Aching After a Slip and Fall? Learn Your Next Steps

It can happen anywhere, from a restroom at an entertainment venue to the dairy aisle of a grocery store. We are talking about a slip and fall, which in some cases bruises nothing more than someone’s ego. However, slip and fall incidents can cause serious injuries that leave victims aching after a fall for a long time. As a worst-case scenario, a victim of a slip and fall can sustain life-threatening injuries that take years to rehabilitate.

Slip and fall incidents fall under the legal practice called premises liability, which is one of many types of personal injury cases. The owners and managers of public-access venues such as arenas, shopping malls, convenience stores, and grocery stores owe every visitor to the property a duty of care to protect them from sustaining any injuries. If they breach the duty of care doctrine, they might be legally liable for causing harm to a visitor who slipped and fell while on their property.

If a slip and fall incident caused you to sustain one or more injuries, you should contact a slip and fall lawyer to determine how to proceed with your case. A slip and fall attorney conducts a detailed investigation to gather physical evidence, as well as interviews every witness that saw what transpired before, during, and after the slip and fall incident. Working with a slip and fall lawyer allows you to focus on recovering from your injuries and the financial losses associated with diagnosing, treating, and rehabilitating them. Your attorney acts as an intermediary with the insurance adjuster processing your insurance claim, which frees up more of your time to eliminate the aching after a fall.

At Morgan and Morgan, we have more than 35 years of experience representing clients that filed personal injury insurance claims and civil lawsuits that sought monetary damages. Our team of highly-acclaimed litigators has recovered more than $20 billion in compensation for clients as the result of favorable legal judgments and negotiated settlements that help us avoid the litigation process. If you feel aching after a fall, you should act with a sense of urgency to receive the compensation that you deserve.

Schedule a free case evaluation with a slip and fall lawyer from Morgan and Morgan to build the most persuasive insurance claim and possibly a personal injury lawsuit.

What Are the Common Injuries That Leave Victims Aching After a Fall?

A slip and fall incident can produce serious enough injuries that make it difficult, if not impossible, to hold down a full-time job. Compounding the loss of income are rapidly rising medical bills. The combination of lost wages and skyrocketing medical costs can place you in a deep financial hole.

Although not every slip and fall incident produces serious injuries, a large percentage of cases produce the following common injuries that develop severe symptoms.

Fractured Bone: The most common type of injury sustained by slip and victims is one or more fractured bones. When you start to slip and fall, the immediate reaction to protect yourself is to throw out one or both arms to brace yourself for impact. Bracing yourself with one or more arms prevents you from damaging vulnerable areas of the body, but the result often is a strong impact that breaks one or more bones in a wrist and/or arm.

If a slip and fall victim does not react in time to throw out one or both arms, the result can be one or more broken ribs and/or fracturing one of the hips. Although the distance of a fall after slipping is not more than a couple of feet, the suddenness of the incident makes it difficult to take preventive measures to minimize the physical damage. You also can fracture a leg if one of your legs ends up under a heavy fallen object.

Traumatic Brain Injury: Some slip and fall victims do not sustain an injury as a result of making contact with the floor or ground. Instead, they hit their head on an object on the way to the floor or ground, with the result possibly being sustaining a traumatic brain injury (TBI). For example, a slip and fall victim at a convenience store might hit her head on the side of a counter before making contact with the floor.

Sustaining a TBI can leave a victim aching after a fall for several years. However, the worst outcome is sustaining a TBI that causes severe enough trauma to require emergency brain surgery. The brain operates on countless electrical impulses that, when disrupted, can irrevocably diminish the cognitive skills of a victim. Even sustaining a mild concussion can disrupt a victim’s life for months, if not years.

Dislocated Shoulder: A dislocated shoulder represents another type of slip and fall injury that results from a victim not having sufficient time to brace for impact. Falling from a height of two or three feet and landing shoulder first on the floor or ground can dislocate a shoulder from its socket. Dislocated shoulder injuries generate excruciating pain, with the injury typically requiring immediate medical care. Rehabilitating a dislocated shoulder can take a long time, and if you work a job that requires considerable manual labor, you might be left without a source of income for several months.

