When a Slip Becomes Serious: Legal Steps After a Fall

It is the type of accident that may barely turn heads. Unlike car accidents, as well as product liability and medical malpractice cases, slip and fall incidents never make it as a story on the nightly news. In some cases, a slip and fall bruises nothing more than someone’s pride. However, statistics emphasize the severity of slip and fall incidents and the negative physical impacts the incidents can have on victims.

The results of a study released by the National Floor Safety Institute (NFSI) underscore the potential severity of slip and fall incidents. According to the study conducted by the NFSI, slip and fall incidents account for more than one million visits to emergency rooms every year. Why are many slip and fall injuries considered serious? One answer is a slip and fall rarely provides any warning for a victim, which means the victim has little or no time to break the momentum generated by a fall. Another answer concerns the vulnerability of sensitive areas of the body, such as the head and spinal column.

If you sustained an injury as the result of a slip and fall incident, you should be proactive and contact an experienced slip and fall attorney. A lawyer conducts an exhaustive investigation into your case by gathering physical evidence, as well as interviewing witnesses that support your version of what transpired before, during, and after the slip and fall incident. Working with a slip and fall attorney can help you receive the approval of an insurance claim, and if you obtain enough evidence, a favorable ruling for a personal injury lawsuit. To file a civil lawsuit that seeks monetary damages, your slip and fall attorney must show the court that another party committed one or more acts of negligence that caused your injury.

At Morgan and Morgan, we have helped clients receive just compensation regarding personal injury cases for more than 35 years. Since we opened our first office in 1988, Morgan and Morgan has recovered more than $20 billion in compensation for our clients. A significant percentage of the compensation is the result of negotiated settlements and favorable legal judgments that have come from slip and fall cases.

If a slip and fall incident has caused you harm, schedule a free case evaluation today with a personal injury attorney from Morgan and Morgan. 

What Are the Most Common Types of Slip and Fall Injuries?

When you meet with a Morgan and Morgan attorney for a free case evaluation, one of the first items on the agenda concerns what caused your slip and fall injury. Once your lawyer discovers the cause of your injury, the next step involves determining whether another party committed one or more acts of negligence.

With more than three decades of experience handling personal injury cases, Morgan and Morgan presents a list of the most common types of slip and fall injuries.

Bone Fracture

When we begin to slip, our first reaction is to find a way to break the momentum of the ensuing fall. This typically involves bracing for a fall by using one or both arms as support. Although bracing yourself for a slip and fall can prevent you from sustaining the most serious types of injuries, you leave one or both wrists and/or arms highly vulnerable to sustaining a fracture. The seriousness of a fracture depends on the height of the fall, as well as which part of the body absorbed the strongest impact.

Spinal Cord Damage

For many slip and fall incidents, victims do not have enough time to brace for the impact of a fall. The result can be landing on an unprotected part of the body, where a serious injury can develop. One of the results of failing to brace for impact forces a victim to land seat-first on the floor or ground. When this happens, the spinal column absorbs most of the substantial impact, which can produce one or more herniated discs or another type of spine injury. Spinal column injuries can generate some type of paralysis that requires months—if not years—of intense rehabilitation.

Brain Trauma

The worst-case scenario for not being able to brace yourself for a slip and fall impact concerns a sharp blow to the head. Whether your head hits a stationary object on the way down to the floor or ground, or your head directly hits and floor or ground, a strong blow to the head can cause a traumatic brain injury (TBI). Even a minor impact on the head can produce concussion symptoms that take a considerable amount of time to dissipate. Sustaining a strong impact on the head as the result of a slip and fall might require emergency medical care.

Knee/Ankle Damage

Slipping and falling can cause part of the body to contort into unnatural positions, which leads to the development of injuries. When you begin to slip, the knees and ankles twist and turn to place considerable pressure on tendons, muscles, cartilage, and ligaments. The result can be serious tears that severely damage one or both knees and/or ankles. Knee and ankle damage can make it impossible for someone who works a physically demanding job to resume work right after a slip and fall incident.

