Rhode Island Elevator and Escalator Accident Lawyer

What Rhode Island Law Means If You Were Hurt on an Elevator

Two legal frameworks usually sit behind an elevator or escalator claim. Premises liability is the law of a property owner's or occupier's responsibility for the safety of the people it allows onto its property. Product liability applies when a person alleges that the equipment itself, or a part of it, was defective. Many accidents raise both.

A premises claim generally asks four questions: did the defendant owe you a duty of care, was that duty breached, did the breach cause your injury, and did the injury cause real losses. Rhode Island's statutes recognize that a person's legal status on property matters; section 32-6-3 of the Rhode Island General Laws, for example, refers to "the legal status of an invitee or licensee to whom a duty of care is owed." An invitee is, in plain terms, a lawful visitor invited onto the property, such as a hotel guest or a shopper. The exact scope of that duty depends on Rhode Island's current law as its courts apply it.

A product claim asks whether the equipment had a defect and whether that defect caused the injury.

For you, the framework shapes who may be responsible and what a claim has to prove; an injury alone does not establish either. Why you were in the building and what the equipment did are the details that point toward one framework, the other, or both. Our elevator accident lawyer overview explains these frameworks in more general terms.

Accident Scenarios This Page Covers

An elevator car can drop suddenly, or in rare cases fall freely. It can stop with its floor higher or lower than the landing, called misleveling, so a person stepping in or out trips or falls. A door can close on a person's body, arm or hand. A car can stall between floors and confine its passengers, called entrapment.

On escalators, a step can collapse or separate, a handrail can stop or move out of pace with the steps, clothing or footwear can be caught at the sides or the comb plate, and an abrupt stop can throw riders forward. Our page on how escalator accidents happen covers these mechanisms in more depth.

These incidents happen in hotels, hospitals, apartment complexes, offices, malls and airports. The setting matters because commercial, residential and publicly owned buildings can involve different owners, managers and service arrangements, and a building owned by a city or town brings in a separate claim procedure, covered below. The mechanism matters too: a door that closed on someone points toward different records than a step that gave way.

Rhode Island's recreational-use statute, section 32-6-3, limits the liability of a landowner who lets people use land for recreation without charge. Section 32-6-5 keeps liability in place for a willful or malicious failure to guard or warn after discovering the user's peril, and wherever the owner charges for the recreational use. Whether that statute bears on an elevator or escalator injury depends on the setting and the facts.

Who May Be Responsible for Your Injury

The building owner and property manager are often the first parties considered, because they control the building and decide who services its equipment. A hotel, mall operator, hospital or apartment landlord can each fall into this category.

A maintenance contractor, a company hired to service, inspect and repair the equipment, can be a potential defendant where the question is how the equipment was kept up. Manufacturers and component suppliers may be potential defendants under product liability when a defect is alleged, and an installer or modernization company can also appear in the chain. Our page on elevator injury claim parties describes how a claim can involve several of these parties.

A service log shows what was recorded about the equipment; on its own, it does not show that anyone was careless, and a missing entry is not a finding of negligence either.

Several parties may share responsibility, and liability turns on the facts. What is at stake is that the evidence that counts follows from who the defendants are. Who owned the building, who managed it, and whether a service company's name appeared on the equipment are questions a conversation with an attorney can help sort out.

Rhode Island's Comparative Fault Rule and What It Means for Your Claim

The question many injured people ask quietly is whether looking at a phone, carrying bags or stepping off quickly ruins their claim. Rhode Island answers it in section 9-20-4 of the Rhode Island General Laws, which provides:

"In all actions hereafter brought for personal injuries, or where personal injuries have resulted in death, or for injury to property, the fact that the person injured, or the owner of the property or person having control over the property, may not have been in the exercise of due care or the fact that the danger or defect was open and obvious shall not bar a recovery, but damages shall be diminished by the finder of fact in proportion to the amount of negligence attributable to the person injured, or the owner of the property or the person having control over the property."

In practice, a person's own lack of care does not end the claim; it reduces damages in proportion to the share of negligence attributed to that person. And a danger that was "open and obvious," such as a visibly misleveled car, does not by itself bar recovery. The rule applies to death claims as well as injury claims.

How fault is divided is a question for the finder of fact, a judge or jury, and turns on the details. Damages, where the law allows them, are described in terms of losses such as medical expenses, lost earnings, and pain and suffering. A worry that something you did contributed is not, by itself, a reason to assume a claim is gone.

