For most of the nearly 30 years that I practiced law involving claims of personal injury (representing both plaintiffs and defendants), a claim of injury due to a “slip and fall” usually focused on one of two questions with regard to liability:

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            1. When a foreign substance or object was the alleged cause, did the premises owner have sufficient notice of the hazard to require removal of or warning of the presence of the hazard; or
            2. Was there a violation of a building code or other regulation with regard to the premises that the owner failed to remedy which was the proximate cause of the fall?

Arriving at an answer to either of those questions normally was an issue of fact that rarely needed the testimony of one with any sort of scientific expertise.

Times have changed. These days, the parties to a slip and fall case turn to experts in the field that is referred to as Human Factors Engineering or simply Human Factors. Many attorneys know that an expert in Human Factors can be employed to prove either a claim or defense in a premises liability case, but they may not know what scientific field qualifies someone to offer sound opinions in this scientific discipline. If an attorney in a premises liability case wants to find an expert to prove that the subject premises either was or was not safe, using scientific expertise as the grounds for their opinions, they must know where to look for such an expert witness.

Human Factors Engineering is a synonym for Ergonomics, and Ergonomics is a sub-specialty of Industrial Engineering. In August of 2000, the International Ergonomics Association adopted the following definition: