're going to do it essentially likethis. On the verdict form, there's
going to be two lines. There'sgoing to be the aligned for the plainiff

(04:49):
and then aligned for the defendant andthe jury Now based on all the factors,
not just the visibility of the hazard, but based on all the factors.
Now the jury will decide out ofone percent what percent fault the premises
owner had for the fall and whatpercent fault that the injured party had for
the fall. Oh, how interesting. So it's it's not like just a

(05:11):
yes or no, it's who hadwhat percentage of liability in the accident.
We think that it's a better standardfor a couple of reasons. First of
all, it absolutely promotes safety.Right. You know, Metro can be
dangerous. It can be a dangerousplace to walk, frankly, and one
of the reasons that Michigan and Metroin particular has become a dangerous place to

(05:32):
walk is because premises owners really didn'thave much responsibility or accountability prior to this
Alsie decision. I mean they saidthe same thing that the judges said,
which is, hey, if youcould see it by looking at it and
you fall and die on it,too bad, got it. We think
that this decision number one promote safetyfrom the standpoint of it's going to hold
them accountable if they have very,very dangerous hazards, regardless if they can

(05:55):
be seen. The other thing thatwe think that this decision does is is
we think that it correctly. Itcorrectly puts this onto a continuum scale where
a jury can think about it inhis side, like, hey, if
if if you go to Kroger andand they've got an extremely dangerous heart to
see a little wire or strap thatwas difficult to see if somebody runs into

(06:17):
that, or if there is ahole in their parking lot that's deep,
may be difficult to proceed from distance. Now the jury is going to be
able to decide, you know,hey, who's gonna be responsible. So
safety increases after alsaid. But alsowe think it's more fair because now all
the factors can be considered. Sopreviously, just to go on your example,

(06:39):
if there were a hole in theparking lot, they you know,
the judge, not a jury,might have said, you should have seen
the hole in the parking lot.The end is that right, you'd never
see a jury on that. Thejudge would dismiss that case, send the
plaintiff away with nothing, and alsoprobably look at me like I was a
sad little man too. So howmany cases would you say over that time

(07:00):
period had just been dismissed that mayhave I mean, is there any study
on anything like that. There's nostudy, But I did teach this subject
at a local college and Grand Rapids, and certainly there's two levels there.
One is the number of cases thatwere dismissed, which I certainly would put
in the thousands. Wow. Theother is where people just didn't bring the

(07:23):
case because they gave the advice thatI've had to give so many people over
the last twenty years, which is, hey, I'm sorry, it's readily
observable upon a casual one spection.You know, they had they tried to
pigeonhole two exceptions to open obvious,but they were hard to understand. They
were heavily litigated, they were superparsand it just really didn't help anybody.

(07:44):
And so, you know, theelimination under the LSIID case, we're very
happy for it. But if youwere to ask me candidly, did it
come a little too late? Camea little too late here? I mean,
there's been thousands of people that havebeen hurt and that couldn't recover.
And I think one thing that's importantfor the listeners to understand, and we
have a different perspective on this becausewe see it every day. But people

(08:07):
are injured badly in falls, andI think that's a little bit of a
misconception that I think a lot ofthe public has is you know, they
think, well, hey, watchwhere you're going and walk it off.
Well, a lot of these falls, I mean are quite dangerous conditions people.
We've got a gentleman that lost hiseye right now, We've got people
that have died. We've got peoplewith two or three ankle surgeries that are

(08:28):
never going to walk right again.Certainly they're never going to run. And
so these are serious cases. Andso for the Supreme Court to kind of
make it right here with the LSIAdecision very important for those people to have
some recourse, but also to asksome justice. You know, I told
people all the time, I'm I'minvolved in the justice system. I've seen

(08:52):
a lot of system, but Ihaven't seen a lot of justice. This
is one of those times where youknow, the Supreme Court really, I
think, is doing injured party somejustice here. How long has Michigan been
behind on this for? How long? Pretty much the last twenty years.
I would put us basically dead last. Everybody else has different laws than us.