Filing Deadlines Under Rhode Island Law

For an injury, section 9-1-14 of the Rhode Island General Laws provides that actions for injuries to the person "shall be commenced and sued within three (3) years next after the cause of action shall accrue, and not after." The section gives two exceptions. Claims based on sexual abuse or exploitation of a child are governed by a different section. And where a person is entitled to proceed directly against an insurer under section 27-7-2, an action was properly filed against the insured in time, and process against the insured was returned "non est inventus" (the person could not be found) and filed with the court, the time to sue the insurer directly is extended by 120 days.

For a minor, section 9-1-19 of the Rhode Island General Laws provides that a person who, when the cause of action accrues, is under eighteen, of unsound mind, or beyond the limits of the United States may bring the action, within the time limited, after the impediment is removed.

For a claim against a Rhode Island city or town, section 45-15-5 of the Rhode Island General Laws sets a method: the person presents to the town or city council a particular account of the claim or damages and how it arose, and if just satisfaction is not made by the town or city treasurer within forty days after that presentment, the person may commence an action against the treasurer.

Missing a filing period can end a claim regardless of its merits. Which period applies depends on who was hurt, when, and who owned the building; the wrongful-death period appears in its own section below.

If a Part Failed: Product Liability and the Ten-Year Period Under Rhode Island Law

When a brake, a door sensor or an escalator step may have failed because of how it was made, the time question turns to section 9-1-13 of the Rhode Island General Laws. Subsection (a) provides that, "except as otherwise specially provided, all civil actions shall be commenced within ten (10) years next after the cause of action shall accrue, and not after."

Subsection (b) once set a product-specific period measured from when a product was first purchased. The official page marks it "[Ruled unconstitutional, see case notes]," so it is not stated here as a rule in force.

What this means for an injured person: the ten-year wording applies only where no other period is "otherwise specially provided," and the three-year period for injuries to the person in section 9-1-14 is one such period. A suspected defect does not mean a longer window to act.

A product claim can sit alongside a premises claim or in place of one, and an accident does not by itself prove a defect. What the equipment was, who made and installed it, and whether the part is being preserved all bear on whether a defect and causation can be shown, and a failed part that is discarded or repaired may be hard to examine later.

After an Accident: Evidence That Often Matters in These Cases

Maintenance and inspection records are often at the center of these cases, because they show what was recorded about the equipment's condition and service over time. They bear on the duty of care, but what they mean remains a question of fact. For an injured person, the strength of a claim often depends on records they have never seen.

Other records that usually matter include:

• The incident report made with the building or property manager.
• Surveillance or security video, which may capture the incident itself.
• Medical records documenting the injury, treatment and prognosis.
• Photographs of the equipment, the landing or steps, and visible injuries.
• The names and contact information of witnesses.

Many of these records sit with the building owner, property manager, maintenance contractor or a government office, and obtaining them can take formal steps, such as a written request or legal process during a lawsuit. Injured people and families often start by listing what they already have and noting who likely holds the rest. Sorting out which records exist is something a case evaluation conversation with our attorney can cover.

Wrongful Death Claims After a Fatal Elevator or Escalator Accident in Rhode Island

A death on an elevator or escalator leaves a family with grief and, often, with questions no one has answered. Rhode Island's rules for who brings the claim and when are in section 10-7-2 of the Rhode Island General Laws.

The action is brought by and in the name of the executor or administrator of the person who died, whether appointed within or outside Rhode Island. It must be commenced within three years after the death, except as otherwise provided; where the wrongful act, neglect or default was not known at the time of death, it must be commenced within three years of when it was discovered or, with reasonable diligence, should have been discovered.

The same section directs how any recovery is divided: one-half to the surviving spouse and one-half to the children; if there are no children, all to the spouse; and if there is no spouse, to the next of kin as in intestate distribution. A person adjudged in willful contempt for being more than six months behind on child support for the deceased is barred from recovery. A separate action for loss of society, companionship or consortium under section 10-7-1.2 is brought by the person who suffered that loss. The section also states that a person or corporation found liable is liable in damages of not less than $350,000; that is a statutory minimum on a finding of liability, not a prediction for any family.

Because the executor or administrator brings the claim, a family may face estate matters alongside the claim itself. Our page on fatal elevator accidents describes what generally follows a death of this kind.