If an infill wall in a reinforced concrete frame is shorter than the column height and there is no initial gap between the column and the infill wall, the short column effect can occur during an earthquake shaking. This form of damage is frequently observed in many earthquake-damaged buildings all around the world and especially in Turkey. In this study, an effective method, which consists of placing additional infill wall segments surrounding the short column, to prevent this type of failure is examined. The influence of adding infill wall in the reduction of the shear force in the short column is also investigated. A parametric study is carried out for one-storey infilled frames with one to five bays using the percentage of the additional infill wall surrounding the short column and the number of spans as the parameters. Then the investigation is extended to a case of a multistorey building damaged due to short column effect during the 1998 Adana-Ceyhan earthquake in Turkey. The results show that the addition of the infill walls around the potential short columns is an effective way to significantly reduce the shear force.