Did you get severely injured from a fall? Don’t ruin your slip and fall case before it begins! Call our Stillwater lawyers to get started on your claim now.
Choosing a Slip and Fall Attorney
When you look for an attorney for a slip and fall injury case, you need to find an attorney who is experienced in this area, who has a track record, who takes on the insurance companies on a regular basis, and who has trial experience. You need to hire an attorney who can get you to the professionals you need, who seems to understand the kind of experts they need to hire and has the ability to do so. You need to hire an attorney that you get along well with, an attorney you believe cares about your situation. You need to go with your gut. You need to go with someone that will be your champion and will be able to take your case all the way to trial if need be.
Mistakes to Avoid After a Slip and Fall Injury
The most common mistake I see when people who have been injured in a slip and fall are one, they think it’s their fault. They think they’re clumsy. They don’t think that they shouldn’t say anything to the store owner or the person that owns the property. That’s just not true. You need to make sure you contact an attorney and help them understand what happened and what the circumstances were like. In a lot of cases, it’s not the person’s fault that slipped, fell, and got hurt; it’s the premises owner who didn’t keep a safe and orderly floor plan out there. Don’t think it’s your fault. The second mistake people make in a slip and fall injury case is they don’t seek medical treatment soon enough and if they do seek medical treatment, they don’t do what the doctor asks them to do because they don’t think they have time or they can’t afford it. Doctors professionals. When you see a doctor, follow their advice. If you don’t, it will come back on you when you try to negotiate your case or you try to go to trial with your case.
The third mistake clients make is they don’t hire attorneys soon enough and so a lot of the evidence is gone. The store might be remodeled. The event, device, or structure that caused the slip and fall might be gone now, might be disappeared, might be fixed, and so you can’t take good pictures of really what happened to show a jury. Hire an attorney. Select an attorney and let them take care of the investigation, the preservation of evidence, and help them orchestrate this case for you and direct you in the right ways.
Proving Fault in Slip and Fall Cases
A lot of times in slip and fall cases, there aren’t any witnesses. It’s just one person – you – in a store, on a sidewalk, and you slip and fall and hurt yourself. No one sees it. You go immediately and you make an incident report that you fell. The only way to prove this – that it was not your fault; it was the fault of somebody else – is your testimony and it’s also preserving any evidence there is, whether it’s taking pictures of the surface that day, or shortly thereafter. I would suggest that if you’re ever involved in a slip and fall incident, you take pictures immediately with your phone, or have your family members do it, or even have the store take pictures for you because the condition at the time of the slip and fall or the incident that causes problems is extremely important.
Slip and Fall Case Value
Clients ask me on a regular basis, “What’s the value of this slip and fall case?” Those questions can’t be answered in a single sentence. It takes time to understand all the facts and the issues of your case to put a value on it. We need to know how serious your injuries are. Will you ever be able to function at the level you did before? Can you still enjoy your family? Can you still enjoy your passions or your hobbies? These are all things that have to be determined. Another thing that has to be determined is the defendant – the store owner, the city, or whoever caused the slip and fall. What’s their behavior been like? Has this happened four or five times last week at the same place, and they’ve never fixed it? These are things that have to be determined. There’s no quick answer on how much your case it worth for these reasons.
Slip and Fall Settlement Timeline
People often ask, “How long will a slip and fall case take to finish and get money?” I can’t answer that question because there are so many factors involved. One is how long it will take you to heal, how long it will take us to evaluate your case, how long it will take us to get all the evidence we need to look at, and where all the witnesses are. We have to do all the initial stuff first. Second, we don’t know if the insurance company is going to be reasonable and offer a reasonable settlement offer. If they don’t, then we have to file a lawsuit. If we file a lawsuit, then it’s a whole other situation. We have defense lawyers, maybe several, to deal with. We have a court system that we have to get a jury trial date, and we don’t always get exactly what we want when we want. It can take several years to resolve this case at the end, but if you hire an attorney early, you have a better chance of getting this thing started quicker and ending sooner.
Were you or a loved one seriously injured after a trip or fall and have questions about your slip and fall claim? Don’t ruin your slip and fall case before it has started! Contact a Stillwater slip and fall lawyer at Murray Law Firm today for a free confidential consultation and case evaluation. Let our experience work for you.
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