(09:13):
Yeah, so everybody else has differentlaws. Now. I was just
lecturing on this in Las Vegas,and it basically boils down to two kind
of types of states that we havein the United States when it comes to
premises law. One is the typeof state that we are where there's a
complete defense like open and obvious thatprevents all recovery. The other type,

(09:33):
which is the type of state thatwe are now, that considers what's called
pure compared to fault. So againkind of that that concept that I talked
about out of one who how muchis the premises owner had falled? How
much is the injured party had fallowed? And it shakes out that way.
So those are the two types.And when we had open and obvious,

(09:54):
we were probably dead last or closeto it in planf's ability to recover and
it in you know, these aren'tpeople that have minor injuries. You know
that we're looking at their case.These are people are hurt, you know,
pretty bad. So this would putus back at least middle of the
pack. So you were mentioning acouple different times, lecturing or teaching,

(10:15):
and this is a specialty for you. You're considered an expert in the field.
I think it's interesting that a lotof law firms talk about they have
people who do this kind of caseand people who do this kind of specialty.
What is it about a law firmthat only does this that makes you
different than another firm that might have, you know, dog bites or slip

(10:37):
and fall or auto accidents. Whatis it Why would somebody choose your organization
rather than Well, I think that'sa very good question, and I think
the answer really is is that we'respecialized. And so you know, for
example, if you wanted to haveheart surgery, you're gonna have a very

(10:58):
dangerous heart surgery, you would wantto go to the best specific heart surgeon
that that is up to date,that has the resources, but also has
the experience in the in the connectionsin that particular surgery. Uh, and
lawyering, it's very much like thatas well, you know, in the

(11:18):
same way where you wouldn't want togo to the best ankle surgeon in the
country for your heart surgery, right, I mean, the best ankle surgeon
in the country is not going todo a stellar job on your heart surgery.
They probably could do it, butthey're not going to do it the
same way as a specialized heart surgeonone lawyering is is very very much the
same way. So, for example, there are specialties that I have premises

(11:39):
liability as one death cases or anotherthat you know, we have very extensive
experience in both teaching it and litigatingit. But if like Coke needed to
merge with Pepsi and or the universewas going to explode, I wouldn't be
your guy. Okay, I wouldnot be your guy for a Coke to

(12:01):
merge with Pepsi because I'm not I'mnot what they call M and A guy,
a mergers and acquisitions guy. Butso number one would be the specialization
that we have. Number two wouldbe just the general knowledge that we have
that I think is a cut aboveand what I mean by that is in
premisis liability. There's all sorts ofconsiderations that for specialists like us that we

(12:24):
would consider that maybe another lawyer thatis doing wills and estates or something,
and then it's going to moonlight forpremisy liabilits. So for example, when
you approached like a slip and fall, you can we have experts that we
get involved with those cases that actuallycalculate a friction coefficient based on the conditions
and then they have the ability toexpertly opine whether or not it was dangerous

(12:48):
based on the friction coefficient, whichis the amount that their shoe would have
had friction on the type of flooringthat they head onto that specific circumstance.
So again, with our specialists,you know, our specialty, we have
access to those kind of experts,national experts. I just I was just
talking to a couple a couple ofmonths ago in Chicago, and there are

(13:09):
all sorts of people that we haveaccess to, not only friction coefficient experts,
but also perception reaction experts. Sowhen when the other side says,
hey, you should have seen that, our experts can do an actual assessment.
They're medical doctors with a specialty andperception reaction. They can give an
expert opinion on whether or not ourclient should have seen it. So and

(13:30):
again we're on the forefront of thingslike of that of calculating what the actual
risk was in the slip, figuringout from a medical standpoint, what could
have been seen or perceived or whatcould not have been You know, another
specialty that we have would be asit relates to like a construction site injuries.
We've got Osha people. We've gotsafety standards people, nit saw.

