Slips and falls often sound trivial compared to other accidents victims turn to personal injury attorneys for. After all, if kids fall down and get back up all the time, why can’t the average American adult?
Unfortunately, this just isn’t the case. According to data obtained from the CDC, falls are the leading cause of emergency room visits each year, accounting for 8 million visits, with slips and falls accounting for one in eight fall accidents.
That is approximately one million patients, accounting for 2.6% of all ER visits in any given year. For even more context, they also happened to be the leading cause of lost days at work, as well as workers’ compensation claims.
Turns out, slips and falls are a bigger problem than the average person gives them credit for. And if you need a solution, you can always turn to our Fulton County slip-and-fall attorneys at The CEO Lawyer Personal Injury Law Firm.
How Does a Fulton County Slip and Fall Accident Attorney Help?
As personal injury lawyers, slip-and-fall accident attorneys specialize in finding avenues for compensation for injury victims, often when someone else is responsible for the harm sustained. This is true even when no party seemingly is at fault.
For slips and falls, as an example, this means looking into the owners of the property where the accident took place. This is because even if the owners didn’t necessarily want the accident to happen, Georgia law generally holds people responsible for the safety of the property they own.
Slip-and-fall lawyers also assist their clients by assisting them through the legal process by investigating the accident to build a strong case and, eventually, negotiating with the at-fault party or their insurance representative for a fair settlement.
Assigning Fault to a Liable Party
Slips and falls are sometimes especially tricky to establish liability for. In fact, it’s so hard to do that most people who fall over don’t even think of the possibility that anyone at all might be responsible for their accident.
However, as we’ve established, this is not the case. Anyone who owns any property is expected to provide a reasonable degree of care to ensure the premises are safe, which means accidents that occur due to safety hazards may be enough to hold the property owner liable.
There are also times when a fall happens in a public space. Again, while people in these situations don’t think anyone can be liable as there is no property owner to point at, slip-and-fall accident lawyers know that the government can be held at fault.
The government is expected to maintain public places such as sidewalks and parks. If hazards such as potholes or uneven paving lead to accidents, especially when these features have been around for a long time, the government can be liable for injuries victims suffer.
Investigating Your Accident
The issue after identifying a liable party, however, is that it is easy for property owners to argue that they were not aware of hazards on their property. This is often the case with wet floors, broken glass, or electric cables stretched across paths.
Property owners may say they were unaware of the hazard because they take reasonable steps to prevent injury and so have no reason to expect a hazard in the first place. If this is the case, your lawyer will have to prove that their claim is false.
Your lawyer will mount an investigation into your accident to determine whether the cause of the slip-and-fall has been a long-standing problem. For instance, if the property owner argued that they regularly put up wet floor signs, your lawyer might investigate why the floor is regularly wet.
If they find out that a pipe has been leaking water for months or that an HVAC unit has been dripping condensation from the ceiling all summer, then no amount of wet floor signs will be enough to waive liability. The property owner should have had the damage addressed.
Negotiating a Fair Settlement
An insurance company’s first offer is rarely their final one. The only time you should accept your insurance company’s first offer is if your expenses entitle you to the entire value of your insurance policy.
Outside of that specific circumstance, your insurer likely calculated the initial offer so that it either:
- Fails to account for all damages – This usually happens when the insurance adjuster believes that some of the damages you sustained are unrelated to the accident. Alternatively, this also happens if they intentionally leave out certain non-economic damages in order for the company to lose as little money as possible.
- Only considers the cheapest possible treatment options – Sometimes, after providing the insurance adjuster with a list of damages, they will base their computations for treatment costs on the most affordable options available. While this may not necessarily be a bad thing on its own, medical patients have the right to choose the healthcare providers they work with and should not be pressured into acquiring the services of non-preferred medical practitioners just because your insurer wants to spend less on you.
- Excludes future expenses and earnings: Insurance companies often have to deal with massive numbers of claims at any given time, so adjusters have an interest in speeding through investigation. Some adjusters may speed up the process by considering only presently known expenses and calling it a day.
You may not be able to account for these possibilities yourself. It’s actually quite normal not to consider that the insurance company’s offer might be lowballed, especially when you are someone who needs a lump sum at that moment.
Hiring a slip-and-fall accident lawyer means you will have someone on your side who is aware of this and has a vested interest in getting you a better offer.
Common Injuries Sustained in a Slip and Fall Accident
Slips and falls can lead to a multitude of injuries, some more serious than others. In the case of more physically vulnerable people, such as the elderly, pregnant women, or PWDs, the odds of serious harm or even death increase dramatically.
Sprains and Strains
Especially common in the ankles, as they support all the body’s weight, sprains and strains occur when excessive forces stretch or twist the joints beyond their normal range of motion. While often considered “mild,” these injuries can cause discomfort for extended durations.
The true danger of sprains and strains, however, is that they also make a person more vulnerable to accidents and injury in the future. Weakened ankles make tripping over and falling more likely than before the slip-and-fall accident occurred.
Bruises
Contusions and other soft tissue damage can be painful, sometimes for weeks on end, depending on the severity of the accident.
Fractures
Breaks or cracks in the bone are often both extremely painful and extremely expensive to treat. These range from thin, hairline fractures – also called stress fractures – to partial greenstick fractures to near-impossible-to-repair comminuted fractures, all plausible in a slip-and-fall.
Sometimes, fractures can be so small that patients do not know they are there – this is often the case with hairline fractures. Repeatedly applying force on these injuries can lead to weakening of the bone over time, and sometimes, causing a larger fracture to occur.
Head Injuries
Skull fractures and traumatic brain injuries (TBIs), also known as concussions, are some of the more serious injuries a person can sustain when falling over. Untreated head injuries can lead to complications down the line.
Concussions, in particular, are common regardless of whether or not the person’s head impacted a surface or other object. This is because the brain can be shaken in the skull due to the forces involved in a fall.
Spinal Cord Injuries
Injuries to the spinal cord can easily result in a host of problems ranging from numbness to lack of coordination or even paralysis. Spinal injuries can be difficult to treat because of how nerve cells generally stop dividing after birth – injured nerves cannot be replaced.
For the most part, recovery from a spinal injury is possible. However, depending on the nature of the injury, the recovery process can involve multiple surgeries and months of physical therapy and not result in complete healing.
Fulton County Slip and Fall Accident Law Firm
When you need help getting compensation after a slip-and-fall accident, choose the CEO Lawyer Personal Injury Law Firm as your legal representative. Our expert personal injury attorneys in Fulton County are ready to take your case.
Throughout the year, our slip and fall accident law firm has been in business, we have recovered millions in damages for our clients – over a million in our first year, in fact – and we are only getting better and stronger.
The CEO Lawyer, Attorney Ali Awad, built the firm into one of the fastest-growing law firms in the country, serving clients in Georgia and Tennessee in both English and Spanish. When not in the courtroom, Attorney Awad reaches out to the community through social media, offering free and useful legal advice.
The CEO Lawyer Personal Injury Law Firm does not get paid until we’ve won your case or settled your claim, so there is no risk to you. Call us today at (470) 323-8779 and get a free case evaluation.