Spinal Cord Damage: The most serious injury outside of a TBI that is sustained as the result of a slip and fall incident is damage to the spinal cord. This type of slip and fall injury frequently takes place when a victim lands on the floor or ground on the seat of the pants. The impact significantly compresses the discs in the spine that provide cushion for absorbing impacts. Severe spinal injuries can result in partial or full paralysis. Recovery can take years—if it happens at all. Many victims of spinal cord injuries end up receiving some form of disability compensation to cover the costs associated with lost wages and medical bills.

What Are the Most Common Causes of Slip and Fall Incidents?

When you sit down with a slip and fall lawyer from Morgan and Morgan for a free case evaluation, one of the first items on the agenda involves determining the cause of your injuries. After three-plus decades of handling slip and fall cases, our personal injury attorneys have come up with a list of the most common slip and fall causes that leave clients aching after a fall.

Beverage Stations: At the center of most convenience stores stands a large counter that supports a beverage station. Customers coming and going throughout the day can leave behind a substantial amount of spilled beverages. A beverage dispenser also can break down, which results in liquid pouring out of a machine and onto the floor to pose a safety hazard. Convenience and grocery store employees assume legal liability for not promptly responding to beverage station spills.

Broken Bottle: One of the sounds you hear while shopping for groceries is a call over the public address system to clean up a spill in one of the store’s aisles. Bottles that break leave behind soda, beer, milk, and spaghetti sauce. A customer who is more focused on the shelves than the floor can slip and fall because of the slick surface created by the remnants from a broken bottle. Store employees owe customers and visitors a duty of care to clean up the mess left behind by a broken bottle as quickly as possible.

Public Restrooms: From a leaky sink to an overflowing toilet, public restrooms represent one of the most common areas where slip and fall incidents unfold. Stadiums and shopping malls are venues that experience a high number of slip and fall incidents that take place in public restrooms. Employees should be checking every restroom for potential safety hazards at least one time an hour. However, a high volume of calls can leave one or more public restrooms unattended for several hours at a time.

Ice/Snow: Not every slip and fall incident occurs indoors. Mother Nature’s contribution to the number of slip and fall incidents happens during the colder months of the year in areas that experience frozen precipitation. Clearing a parking lot of ice and snow is not enough to prevent slip and fall incidents. Business owners also must prevent the redevelopment of frozen sections of their property to prevent slips and falls.

What Should I Look for in a Slip and Fall Lawyer?

You should consider certain attributes when you conduct a search for hiring the right slip and fall lawyer. The personal injury attorneys at Morgan and Morgan exceed each of the following criteria.

Proven Record of Success: You can expect to hear that experience should be one of the most important factors considered when searching for a slip and fall lawyer. Although the number of years of experience matters, you also should consider litigators that have compiled a proven record of success. Success is measured by the value of compensation awarded to clients, as well as the value of negotiated settlements that help clients avoid the costly and time-consuming litigation process.

Morgan and Morgan meets both the experience and proven record of success criteria, with our law firm offering more than 35 years of experience in which we have recovered more than $20 billion in compensation for our clients. 

Specializes in Slip and Fall Cases: You should consider personal injury attorneys who specialize in handling slip and fall cases. The physical evidence gathered and organized for a slip and fall case differs from the physical evidence collected at the scene of a car accident. Moreover, the injuries that cause aching after a fall differ from the injuries that develop as the result of a defective product. Working with a slip and fall lawyer also improves your chances of getting an insurance claim approved.

Responsive Communicator: You cannot afford to hire a slip and fall lawyer who fails to get back to you in a timely manner. At Morgan and Morgan, our personal injury lawyers return emails, phone calls, and text messages on the same business day, if possible. If you do not hear back from your slip and fall lawyer by the end of the business day, you can expect to hear back from your attorney first thing the next business day.

Schedule a free case evaluation today to learn more about how a slip and fall lawyer from Morgan and Morgan can help you recover financial losses.