Slip and Fall Lawyer Pearland TX
A Pearland, TX slip and fall lawyer knows that slip and fall accidents are often part of comedy shows or children’s cartoons, meant to generate a hearty laugh from the audience. In real life, however, slip and fall accidents cause serious injuries that end up leaving victims with high medical bills, lost wages, and other losses. If you’ve been a victim in a slip and fall accident, contact Keith B. French Law, PLLC today.
Each year, more than eight million people in the United States end up in emergency rooms because of injuries they have suffered in slip and fall accidents. If that slip and fall was the result of someone else’s negligence, the victim may be able to pursue legal action against that party to recover financial compensation for the losses their injuries have caused them. The following are some of the common injuries that occur in slip and fall accidents.
Pursuing Personal Injury Damages
One of the reasons why it’s important to connect with a skilled Pearland, TX slip and fall lawyer in the wake of an injury is that you may be entitled to compensation from a property owner or another party involved in your slip and fall situation. The law generally protects the rights of injury victims to pursue compensation in the event that their injuries occurred due to another’s negligent, reckless, or intentionally harmful actions or inactions.
With that said, the law is complex. As a result, you may not know for sure whether you’re entitled to pursue compensation as a result of your harm until the experienced legal team at Keith B. French Law, PLLC investigates your circumstances. This is normal. All too often, injury victims are self-conscious about speaking with an attorney if they are unsure of whether their situation is legally actionable or not. There is no reason to be shy about exploring your legal options. Investigating injurious situations, assessing their actionability, explaining a victim’s legal options, and helping injury victims to exercise their rights under the law is – quite literally – our job.
Once we learn the specifics of your unique slip and fall situation, a skilled Pearland slip and fall lawyer at our firm will be able to help you decide whether pursuing legal action is in your best interests at this time. If it is, we will do our utmost to maximize the compensation that you’re rightfully owed.
Workers’ Compensation and Insurance Settlements
Another reason why it is important to connect with our team as soon as you can after sustaining an injury is that you may be entitled to some other time-sensitive forms of compensation. For example, if your slip and fall occurred under work-related circumstances, you may be owed workers’ compensation benefits and/or an insurance settlement. Navigating these processes is generally a much more time-sensitive undertaking than filing a lawsuit and if you don’t act quickly, you may be denied compensation that would otherwise be rightfully yours.
Preparing for Your Legal Consultation
Before you meet with the savvy legal team at Keith B. French Law, PLLC in a risk-free consultation scenario, you’ll want to take a little time to prepare. Making a few efforts upfront will help to ensure that you make the most of your time when you’re at our offices.
First, take some time to write down or record your recollections of what happened. To protect you from trauma, your brain will likely start to dull the edges of your memory of the event not long after it occurs. By recording your story now, you’ll provide a valuable reference for yourself and for our team.
Second, write down your questions and concerns so that we can address each of them when we speak with you. You don’t want to force yourself to remember everything on the fly. Writing your questions and concerns down will allow you to reference each during the conversation, no matter how your check-in with our Pearland slip and fall lawyer team evolves.
Common Slip and Fall Injuries
The following are some of the common injuries that occur in slip and fall accidents.
Brain Injuries
A common injury that occurs in slip and fall incidents is a brain injury. Although many victims may sustain what appears to be a minor brain injury can result in serious medical bills and other financial losses because of the time a concussion or other brain injury can take to heal. But there are also victims who suffer serious to severe brain injury that can have devastating consequences, leaving them with permanent disability and even permanent brain damage.
Broken Bones
Fractured and broken bones are another common injury in slip and fall victims. A Pearland slip and fall lawyer has represented many clients who have suffered serious breaks and fractures in slip and fall accidents. Many people do not realize just how much of an impact broken bone injuries can have, often resulting in being unable to work while they recover. Many victims end up needing surgery as part of their treatment, with pins being placed to help hold the bone pieces together while they heal. The pins need to be removed in a subsequent surgery. There is also usually physical therapy needed as part of the recovery.
Joint Injuries
One of the most common injuries in a slip and fall accident is a joint injury – to the shoulder, knee, or hip. These dislocations or other joint injuries can cause chronic pain, and long-term medical care, and can even result in surgery in order to repair the damage the fall caused.
Ligament, Muscle, and Tendons
Injuries to soft tissues are also another common type of slip and fall accident injuries. Typically, as a person begins to fall after slipping or tripping, their body begins to contort in unnatural ways as they attempt to stop the fall. These off movements can cause ligaments, muscles, and nerves to twist and turn. These are very painful injuries and can take an extended time to heal.
Why Witnesses Are Imperative To Your Slip and Fall Claim
Many people understand that it can be helpful to have someone who saw an accident occur. It is always good to have someone corroborate your story because it adds weight to your claim and can bolster your case. However, with a slip and fall accident, having a witness can be even more crucial because slip and fall accidents happen all the time. In fact, many of them happen because of the person who fell, not necessarily because of someone else’s outside actions. So, when you are saying that you slipped and fell as a result of someone else acting negligently, there are different types of witnesses who may be able to help your claim.
Having the Right Witnesses
When you have the right witnesses, this can make the difference between you getting a fair amount of compensation or not. Insurance agents or property owners will do everything in their power to show that you were responsible for your own accident and that it wasn’t the result of the property owner’s negligence.
- Eyewitnesses. Perhaps one of the most useful types of witness that you can use for your slip and fall claim is an eyewitness. An eyewitness is someone who saw the accident occur as it was happening. This is not someone who was in a different part of the store or building and saw you on the ground post-slipping or heard a loud thud but nothing else. An eyewitness may have seen that there was a puddle on the floor–and no warning signs–right as you approached it or saw that the sidewalk was broken or uneven right as you tripped. They are crucial to your claim.
- Property experts. A property expert can help with your claim by examining the property where you were injured and seeing if the property owner maintained it well enough. They would know if certain places around the property were up to code when you were or if there were certain warning signs that should have been up for the public. A property expert could be an architect, a builder, a building inspector, etc.
- A medical expert. Medical expert testimony can be necessary for your claim for two reasons. A medical expert can examine your injuries and determine if they were consistent with the slip and fall accident you were in and can also discuss how these injuries will impact your near future and what it may mean for recovery time.
Getting the right witnesses for your slip and fall claim is not something you should handle, with the exception of identifying if anyone may have been at the scene of the slip and fall accident. Your lawyer will listen intently to what happened during your accident and can determine what type–or types–of witnesses should be used for your claim so that you are getting the compensation you deserve.
When you have suffered from a slip and fall accident, do not leave your compensation up to chance. Instead, reach out to our team to learn how we can help you today.
Call Our Personal Injury Law Firm Today
If you have been injured in a slip and fall accident, do not delay in contacting Keith B. French Law, PLLC to schedule a free consultation with a dedicated Pearland slip and fall accident lawyer and find out what your legal options may be.
