It’s hard to imagine how something that seems so simple as a slip-and-fall can be so dangerous for your physical health and mental wellbeing. But, the truth is, a slip-and-fall accident is extremely dangerous, and it risks your own safety and security.
A simple fall can cause serious injuries that require urgent medical care. Any form of medical treatment, especially surgeries, carries expensive costs that will themselves fall onto your budget. Those expenses are not costs that you, as the victim of a slip-and-fall accident, should have to incur. Someone needs to be held responsible.
The question is: how do you prove that a property owner or a business manager is responsible for premises liability, thereby directly contributing to the circumstances that caused your slip-and-fall accident?
How to build a slip-and-fall claim?
If a slippery surface on someone else’s property was responsible for your accident, that property owner should be held accountable for the costs to treat your injuries. Similarly, the owners or managers of a slippery or unkempt workplace should be liable for any injuries you sustain from a slip-and-fall incident on their job site.
How to prove the property owner’s negligence?
Negligence is often the legal reasoning for many slip-and-fall incidents. Any property owner or business manager who fails to maintain a safe environment that, consequently, causes injury to an innocent victim is guilty of negligence if it can be proven.
A proper investigation will uncover the truth. A diligent slip-and-fall investigative team has the skills and the resources to conduct a full investigation of your case. This includes asking probing questions of the property owner, uncovering evidence that points to willful negligence of dangerous conditions on the property, and also recreating the events of the accident.
This is the evidence that your attorney will use when pressing your claim for compensation to pay for your injuries.
What if your own negligence contributed to the accident?
As you seek compensation for your injuries, the defendant in your case may counter your claims with claims of their own. In some cases, property owners may respond to charges of negligence with claims that victims are guilty of their own negligence, which directly contributed to the slip-and-fall incident.
As the plaintiff in the case, you may be subjected to questioning from the defendant’s own legal team in regards to negligence. You may be asked to verify your own attentiveness as to the surrounding environment where the accident occurred. Lawyers for the defense will seek to determine that a reasonable person should have seen the circumstances that caused the slip-and-fall in an effort to deny compensation for your claim.
This is why it’s important to hire a proven slip-and-fall lawyer to assist you with your case. Slip-and-fall attorneys have the experience to handle probing questions from the defense, and they’ll coach you on how to answer the questions so that you can thoroughly disprove any questions or claims about your own awareness of the environment where you were injured.
What compensation can you seek in a slip-and-fall claim?
Most people immediately think of medical expenses to treat things like fractured bones or internal bleeding caused by a slip-and-fall incident. But there are other, lesser known costs incurred from the accident.
You’ll likely be forced to miss work for a period of time as you recover from the injury and the medical treatment. Those lost wages should be part of a slip-and-fall claim. Additionally, it’s possible you’ll experience ongoing pain and suffering, potentially for the rest of your life.
