Slip & Fall Accidents

Helping You Get Back on Your Feet

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Fall Accidents

Helping You Get Back on Your Feet

If you were injured as a result of losing your balance and falling on an uneven or slippery surface, and if this occurred due to someone else’s carelessness, then we are here for you.

Slipping and falling might sound like a bizarre way to injure yourself. Some people, when they hear the term “slip and fall,” think first of Vaudeville sketches and banana peels.

The truth is, though, that these accidents are both more common and more serious than most people think, accounting for thousands of deaths and serious injuries a year. And if the fault lay with someone else, then we will hold them responsible.

As your attorneys, we fight these cases and win, taking on property owners – even big corporations and government entities – and making sure that they, and not you, pay the price for their careless decisions.

How Slip and Fall Accident Cases Work

Slip and fall accident lawsuits fall under the broad legal umbrella of premises liability. While there are other types of premises liability cases, slip and fall cases are among the most common, so if you have just experienced such an injury, don’t feel alone.

Simply put, premise owners (and lessees) have an obligation, known legally as their “duty of care,” to keep their premises reasonably safe and free from hazards. This doesn’t mean that they have an absolute duty to make the premises completely safe, but it does mean that they have to take reasonable precautions to keep people from getting injured.

If they fail to uphold this duty, then they have been negligent, and they are legally responsible for your injuries. This is the part that we, as your attorneys, have to prove.

The owner (or lessee) does not have to have directly caused the unsafe condition for them to be held responsible. Even if someone else caused it, the owner or lessee can still be liable for the incident if they knew, or even if they reasonably should have known, about the danger. For instance, if someone in a store causes a spill, and the owners do nothing to clean the spill for hours and hours, they will likely be liable for your injuries if you slip and fall.

Types of Slip and Fall Accidents

Contrary to what the name suggests, “slip and fall” actually applies to a broad range of circumstances which involve something on the ground that causes you to lose balance. “Slip and fall” could just as easily be “trip and fall,” depending on your case.

In fact, slip and fall cases do not necessarily even require you to fall. If you step in a hole and break your ankle, then this is still a potential legal case, even if you did not actually fall to the ground. The owner’s negligence is the issue here, not your verticalness or lack thereof.

Common causes of a slip and fall accident include:

Water or other liquid on the floor.
Solid but slippery substances, like sand.
Cluttered floors and small objects on the ground.
Cracked and uneven floors, roads, or sidewalks.
Holes in the floor, potholes, manholes, and ditches.
Unexpected steps and uneven staircases.
Loose or worn rugs.

There can also be a number of circumstances that contribute to these slip and fall accidents. For instance, you’re more likely to slip and fall in darkness or poor lighting, and the absence of handrails or warning signs may contribute as well.

We Level the Playing Field for You

Often, if you are involved in a slip-and-fall case, you will be suing a big corporation.

These corporations are far more powerful than you. They have numerous legal resources at their disposal, and they are used to dealing with cases like this. You are an ordinary person who is probably not going through life planning for a lawsuit. It’s not a fair competition.

If the injury happened on government-owned land, such as a public sidewalk, then you will face the additional hurdle of sovereign immunity. This is a legal rule which says that government agencies are immune from lawsuits. Sovereign immunity dates back to the Middle Ages, when monarchs had absolute power, and while it may seem like an antiquated concept incompatible with modern notions of the rule of law, it is still in effect in California today.

This doesn’t mean that you can never sue a government agency – or a government contractor – in a personal injury case. The law does recognize a number of exceptions to sovereign immunity. However, you will face additional legal obstacles in such a lawsuit, including a narrower window of time in which to sue (six months for a claim against the government, as opposed to two years for most other claims).

Either way, if you are suing a large corporation or the government, you will be going up against someone much more powerful and experienced than you are. And this is why you need our legal help: we are professionals at this. You cannot be expected to become an expert at slip and fall lawsuits in a brief period of time, so instead you should outsource your legal footwork to us, just as you would outsource your taxes to a trained accountant.

