Elevators and escalators fail in predictable ways, and both are covered by inspection and maintenance regimes that leave a paper trail. When someone is injured, the question is almost never what happened. It is who knew the equipment was faulty and what they did about it.
We handle these claims across Maryland: office towers, apartment buildings, hotels, shopping centers, hospitals, parking structures and transit stations.
How these injuries happen
Elevators:
- Misleveling, where the car stops above or below the floor and someone trips stepping out. This is the most common elevator injury and it is almost always a known, recurring fault.
- Door strikes, where the sensors fail and the doors close on a person, a hand or a pushchair
- Sudden drops or hard stops, causing back, neck and knee injuries
- Entrapment, and injuries during an attempted self-rescue
Escalators:
- Sudden stops or reversals, which throw riders down the steps
- Entrapment at the comb plate or side panels, which frequently injures children and people wearing soft shoes
- Missing or damaged teeth and loose steps
- Handrails moving at a different speed from the steps
Who is responsible
Usually more than one party, which is why these claims need sorting early:
- The property owner or manager, who owes a duty to people lawfully on the premises
- The maintenance contractor, which is often a separate company under a service contract with defined response obligations
- The manufacturer or installer, where the equipment or a component was defective
- A government body, where the equipment is in a public building or transit station, which brings short notice deadlines into play
Buildings routinely point at the maintenance company, and the maintenance company points back. Naming both early stops that from running out the clock.
The records that decide these cases
- Maintenance and service logs, which show callouts for the same fault, often repeatedly
- The state inspection certificate and its date, which should be posted in or near the equipment
- Work orders and parts records, showing what was repaired and what was deferred
- Camera footage, which in lobbies and stations is overwritten within days
- Prior complaints from tenants, staff or visitors about the same equipment
- The incident report taken by building staff, and the name of whoever took it
Photograph the equipment before it is repaired, and get the certificate number if you can. That single number identifies the unit and its inspection history.
Transit stations and public buildings
The deep Red Line stations around Silver Spring and the Metro system generally have a long history of escalator problems, and injuries there are handled as transit claims against WMATA, which carry a strict written notice requirement that runs well before the ordinary deadline.
The same is true of courthouses, schools and other public buildings, where a government body owns the equipment. If it happened in a public building, treat the notice clock as running from the day of the injury.
When the person hurt is a child
Escalator entrapment injuries disproportionately affect children, through soft shoes caught at the side panel or fingers at the handrail entry. Those claims follow different timing rules than an adult's, and a settlement for a child generally requires court approval, which protects the money until adulthood.
Insurers often raise supervision as a defense, which under Maryland's contributory negligence rule can be used to argue the claim away entirely. Very young children are not held to an adult standard of care, and that argument is worth resisting rather than accepting.