(13:54):
I just went to a conference againtwo months ago, and I saw the
president of the National I'm gonna saythis wrong Flooring Safety Standards Institute. First
of all, if I wasn't aPremisis Lively the attorney, I don't think
I would know that there is aNational Flooring Safety Standards Institute. But myself
and two other lawyers from Slipping Fatwe sat there front row. We were

(14:18):
fascinated by it. And they've alldone the math on what are the most
dangerous floors, what are the mostdangerous flooring conditions like, or what's the
most slippery floor cleaner, or what'sthe safest floor They've done all of that
math. The sad math that wefound out at that conference was that the
number one most dangerous shoe at theNational Flooring Safety Standards Well, it was

(14:43):
funny, it was we all kindof guessed it before we told us that.
I guessed like high heel shoe,like a super high heel shoe.
Somebody in our party guess sneakers.Nobody guessed the right answer, which was
flip flops. It turns out thatflip flops are the most dangerous shoe because
not only of the way that itsits on the foot, but also I

(15:05):
guess they're so inexpensive on the treadthat it's actually flip flops. Now,
the other irony was all three ofus were wearing flip flops. We were
at the premises Lavely National Flooring SafetyStandard Institute. I think I'm close on
that one conference and he says flipflops and I almost wore him. Today,

(15:28):
I'm going to Metro. Better besafe. Wow. Yeah, So
invest more heavily in your well rubberedflip flops. Definitely. Oh my god,
do not cheap out in the flipflops, Metro. It's dangerous enough
as it is. You know,nip in this field. And now you
teach too, which is and youand you advise lawyers all across the country.
So how does that come about?You know? I started out as

(15:52):
West Coast lawyer working in a biggerfirm. But I really realize that I
love lawyering, and I love lawyers, and I love actually litigating and trying
cases. And it's interesting, butlong story short, injury work allows the

(16:14):
best opportunity to litigate. There area lot there's a lot of cases.
There's a lot of interesting cases,and they funnel through the court system in
a way that you know, whenI was working on the West Coast,
I was working at a bigger firmwhen we were litigating these massive products liability
cases, and you know, Iwas writing a lot of memos and doing

(16:34):
a lot of emotions, but Ireally wasn't in a courtroom, and we
weren't really taking a lot of depositions. And so injury practice allowed me right
out of the gate to take myown depositions, try my own cases,
and and really become the lawyer thetype of lawyer that Lord Willing that I
wanted to become. And I wouldsay that that holds today. And then
through that, I really, Ithink more so than many others, I

(17:00):
really I like other lawyers too.I like spending time with other lawyers,
and that's where I like educating them. I like talking to them, and
I like being educated by lawyers too. So it's just the right fit for
me. I mean, I kindof I think of myself as kind of
a lawyer's lawyer, and and soit's just injury work is right for me.

(17:21):
And then when slip and fall.I started doing slip and fall back
in two thousand and three a slipand fall cases. I liked how they
were interesting in terms of proving theliability A lot of times, like,
for example, in a car accident, it's just a rear ender and there's
no real issue on you know,who's that fault. We're in premise this
liability cases. We're taking into accountso many factors to prove what that percentage

(17:44):
is well or at least back beforeFriday, just to try to survive the
case. So, yeah, that'show I got involved in it. It's
really interesting if you're just joining usright now. We're joined by Tim Holland,
he's an attorney with Michigan Slip andFall lawyers. Are there other areas
of law where it's comparative with theso you were talking if again, if
you're just joining us at it's moreof one hundred percent and breaking out who

(18:07):
has what percentage of liability and aslip and fallower trip and fall accident.
Are there other areas of law wherethe jury actually has to figure out the
percent as well? Or is thatstandard in a lot of injury work.
It's fairly standard. Okay, youknow, you're not going to see it
as much in like a breach ofcontract type suit, because you know the
jury is going to decide they eitherbreached or that you didn't right. So
you've seen in a lot of injurywork or or any kind of really like

(18:30):
a negligence type of issue is reallywhere that comparative fault is considered where anytime
there's like a little bit more ofa gray scale or exists on a continuum,
would be where you would have thatpercentage basis where if the jury is
going to break down a yes orno, and you wouldn't have it.
So let's talk about the experience ofthe victim. So you know, we

(18:55):
were talking about initially before this newruling that the victim would basically be out
of luck because they it was theobvious potential that there the accident happened because
the hazard was obvious. So Iknow that, you know, I'll go
to the grocery store and first ofall, ever glasses, and that does
limit your frame of reference with regardto things that are around you. And

(19:18):
then I'll be on my phone lookingat my list or somebody will text me
and I'll take a look, andyou know, you're fairly distracted in general.
So how has that, you know, just all of the things that
can come into a party's purview thatmight affect their ability to be aware of
the open and obvious? How hasthis helped them with regard to their potential,

