When you’ve become the victim of a slip and fall accident, it’s difficult to know what next steps you should take to secure compensation for your injuries and other losses. To represent your interests in negotiations with insurance companies, you should always consult with an attorney, like those at Avrek Law, to discuss the details of your specific personal injury case.
After you’ve suffered a slip and fall, there are some important questions to ask. Your personal injury attorney is someone whom you will work with closely, and you should consider them your trusted advisor. Maryam Parman and the team at Super Woman Super Lawyer possess the knowledge and expertise to help you realize the highest amount of compensation for your injuries.
10 Questions to Ask After a Fall
Here are some questions you should think to ask when you’ve decided to pursue a slip and fall accident injury claim:
What to do after a slip and fall?
A slip and fall accident can result in serious injuries, and if the accident was caused by negligence, you may be entitled to compensation. The next steps you take after this kind of accident can impact the success of your claim.
First, immediately report your fall to the property owner or manager. They’ll likely put together an incident report, of which you should have a copy. Confirm that they report contains the details of the incident, but also limit your communication with the property owner or manager at this time. If possible, take photographs of the scene where you fell, including any dangerous conditions that led to the accident, for evidence.
While at the accident scene, locate any witnesses to your fall or the condition of the property, and collect their names and contact information. Hold on to the clothing and shoes that you were wearing at the time of the accident, and check to see if there are any camera on the property that may have recorded your fall.
Seek medical attention, especially if you’ve been seriously injured. Even if you don’t think you have serious injuries at the time of the accident, it’s advisable to speak with a medical professional after the fall so that they can assess you properly.
Do not share information about your injuries or the circumstance of the fall on any social media accounts. Any statements you make, in person or otherwise, can be used against you in the future. And, of course, contact an experienced slip and fall injury attorney who can advise you on any other steps you need to take to complete a successful personal injury claim.
How long after a slip and fall can you sue?
The amount of time you have to file a personal injury lawsuit claim depends on the state in which you are filing the suit. The deadlines range from one to six years. For example, CCP § 335.1 gives victims in California two years to file a case, while Florida Statutes § 95.11 allows four years from the date of the accident.
Before a victim files a lawsuit, they usually attempt to recover compensation through an insurance claim. However, when negotiations with insurers fail, a lawsuit is the next step in compensation recovery process. Most states impose a deadline to file a legal action, which begins from the accident date, and this deadline affects how much time you have to sue after a slip and fall.
If a personal injury claim is not filed within the allotted time frame, you risk losing your right to take legal action against a property owner who was negligent and caused the slip and fall accident. You can research your state’s statute of limitations to get a better idea of how long you have to file a personal injury lawsuit. A slip and fall accident lawyer can also help you comply with your state’s deadline.
What happens if you fall at work?
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics, falls, slips, and trips accounted for 27% of the total number of accidents among workers. In fact, slip and fall accidents are one of the most common non-fatal accidents in the workplace. When you have been injured in a slip and fall accident on the job, you have rights. Companies must ensure that their workplaces are safe for their employees, and failure to address safety issues can cause workers serious injuries, permanent disabilities, and even death.
Generally speaking, people involved in workplace accidents assume that a workers’ compensation case requires them to prove that the employer was negligent. That’s not always the case. You will need documentation proving your injury, and you will need to show that you were injured on the job while properly performing your job. If your slip and fall accident happened at work and you are unable to work due to the injuries, you may qualify for workers’ compensation benefits.
What is the main cause of slipping accidents at work?
Slips, trips and falls are the most common cause of non-fatal injuries in the workplace. These types of accidents and injuries can happen at any time in a workplace, so staff, customers and contractors could all be negatively impacted when exposed to this type of risk.
Slips, trips and falls in the workplace can be prevented. Some of the main causes of these accidents in the workplace include:
- Uneven flooring
- Wet or slippery floors
- Changes in flooring levels
- Exposed cables
- Poor lighting
- Inadequate housekeeping
The responsibility falls on an employer to ensure workers health, safety and welfare while they are at work, which includes protecting them, as well as the public from risks related to slips, trips and falls.
Can I claim compensation for a fall?
When you have been injured in a slip and fall accident due to someone else’s negligence, you may wonder how much compensation you are entitled to for your injuries and damages. Every slip and fall case is different, but there are some common considerations that can give you an idea of what a valid injury claim is worth. These include:
- Present and future medical bills
- Pain and suffering
- Lost wages
- Loss of earning capacity
- Incidental expenses due to the injury
An experienced personal injury attorney can assist in gathering the appropriate information related to your slip and fall injury to help back up your claim. The personal injury attorneys at Avrek Law have extensive experience helping injured victims recover compensation for injuries, medical expenses, lost wages and other damages.
