Slip-And-Fall Scenarios May Be Actionable
Personal Injury
If you have recently slipped and fallen on someone else’s property, you may be concerned about both the physical and financial consequences of your situation. Slipping and falling frequently results in sprains, strains, broken bones, severe bruising, dental challenges and even traumatic brain injuries (TBI). Recovering from any one – or combination – of these injuries can take time, energy and resources.
Whether you’re struggling financially or not, the impact that mounting medical bills, lost wages due to time taken off of work to recover, struggling through pain and the inconvenience of navigating the world while injured can be overwhelming. As a result, it is important to take an hour or two of your time to speak with an attorney about whether you might have strong grounds upon which to file legal action.
Why File Legal Action?
As an experienced premises liability lawyer – including those who practice at Council & Associates, LLC – can confirm, many slip and fall injury victims are not aware of just how costly their situation will ultimately prove to be until weeks or months after sustaining harm. In the moment, it is relatively easy to brush off a trip to the emergency room as “something that happens” from time to time.
As the weeks pass on, however, many injury victims discover that the medical bills, employment impacts, pain and suffering, practical challenges, and frustrations that accompany injury are affecting their family’s finances and wellbeing in significant ways. By pursuing rightful compensation from a negligent, reckless, or downright dangerous property owner, you’ll better ensure that the financial burdens associated with your injuries are shouldered not by you and your family but by the party that caused your harm.
The Legal Standard for Slip and Fall Cases
Each state sets its own standards for how slip and fall cases must be decided. Yet, despite nuances in state law, there is a general legal standard that applies fairly broadly across the U.S. While you’ll want to speak with an attorney about how nuances in your state’s laws could affect your case, you’ll likely be able to bring a case successfully if your situation meets this more generalized set of criteria.
Essentially, slip and fall cases are actionable when individuals sustain physical harm – and some kind of financial costs – due to the negligence, recklessness, or intentionally dangerous conduct of a property owner. For a property owner’s conduct to be considered actionable, they must generally need to have known – or should have known – that a hazardous condition existed on their property. Next, they need to either have failed to properly address the hazard or to have failed to take reasonable steps to safeguard visitors and guests from the threats that the hazard posed.
It isn’t always easy to know if a situation is actionable at a glance. For example, you may think that you don’t have a legal case to make because there was a wet floor sign up where you fell. But, perhaps a dozen other people had fallen in the exact same spot despite the wet floor sign and that might make your case actionable. Speaking with an attorney about your circumstances will help you to know for sure.