Dislocated Shoulder

Another outcome of failing to brace yourself for a slip and fall is falling directly on a shoulder. If you land on the shoulder in the right position, you might sustain a highly painful dislocated shoulder. Unlike movie portrayals of heroes popping their shoulder joints back into place after sustaining a dislocated shoulder, if you sustain a dislocated shoulder as the result of a slip and fall, you can expect to undergo intensive medical care and a prolonged series of physical therapy sessions.

Severe Cuts and Lacerations

You might think that if you walk away from a slip and fall incident with just a few cuts you have gotten off easy. However, a slip and fall incident can produce severe cuts and lacerations, especially if you land on broken glass or another type of material that easily rips apart human skin. The two biggest concerns with serious cuts and lacerations regards excessive bleeding and the development of an infection. You must disinfect any open wounds and then have them stitched as soon as possible after a slip and fall incident.

Where Do Slip and Fall Incidents Occur Most Often?

You can slip and fall just about anywhere, and that includes slipping and falling while on another party’s private property. If you slipped and fell while on another party’s property, a premises liability lawyer from Morgan and Morgan handles your case. For slip and fall cases that unfold at a public venue, a slip and fall attorney determines whether you should receive compensation for the financial losses associated with an injury.

Let’s see where slip and fall cases happen the most often.

Convenience Stores

Convenience stores have all the ingredients required for slip and fall incidents to occur. First, you have customers in a hurry, moving quickly throughout the store to buy what they need. Second, a vast majority of convenience stores operate a large beverage station that sits in the middle of the venue. Beverage stations are magnets for slip and fall incidents because of the amount and frequency of spilled beverages on the floor. Convenience store employees owe each customer and visitor a duty of care to prevent slip and fall incidents by taking steps such as placing Wet Floor signs over slick surfaces.

Grocery Stores

Grocery stores present many of the same hazards faced by convenience store employees. However, the much larger space of a grocery store makes it more difficult to respond to slick surfaces in a timely manner. Grocery stores also present many more opportunities for slick floor surfaces to develop. For example, a grocery store might experience several slick surface calls at the same time, which places a considerable strain on the employees responsible for responding to calls.

Restaurants

A slip and fall incident is waiting to happen just about anywhere inside a restaurant. Let’s start in the kitchen, where grease from the fry station ends up on the bottom of the shoes of one or more employees. Not only does the kitchen floor become extremely slick, but the dining room floor also can pose a significant danger because of the grease tracked in by employees. Other areas of a restaurant where slip and fall incidents frequently happen include both bathrooms and areas near ice bins.

What Steps Should I Take After a Slip and Fall Incident?

How you react after a slip and fall incident goes a long way toward determining the outcome of an insurance claim and a civil lawsuit that seeks monetary damages.

Get Your Injuries Treated.

Your health is the first issue to address after a slip and fall incident. If you sustain a serious injury as the result of a slip and fall, you or someone else should call 911 for emergency medical assistance. On the other hand, if you feel healthy enough to remain at the scene of the slip and fall incident, you must eventually seek medical care. If you delay getting treated for your injuries, the other party’s lawyer might claim you did not sustain serious enough injuries to justify awarding compensation.

Inform Management

Right after you slip and fall, you or someone else should get the attention of an employee to notify a manager. Notifying a manager or the owner of a venue sets the wheels in motion for the filing of an accident report with the venue’s insurance company. A formal report released by the venue where you slipped and fell also reaches the desk of the attorney from Morgan and Morgan handling your case. The formula incident report should include the date and time of the incident, as well as a detailed description of what caused you to slip and fall.

Contact a Personal Injury Attorney for Slip and Fall Injury

Contact an attorney from Morgan and Morgan concerning your slip and fall injury before you contact the appropriate insurance company. Far too many insurance companies take advantage of policyholders who do not retain legal representation. If you do not get the legal support of an attorney from Morgan and Morgan, the insurance company might deny a valid claim or approve a claim for a value worth much less than what you deserve. 

Act with a sense of urgency to address a slip and fall injury by scheduling a free case evaluation with Morgan and Morgan.