Can you sue someone for falling on their property?
Yes. Property owners, renters and managers, as well as small and commercial business owners can be held liable in a slip and fall accident that occurs on their property. However, there may be other parties responsible involved, depending on the details of your particular accident.
That said, slip and fall accidents can easily occur without someone clearly at fault, so a property owner (or occupant) cannot always be held responsible when someone slips or trips on something that an ordinary person should expect to find there or should see and avoid. Property owners do need to maintain their property, so slip and fall injury claims are usually based on whether or not the property owner did so in a manner that slipping and falling was not likely to happen, as well as whether the victim was careless in their own actions.
Injury claims in a slip and fall accident can be complicated, so it’s best to work with an experienced premises liability attorney to protect yourself and to uphold your rights.
Are you liable if someone falls on your property?
In short, the answer is: It depends. If someone is injured on your property due to an alleged defect or condition on the property, a successful claim or lawsuit can be made against you depending upon whether you invited or gave permission for the person to come onto your property and what that person was doing when they fell.
The landowner’s duty of care and the law surrounding it is regulated by whether the person who was injured on the property was a:
- Trespasser: A person who comes onto the property without consent or permission to be there. Under the law, a trespasser is offered little protection when they are injured on someone’s property. In this case, a property owner’s responsibility is simply to avoid “willful or wanton misconduct,” which means conduct in reckless disregard of the safety of another. It should be noted that this is a different standard than being negligent to warn of a dangerous condition.
- Licensee: A neighbor, social guest, police officer or even children permitted to play on an abandoned lot can be considered a licensee. In this case, a property owner is accountable to make a property safe or warn a person of any risks that may exist on the property. They are required to warn visitors of known, non-obvious unsafe conditions.
- Invitee: There are two types of invitees – a business invitee or a public invitee. A business invitee is someone who is invited onto a property for a purpose directly or indirectly related to business dealings with the property owner. A public invitee is a person who is invited to enter the land as a member of the public for which the land is open to the public. A property owner has the highest duty of care when it comes to invitees, including inspection of the property to find hidden defects, repairs and warnings to the invitee.
Who is responsible for a slip and fall accident?
If you slip or trip, and fall and inure yourself on someone else’s property, the property owner may be held responsible. Determining liability in this type of access is the key element of any claim. People fall and are injured all the time, slipping on an icy sidewalk or tripping on an uneven floor or flight of stairs. If the property owner or manager was aware of the situation and did nothing to remedy the problem or hazard, they may be held liable.
If you were injured in a business location, like a mall or storefront, the business can be sued. If you were injured in at a residential location, the homeowner’s insurance should cover the claim. When you’ve been injured at work, a workers’ compensation claim will handle compensation for injuries and damages.
Premises liability law covers slip and fall accidents, as well as others caused by unsafe conditions on someone else’s property. For a property owner to be held legally responsible for injuries and damages caused by a fall on their property, the following must hold true:
- The property owner knew about the unsafe condition of their property and did not fix it
- The property owner did not take steps to prevent injuries as a “reasonable person” would have done
- The property owner created the unsafe condition of the property that caused the accident
How do you prove negligence in a slip and fall accident?
To prove negligence in a personal injury lawsuit, the injured party must establish that:
- The property owner owed a duty of care to the victim
- The property owner breached that duty
- The property owner’s breach was the cause of the victim’s injuries
- The victim suffered damages
Slip and fall injury claims fall under Premises Liability. The question to be answered in these cases is whether someone in charge breached a duty to the victim. A property owner, in general, has the legal responsibility to repair, protect against, or give warnings of unsafe property conditions that they knew about or should have reasonably known about.
Are slip and fall cases hard to win?
A good deal of evidence and proof is required when submitting an insurance claim or lawsuit for a slip and fall accident. Specifically, negligence of the owner of a property or store where the accident occurred must be proven.
Negligence means the at-fault person or entity did or did not do something that caused a victim’s slip and fall accident. Negligent actions fail to meet the duty of care a reasonable person would have met in order to protect the safety of people visiting their premises.
Hiring an experienced premises liability attorney like those at Avrek Law will greatly increase the chances of a positive outcome for a slip and fall injury claim. They will assist you in taking steps to submit the claim, gather evidence and negotiate with insurance companies.
If you’ve been injured in a slip and fall accident due to the negligible actions of another party, we may be able to help. Maryam Parman and the attorneys at Super Woman Super Lawyer have more than 50 years of combined experience successfully resolving personal injury cases. With $1 Billion recovered in over 45,000 cases, the Avrek Law team is here to help. Contact us today for a free slip and fall accident case evaluation!
