THEY HIT PEOPLE MORE OFTEN THAN YOU THINK AND CAN CAUSE SERIOUS PERSONAL INJURY
Most of us walk through automatic doors on a regular basis. Most retail stores have some form of automatic doors, whether they are sliding doors, revolving doors, swinging doors, or folding doors. Most people who pass through automatic doors don't think about the fact that they can be struck by the door or trapped between the door and door frame. We expect them to simply open for us and close behind us. But often, that is not the case.
When an automatic door hits you, you don’t expect it. It can throw you off balance or simply knock you forcefully to the ground. The injuries inflicted from automatic door accidents can be severe and result in serious personal injury and sometimes death, particularly when involving the elderly or frail.
DOES ANYONE CHECK THESE DOORS FOR PROPER FUNCTION?
Accidents involving doors of all types occur in many different venues such as supermarkets, big box stores, cruise ships, restaurants, schools, and hospitals. As discovered in several past cases, the idea that there should be daily safety inspections of their automatic pedestrian doors comes as a surprise to the store manager. It is often their feeling that there is never enough time for store opening preparations, and checking the automatic doors is not something that they have ever been asked to do. The managers are too busy readying the store for opening to spend any additional time on this non-revenue generating aspect of their daily operation. The culture of the chain stores is that they pay to have door services provided when needed, so they believe individual store management bears no responsibility when an accident happens to one of their patrons.
WHAT ABOUT THE EGGSHELL PLAINTIFF?
Every good attorney needs to consider the validity of a potential claim. As the most frequently retained door expert witness, working evenly for both Plaintiff and Defense, Mike Panish has been retained on door personal injury and wrongful death claims that were not caused by malfunctioning doors or door hardware. As discovery has often shown, people in poor physical or mental condition who are left unattended or unassisted while moving through properly functioning doorways are often the genesis of their own injuries. All commercial venues have the responsibility to maintain their facilities to industry wide standards, seek proper routine maintenance, and provide daily inspections of their door systems. However, it is difficult to provide safe passage to every patron of their facilities when some of those patrons may include persons requiring diligent physical supervision, special assistance walking, or have special needs due to disease, mental incapacity, or other unknown infirmities.
HOW TO EVALUATE YOUR CLAIM
While evaluating your next door related injury case (plaintiff or defense), it is essential that you have a full understanding of the various layers of responsibility that may play a role in the path leading to the door malfunctioning. It is critical that you find the best expert available to show you all available methods to detect and specifically identify who the responsible parties are. This is usually a multilayered issue where knowing the right expert with years of experience in the automatic door industry will greatly enhance your claim potential. When an injury occurs from an automatic door it is important to find out who is responsible. As the retained automatic door expert witness for both plaintiff and defense in many hundreds of personal injury and wrongful death cases over the last 18 years, Mike Panish is the unbiased automatic door expert you need to help you understand your case.