(19:42):
you know, having the ability tohave a remedy for what might happen
to them. Well, I thinkyou're setup is perfect there, and I
think it actually demonstrates the biggest differencebetween the Lugo decision and the Alsai decision.
If you if you noted the wayyou were setting up the hypothetical,
you we're bringing up a lot ofparticular factors to you, like but you

(20:07):
brought up your glasses, Yeah,you know, you were bringing up kind
of the shoes that you're wearing.You weren't bringing up, you're the fact
that you'd be distracted by some things. Under the Lugo decision, none of
those factors would be considered where underthis decision. And I think this is
the way that the juries are goingto think about it. They're going to
think about the exact factors that youreally just articulated there, which is well

(20:30):
they you know, probably was difficultto see. She had the glasses.
You know, it is a littledistracting in there. You know, she
had the right shoes on, sothat's not going to be her fault.
She wasn't wearing flip flops like thisguy. And and so you're you're,
you're set up perfectly demonstrates the differencebetween the prior decision and the current decision,
which is none of those factors wouldhave been considered under Lugo. It

(20:52):
just would have been the case wouldhave just been drop kicked right out of
the court. Where here all thejury is going to hear about all that
stuff. And and I think thosefactors are still important. What's how does
this affecting the property owner? What'sthe responsibility of the property owner as we
enter this new phase. First ofall, I want to give the property
owners some good news here, okay, because I really want the property owners

(21:15):
listening to this to take heart ona few things. Okay, it's not
all gloom and doom for the propertyowners. Number one, you have the
exact same defenses now that you dida week ago. Okay, so you
know somebody else is asking me,you know, well now they just you
know, the property owners don't haveany defense. That's absolutely not true.

(21:37):
You have all the same defenses youhad a week ago. You just have
to prove them to a jury insteadof a judge. But this didn't eliminate
any defenses that you had. Youstill have those defenses. You're just gonna
have to argue them to the jury. Were a judge, you know what,
it wouldn't have made it that far. That's number one. The other
good news that I have for propertyowners is is that you're still in a

(21:59):
situation where if you have good policiesand procedures in place, and you're being
smart about the safety for your tenants, you're being smart about the safety for
your customers, you're being smart aboutthe safety for your residence. You're going
to be okay here for people thatare inspecting, for people that you know,
have a employees following policies and proceduresfor when a spill happens, by

(22:23):
getting your floor looked at, testedto make sure that it's safe for people
to walk on. For all thosepeople that are actually making things safe,
you're going to be fine under thisnew decision. What the people that should
should be worried about the l sidedecision, or the people that have the
dangerous properties, people that have theterribly slippery floors that they know, or

(22:47):
slippery that a million people falling on, but they never fix it. Those
are the people that have to worryof. People that never inspect, people
that never clean up spills or don'teven have a procedure in place for cleaning
up spills, you know. Andthose are the people that should worry under
the law because they essentially cause theinjury. But if you are a property
owner that is taking care of yourplace, making sure it's maintained, making

(23:11):
sure it's inspecting, you've got policiesand procedures in place, you're going to
be absolutely fine under this new law. And people like me, we won't
pursue cases against you because there isn'tgonna be any reason to hold you accountable
for your misdis because you didn't doany misdeeds. Right, Let's talk about
the person who does slip and fall. What happens. Let's say they make
a call to you. What isthe procedure that takes place. Yeah,

(23:33):
and I think that this is asuper important question off for your listeners,
because number one, the instant thatyou have the fall, it's just very
awkward and it's very embarrassing for people. And so you know, right out
of the gate, they're distracted bythe fact that I just fell. I
feel a little embarrassed, Russian onyou awkward yeah, or people are silently

(23:56):
judging you for being klutzy or whatyou know, You're having all those thoughts
and so you're not immediately thinking,you know, oh my lord, what
specifically did happen here? Or whosefault you know is this specifically? So
so the first thing that I wouldI would absolutely tell your listeners is is
that if you have a fall andyou have a bad fault, or you're
with someone that has a fall hasa bad fault, you want to first