Comparative Negligence in a Slip and Fall

If you sue someone for a slip and fall injury, they (or their attorneys) will likely try to argue that you contributed to the incident by acting carelessly. For instance, they might claim that you slipped on a floor because you were running, or that you were not looking where you were going, or that you ignored a posted warning, or even that you were a trespasser.

Under California’s comparative negligence law, businesses and government agencies which successfully deploy this argument in a legal case can reduce the amount of damages that they are obligated to pay you for your injuries. Their goal is to pay you zero, of course. But if they can’t quite manage that, they’ll settle for paying you as little as possible.

That is another reason why it is so important to have us representing you legally. We can fight to prevent companies from using this trick on you, and, if they do, to minimize its impact on your case and maximize the damages you are able to receive.

We Fight for You to Recover the Maximum Damages Possible

There are a number of different types of damages that we can help you recover in a slip and fall lawsuit.

The first type of damages we can help you recover are economic damages. This is stuff with a specific, quantifiable monetary value. It includes:

Medical bills. This is often the most important aspect of a slip and fall case, and involves items such as the initial emergency room visit, any subsequent hospital stays, surgeries, physical therapy, pharmaceutical drugs, and far more.
Lost wages and lost earning capacity. Both of these involve the earnings that you lose as a result of your injuries limiting your ability to do work; the first applies to those which you have already lost in the past, while the second applies to those which you are anticipated to lose in the future.
Property damage. This is usually a minor factor in slip and fall cases (unlike with, say, a car accident), but if some personal effect, such as a valuable watch or piece of clothing, was damaged or destroyed in the fall, then we can help you seek damages for this.

The second type of damages we can help you recover are noneconomic damages. These don’t have a quantifiable amount, but they are still items which the personal injury legal system recognizes as real and deserving of compensation. They include:

Pain and suffering. This includes both the physical pain you suffered and the emotional and psychological harm you experienced as a result of the slip and fall.
Loss of life enjoyment. This involves the ways in which the injuries prevent you from enjoying life activities which you otherwise would.
Loss of consortium. This refers to the ways in which the injuries hinder your relationship with your spouse and other loved ones.
Physical impairment and disfigurement. These apply to the harms caused by the loss of certain bodily functions and those caused by any scarring or other damage done to your appearance.

The third type of damages we can help you recover are punitive damages. These are not attached to any injury and are purely intended to punish the defendant. You shouldn’t count on these; they are only awarded in a small minority of cases. However, if the defendant acted in an extremely reckless manner that led to a serious injury, or if they committed fraud during the process, then we might be able to go for some punitive damages. Remember, our aim is to hold bad actors responsible.

We Aim to Settle Cases Early – And Favorably

Personal injury cases can drag on for years, and we recognize that the stress which this places on victims can be deeply trying. That is why we aim to settle cases early in the process, before they get to trial. We will fight all the way to trial if that is what it takes for you to get justice, but ideally it won’t come to that.

As your attorneys, we will leverage all of our skills in dealing with defendants and their insurance companies to get them to come to the table with a favorable settlement right away.

Remember, time is of the essence on both sides. The earlier you get us involved with our case, the better of an outcome we are likely to get for you. This is both because of the statute of limitations, which means that you only have two years to file a lawsuit – shorter in the case of a claim against the government – and because evidence gets weaker the longer you wait after an accident.

If you have been injured in a slip and fall, then give us a call today. A consultation is totally free, and we would be happy to discuss your options with you and see how strong of a case you may have.

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Helpful Information

The Personal Injury process can be confusing. To answer the many questions regarding accidents and the injuries they produce, we put together the most frequently asked accident questions along with helpful guides to accompany them. Whether it be questions on cost, medical expenses and treatments or specifics in what to do ( or not do), we have you covered.

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find the best medical providers

Having high quality care to get our clients recover is our main priority. That is why we focus on sending our clients only to the best physicians after being involved in an accident.

Chiropractic

Family Doctors

General Practitioners

Neurologist

Spinal Surgeons

Cardiologist

Orthopedics

Pain Management

MRI

Optometrist

Pediatrics