Woman Sues Hy-Vee After Getting Knocked Down By Automatic Door

They may not seem like much of a threat. In fact, they can be a major convenience when you’re carrying your groceries to your car. They open automatically, ushering the way out of the store and into the parking lot. Yet one woman is claiming that a grocery chain’s negligence resulted in injuries severe enough to require surgery.

Julie Hallan of South Dakota accused Hy-Vee grocery chain of failing to inspect their automatic doors. While the store acknowledges that the woman was injured, they denied that their own negligence was to blame for her injuries. They are further claiming that they don’t have enough information concerning the event to positively state anything at all. While it’s clear that they’re preserving a potential defense, just how dangerous are automatic doors?

Automatic Door Injuries

While automatic door injuries are not exactly an epidemic, staff at stores that have automatic doors are required to perform daily safety checks to ensure that they’re operating properly. In cases where they aren’t, the staff has the ability to leave the door open while the business is in operation. In the majority of cases where a person is injured, the store’s staff failed to conduct the daily safety check and someone was harmed as a result. To reduce their own liability, the companies that manufacture automatic doors place conspicuous warning labels on the doors in order to ensure that no one is harmed. If these safety checks are adhered to, then no one is harmed. If, however, the door malfunctions despite a safety check, then the manufacturer might be held liable for the injuries. In this case, the plaintiff is alleging that the store manager and employees failed to conduct a safety check that resulted in the woman’s injuries.

Nonetheless, most of the automatic door injury cases involve a store manager and store chain trying to shift liability from themselves to the maintenance crew that provides periodic inspections of the doors. In some cases, they may be at least partly to blame. Nonetheless, because the store is expected to do daily checks to ensure the doors are safe and keep records of those tests, they are to blame when someone is injured.

Automatic Door Injuries are Premises Liability Lawsuits

In any premises liability lawsuit, the plaintiff must be able to show that the individual responsible for the property either knew about a dangerous condition or should have known about a dangerous condition. Since daily safety checks are part and parcel of having automatic doors, the plaintiff will always be able to argue that the company should have known that the doors were potentially dangerous. Most automatic door injury lawsuits are slam dunks for the plaintiff. If the door malfunctioned and caused an injury, the business is liable.

Talk to a Jacksonville Personal Injury Attorney Today

If you’ve been injured by a rogue automatic door, contact the Jacksonville personal injury attorneys at Gillette Law. We can help you recover damages for your injuries.

Resource:

myjournalcourier.com/news/article/Woman-sues-grocery-chain-Hy-Vee-after-automatic-13741663.php

https://www.gillettelaw.com/family-gets-495-million-after-fatal-shooting/