(24:18):
make sure that you do an incidentreport so that there's some documentation of what
happened at the place and they can'ttotally sweep in under the rock and pretend
that it didn't happen because you didan instant report. That's number one.
Number two, take your own pictures, the best one. Who do you
do the incident report with the ownerof the property? Do okay, all
right? Sorry, keep going becausethey like to pretend that you know,

(24:41):
they'll have like a pit of hungrylions on their property, and then you'll
fall in there and they'll lions,they'll like bite your leg off, and
then if you don't do an instantreport, they'll pretend like it never happened,
Like no, you were at theother pit with the lions, you
know. So we get into likea weird situation there quite often where people,
the property owners deny that anything evenever happen. So it's so important

(25:02):
to do that instant report. It'sso important that before they can alter the
scene all of a sudden, makeit look safe when it turns out when
you traversed the hazard, it wasa death trap. Well after you fall
and you're embarrassed, so you justtry to hustle out of there without an
instant report. Well, the nextthing they do is they eliminate the hazard,
make it look like a million bucks. Then they take the pictures.

(25:25):
So you want to number one,collect yourself, get an instant report done.
Number two, take your own picturesso they can't falsify the evidence later,
which again we just see so often. Okay, and then your number
three step is is to call ourselvesimmediately Slip and Fallow lawyer. You want
to call us, right, awaybecause the third, you know, pieceless
number one is for us to getthe claim going and help you document it,

(25:48):
but also for us to get thesurveillance. You know, there's surveillance
everywhere today, there's video cameras,I mean everywhere. And the other thing
that they like to do is isthat if the surveillance is good for them,
they paraded out there. But ifthe surveillance shows that they had a
death trap, well, all ofa sudden, those tapes get erased or
the files are deleted, or willwe put them on a thumb drive to

(26:10):
save it. Now that thumb driveis in here. So so step one
definitely answer and report. Step twois you want to at least take some
of your own pictures, and thenstep three us to get someone like us
involved immediately so that we can makethe claim and preserve the video. Yeah,
the first two I would never eventhink about about following an incident report
and then taking my own pictures wouldnot even even cross my mind. And

(26:33):
that's why I bring up the naturaltendency because it's so awkward when people have,
right, you know, it's it'svery awkward when people have a fall.
And so what your your first instinctis just to cover your face and
run out of there. Right,you just had a falling from all these
people, you want to you know, do the old hey, look it's
elvis and then cover your face andyeah, scurry out of there. And

(26:55):
so that's what I want to communicateis in that moment when you feel that
embarrassment and you're BLUs stir it andyou don't you know know what to do.
You know, you just take asecond. And if you're with someone
that has a fault, please dothe same. Help them take a second,
collect themselves, and then make thatincident report and to snap a couple
pictures. I mean, you don'thave to stand there and you know,

(27:15):
take like thirty pictures or something,but you know, just take at least
one or two that just shows whatwas dangerous about it, and then and
then get us to contact us assoon as you can. Is there a
time frame within which a person hasto make that call and address what happened.
Yeah. The statue limitations for allpremises liability cases in the state of
Michigan is three years, So youhave three years from the date of the

(27:37):
fall to make a claim. Now, that's important for our conversation to day
for two reasons. The first isis that you want to if you've had
an opinion about a serious fall thatyou had before last Friday, but no
one would take your case, andyou're within the three year Satu limitations period,
I would encourage everybody to take asecond you go you can go back

(27:59):
if it was in the past threeyears within and say, hey, this
this happened, and now that thelaw has changed, I can find some
recourse. Perhaps so before last Friday, if if you had an opinion,
if you were seriously hurt and itwas someone else's fault on someone else's property,
and you had a prior opinion froma lawyer that said they couldn't do
anything for you before the twenty eighth, you want to take another stab of

(28:23):
that, and you want to contactus and get a second opinion on that
because it has changed. So that'sone aspect of the twenty eighth that's important.
But you know, when we're talkingabout three year statur limitations, I
it's we don't want people to wait. I guess it's the best way for
me to say it, because again, like we discussed earlier, this is
that's when the evidence disappears. That'swhen the witnesses disappear. That's when the

