According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), 244,000 people filed non-fatal slip and fall claims that resulted in missed work time, with over 80,000 of those requiring a trip to the emergency room. Slip and fall accidents are the primary reasons employees file for workers’ compensation.
The workplace isn’t the only location where people have these accidents. They also occur on sidewalks, walkways, and staircases, and in parking lots, shops, eating establishments, and homes. If a property owner’s negligence caused your slip and fall injury, an Elliot Ifraimoff and Associates lawyer can help you fight your case.
If you had a severe accident, your injuries might impact your life long into the future. Even minor falls often have implications reaching into multiple areas of your life. A slip and fall can lead to injuries ranging from strains, sprains, and broken bones, to traumatic brain injuries, spinal damage, paralysis, and death. Your financial losses may include.
Additionally, you may experience emotional impacts from the incident that result in additional losses, including pain and suffering. A slip and fall attorney can help you assess the damages from your accident. Our lawyers examine all aspects of these types of cases. They often identify contributing factors that clients are unaware of, and they can provide professional advice and guidance on how to proceed with a slip and fall claim.
If you file a personal injury claim, your success rests on proving that another party was at fault for your injuries. NYS has legislation regarding incidents when an individual receives an injury on someone else’s property due to the owner’s negligence in maintaining safe surface conditions. Neither the property owner nor their insurer will likely admit to any level of responsibility for the accident.
As the claimant, it is your responsibility to prove that another person’s actions or inactions led to the conditions that caused you to slip, trip or fall. The amount you may recover in a settlement depends on the state’s negligence or at-fault laws. Elliot Ifraimoff and Associates slip and fall lawyers understand how these laws work and have a wealth of experience helping clients navigate their claims.
NY has pure comparative negligence rules for civil lawsuits, including those that involve slip and fall injuries. These rules establish the possibility for the property owners and you to share blame for the accident that led to your injuries. Even when their negligence seems obvious, the other parties and their insurance companies often accuse the injured party of failing to take the proper precautions to prevent their own injuries.
In states that have comparative negligence legislation, these accusations are important. If they succeed, the court reduces your settlement. According to pure comparative negligence rules, your settlement amount reflects your share of the blame for the accident. If the judge finds you 20% liable for your injuries, you collect 80% of the total settlement the court awards. With a slip and fall attorney working for you, you may have a better chance of getting the compensation you deserve.
When you get hurt on someone else’s property, it’s essential that you visit a doctor right away, regardless of how minor you think your injuries are. If you don’t seek medical attention, you may harm your chances of receiving compensation. A slip and fall lawyer from Elliot Ifraimoff and Associates assists clients in pursuing compensation for their injuries. Generally, the steps you take in pursuing a claim are as follows:
Immediately after the incident, you should notify the property owners. If your accident occurs at a business, inform the on-duty manager.
If there are witnesses, make sure you get their names and contact information.
When possible, take photographs. If you are too injured to take them, you may want to ask a witness to do so instead.
Serious accidents may warrant emergency services. Whether you receive emergency care or make an appointment with your primary physician, tell your provider how you got hurt, explaining as much as possible about the circumstances and the incident.
If your injuries occur on public property or at a place of business, you can ask for an incident report. After completing the report, make a copy for you and file the original with the appropriate person. Slip and fall accident attorneys may also include the report as evidence of liability in your claim.
You may receive a phone call from the property owner’s insurance provider. They may want you to tell them what happened. You have no legal obligation to speak to them. However, you do need to file a claim with the insurance company, including the details of your accident and all related expenses and losses.
The insurance company will likely offer you a settlement that does not reflect your total losses. You can negotiate with the claims adjuster, but it may be necessary to file a lawsuit if you cannot come to a satisfactory agreement.
Hiring an attorney who has experience with these types of cases may improve your chances of securing a settlement that covers your losses. An Elliot Ifraimoff and Associates slip and fall attorney knows what you need in order to prove that the property owner’s negligence caused your accident. We can also get our hands on evidence and testimony that are difficult for individuals to obtain.