(28:47):
thumb drives vanished. That's when theVHS tapes, which many surveillance we're still
using VHS tapes, the tapes gettaped over. So three years is good
news for people that may have hada case before the twenty eighth and and
couldn't get any money to do it. But it's not necessarily good news for
people that's slip and fall now becausewaiting it can be very problematic to the

(29:07):
case. I hear slip and fallor trip and fall fall, and I'm
like, how many people does thisaffect? I mean, is it an
enormous number of people or I justcan't I can't get a picture in my
head of how many people are affectedby something like this. Are you ready
for some stats? I am.It is one of slip and fall.
Trip and falls are one of thetop causes of death in America. Yes,

(29:27):
death, yea death. I wasthinking, you know, injury or
maybe even closed head injury. Youknow, like you hit fall and you
hit your head. Seriously, thatcould happen, but death, if you
check with the National Health Institute,falling is at the absolute top for death,
one of them at the absolute topfor one of the main cause of
death. It is also one ofthe top causes of serious injury in this

(29:51):
entire country. Wow. And youknow that the gravity of that is something
that very much attracted me to thisline of work because everybody kind of knows
about the car accidents and uh,you know that kind of thing. But
really, fall injuries can be morecommon than car accidents and can be in

(30:12):
many ways more dangerous and result inextremely severe and serious life changing consequences.
And so it is a very seriousproblem. And and that's where you know
Lugo did not certainly take that intoaccount by eliminating all those cases. But
but yes, it is. Itis internet searchable that trip and fall,

(30:34):
slip and falls are one of thetop causes of death. Wow. Really
surprising when you teach, when youlecture, what's your favorite thing to talk
about with regard to slip and fallor trip and fall. I have this
bit that I do where I relatewhen people are trying to get me to

(30:56):
take a new case. And Ihave I have a bit that I do
because when I'm when I'm trying toexplain to the people that I'm lecturing too,
is that these cases are not easy, and in the same way,
they're embarrassed when they fall. Alot of times the people that call me
are still kind of embarrassed about theincident. And so I really like kind

(31:18):
of educating lawyers what it's like fromthe client perspective when they call, because
a lot of times lawyers, wecan be short, we're busy, and
we're intense people. You know,we're busy, and so my favorite part
of my lecture is when I'm reallyencouraging the other lawyers at the conference and
paralegals to really realize that it's avery tough call to make from their perspective.

(31:45):
They're they're going to feel uncomfortable,they're going to feel awkward. You
have to kind of drag it outof them. But it's important to drag
it out of them because they don'tknow what to tell you. They don't
know what to say, they don'tknow what facts to volunteer. There's a
lot of people that I talk topretty much every day that think that when
you follow someone else's property, youjust automatically can recover. And it doesn't

(32:06):
like that we have to prove thefault. Still, you know, even
under the Alcaiu case, we stillhave to prove someone else's that fallow.
They can't be your own fault foryour fault. And so I think not
only is my favorite, but themost important thing that I think that I
do is to try to encourage lawyersto be patient, be kind. It's

(32:27):
very important to me and I wantevery person that calls our firm, Michigan
Slim and followers dot com to havea positive experience with me, whether or
not I take your case. Everybodythat talks to me, I you know,
I politely drag it out of them. I also, if it's appropriate,
I joke around with them a littlebit. I'll engage in a little

(32:51):
small talk just to get to knowthem a little bit. So even if
I don't take your case, it'svery important to me that every person I
talk to has a good experience.And so that's what I really try to
impart, you know, beyond mejust you know, nerding out about the
law and the you know again thefriction coefficient and the perception reaction time.
I think one of the most importantthings I do, and it's actually my

(33:14):
favorite, is is to just encouragemy people, the lawyers to treat the
clients very well and what can bea difficult they're frustrating first conversation, which
I'm sure they appreciate because it issuch a sensitive event that's happened to them,
so I can appreciate that you handlethe situation that way. We've been
joined today by Tim Holland. He'san attorney with Michigan Slip and Fall Lawyers.

(33:36):
Thank you for joining us today,Tim, Hey, it's been great.
Thanks a lot. This has beenlight Up the D a community affairs
program from iHeartMedia Detroit. If yourorganization would like to get on the program,
email Colleen Grant at iHeartMedia dot com. Here all episodes on this station's
podcast page.