What’s more, we understand how insurance companies work and know how to talk to their representatives in ways that won’t jeopardize your claim. While insurance companies usually end up settling out of court, if your case turns into a civil lawsuit, you may benefit substantially from having our slip and fall accident attorneys fighting for you in the courtroom. Let us put our 60 years of combined experience to work in your case. Contact us today to set up a free consultation with a slip and fall lawyer.
According to the National Safety Council, falls cause approximately six million non-fatal injuries and over 40,000 injury-related deaths every year. You can slip and fall anywhere, but this type of accident is almost always preventable.
If you slipped and fell on another person’s property and sustained an injury, you likely suffered severe physical and emotional consequences.
As you focus on getting better, a slip-and-fall lawyer can help you determine who is responsible for the financial burden caused by the related damages. Additionally, they may negotiate a fast and fair settlement for you in your slip-and-fall claim.
An experienced NYC slip-and-fall accident lawyer deals with accidents occurring at work, at a grocery store or restaurant, in a parking lot, on a sidewalk, or on someone’s residential property.
Several factors contribute to the severity of the injury. For example, seniors typically suffer more severe injuries, such as fractured bones, in even minor slip-and-fall accidents. No two slip-and-fall accidents are identical, but some common causes and injuries are.
The most common dangerous conditions leading to a slip-and-fall accident are 100% preventable, and a slip-and-fall accident attorney may recognize causes that you would overlook.
Examples include:
The most common cause is poor floor conditions. This includes loose mats or floorboards, broken tile, torn carpeting, and poorly maintained staircases.
Store and restaurant employees sometimes forget to use proper signage after waxing or mopping or fail to keep entrances dry during inclement weather.
Business owners are responsible for their entire property, including outdoor areas. New York experiences harsh winter conditions. Snow and ice can accumulate quickly, creating dangerous parking lot conditions for visitors.
Commercial and residential properties may present dangers such as poor lighting or loose handrails.
Without proper training, employees may miss hazardous conditions on the floor or leave them longer than they should. For example, grocery store employees should never leave inventory in the aisles with while stocking the shelves, and restaurant employees should regularly check for spills.
The circumstances that cause your fall do not always immediately implicate a property owner for negligence. However, a slip-and-fall lawyer will conduct an initial review of your case for free to help you better understand if you have a strong claim.
Several factors can influence the severity of your injuries. Maybe the fall exacerbated a previous injury. The position in which you landed and the force of the fall both play a role.
Some common injuries caused by a slip-and-fall accident are:
The most severe accidents may result in death. If you lost a loved one in a slip-and-fall accident, you may benefit from contacting a slip-and-fall accident lawyer about a wrongful death case.
Certain occupations, such as construction worker or workers or restaurant servers, are at higher risk of slipping and falling on the job. Workers’ compensation benefits do not require fault determination.
However, more severe injuries may require extended benefits, and employers sometimes use unsavory tactics to avoid long-term payouts. You may benefit from contacting slip-and-fall lawyers if your employer tries to get you to come back to work before you are ready or terminates your employment following an accident.
Not every slip-and-fall accident warrants filing a lawsuit against the property owner. Sometimes accidents happen, and no one is at fault. Sometimes you suffer no slip-and-fall accident injuries – and you have no damage without injury. Sometimes you don’t suffer injuries from your slip-and-fall accident- and you cannot claim damages without an injury.
A slip-and-fall lawyer will investigate your accident to determine liability. Slip-and-fall accidents caused by another party’s negligence fall under the concept of premises liability.
Premises liability states that property owners have a responsibility to ensure the safety of anyone that visits their property legally. A lawful visitor on private property would include anyone with expressed or implied permission to be there, including friends and family.
Everyone is a lawful visitor on public property as long as they are present during open hours. If your claim states that the property owner where the injury occurred is responsible for the dangerous condition and your resulting injuries, you must prove one of the following:
Ultimately, the court a jury decides what behavior is reasonable, but some common ways to set the standard of reasonableness include come from questions such as:
You should expect resistance from the defendant. They typically argue that you at least share some responsibility for the accident and your injuries.
In the initial review, your slip-and-fall lawyer will likely present questions about your potential liability for the accident. If you do share fault, you may still recover compensation.
The comparative negligence rule allows the plaintiff to receive at least a partial reward or settlement if they share responsibility for the accident.
There are two categories of comparative negligence, and the state determines which applies. The two types are:
New York applies the pure comparative negligence rule to slip-and-fall accident cases. For example, if you are 75% responsible for the accident and the court awards you $10,000 in compensation, you can only receive 25% of that award.
The same applies to your settlement. One of the benefits of hiring a slip-and-fall accident lawyer is that they often secure a higher payment for your claim because they better understand the potential damages you could recover.
Additionally, a slip-and-fall accident attorney has experience with similar cases and can use precedent to better value the damages.
A claim in a slip-and-fall accident case should include any damages suffered as a direct result of the accident. To receive damages, you must prove that the defendant negligently or intentionally caused the dangerous condition, the dangerous condition caused the accident, and the accident resulted in your fall injury.
In addition, you provide evidence proving your losses, which fall under compensatory damages.
The court designed compensatory damages to compensate the victim of a personal injury case for the anything they lost.
These damages include economic and non-economic losses:
Only in very rare cases might the court award the plaintiff punitive damages, which punish the defendant for incredibly horrible behavior. This type of award does not compensate for anything lost, and defendants rarely act egregiously in a slip-and-fall case.
A slip-and-fall accident attorney can help you better value the non-economic damages, such as pain and suffering.
Whether you slip-and-fall in someone’s private home or on public property, there are a few steps you should immediately take to protect yourself:
If you are in pain, call for emergency medical services or ask someone to help you.
If the accident occurs at a business location, find the manager on duty or have someone else locate them if you cannot move. Managers and supervisors should generate an accident report, and you can request a copy on the scene.
If anyone nearby witnessed the accident, request their name and contact information. If you must report the accident to a business manager or supervisor, request their information and the name and contact information of the property owner.
Take photographs of the hazardous condition that caused the fall, the surrounding area, and any visible injuries on your body. If your injuries hinder you from doing so, ask a witness to take photos for you.
Most businesses use security cameras inside and outside. If you see cameras, request a copy of the footage at the time of your accident.
If you do not need emergency medical services, you should still see a doctor as soon as possible. Internal injuries may cause dangerous swelling or bleeding that does not immediately cause pain. Additionally, having a medical record of your injuries helps prove your claim.
Take all the evidence you have and speak to a slip-and-fall accident lawyer right away. The longer you wait, the closer you get to the deadline mandated by the statute of limitations. Additionally, your slip-and-fall accident attorney will request specific details about the case, and your memory may fail you if you wait too long.
You can file a claim with the property owner’s insurance company on your own, but you may face pushback. You can file a claim and deny speaking with them until you hire a slip-and-fall lawyer.
As the plaintiff in a slip-and-fall accident lawsuit, you bear the responsibility of proving the defendant’s negligence. beyond a reasonable doubt. Without the help of a slip-and-fall accident lawyer, the legal process can be challenging and overwhelming.
While dealing with the case, you also face the accident’s fallout, including the fall injuries you sustained from the fall.
An experienced slip-and-fall accident attorney will handle:
Without legal experience, you may not fully understand the losses you can claim. In New York, you have three years from the date of your accident to file a lawsuit before the statute of limitations runs. Unfortunately, many things could slow that process.
For example, the insurance company employs bad faith tactics, such as delaying an investigation or avoiding your attempts to communicate, to slow down settlement negotiations long enough to guarantee that you cannot file a lawsuit. A slip-and-fall accident lawyer can recognize bad faith tactics and protect you from them.
Most slip-and-fall cases settle outside of court, but if a lawsuit becomes inevitable, you may need one of our attorneys representing you in the courtroom. Contact us today to schedule your free consultation with a slip-and-fall attorney.
Elliot Ifraimoff & Associates, PC
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(888) ASK-ELLIOT / (888) 275-3554
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