How to respond after a slip and fall injury: Important Tips!

After a slip and fall accident, victims should prepare for the long, and often frustrating, civil claim process. The process is long because so much money is at stake for property owners. Personal injuries, including slip and fall injuries, cost more than $4 trillion a year. Substantial compensation is available, but insurance companies don’t give away this money.

California’s premises liability laws are very complex. This area of law governs injury claims like swimming pool drownings, slip and falls, and dog bites. These victims usually have multiple legal options, and insurance companies usually have multiple options as well.

This environment underscores the need for a slip and fall lawyer. Despite what TV commercials imply, insurance companies don’t care about what’s right or fair. They only care about their profits, and they hire lawyers to defend those profits. Victims without lawyers are at the mercy of these lawyers.

Know Your Rights

Many people blame themselves for slip and fall injury accidents. But these incidents don’t just happen out of nowhere. Generally, a defective property condition causes slip and fall injuries.

These defective conditions include:

• Uneven walkways,
• Wet spots,
• Loose rugs,
• Steep steps, and
• Dimly-lit staircases.

Usually, California property owners must ensure that the insides and outsides of their properties are free from injury hazards. Owners, not landlords or other parties, are responsible for such upkeep, at least in most cases.

The purpose of a personal injury suit is to exercise these rights and force negligent property owners to take responsibility for the injuries they cause. A Los Angeles personal injury lawyer doesn’t “blame” anyone for anything.

Fall injury victims have financial rights as well. Compensation for medical bills is important, but it’s only part of the picture. No health insurance company fully compensates fall injury victims. These victims also deserve compensation for their noneconomic losses, such as emotional distress.

See a Doctor

Usually, falls cause injury shock. This shock masks pain, which is why many injury victims don’t “feel” injured. Additionally, many victims don’t want to deal with large hospital bills.

Whether or not they feel hurt, slip and fall victims should always visit doctors. Many fall-related injuries are difficult to diagnose, especially head injuries like:

• mTBIs: Concussions, or moderate traumatic brain injuries, often don’t require extensive treatment. But they do require uninterrupted rest and proper medical care. Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, the mTBI must be carefully documented. The cumulative effects of mTBIs cause chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a progressive brain disease that occurs after repeated head injuries or concussions.
• sTBIs: Initial symptoms of a severe traumatic brain injury mirror the aforementioned accident shock, a temporary condition that usually goes away on its own. As a result, many fall injury victims leave hospitals with untreated brain injuries. Untreated injuries cause progressively worse symptoms, such as tinnitus (ringing in the ears), severe headaches, and even death.
• PTSD: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a physical brain injury, just like a TBI. But a chemical change, not a trauma impact, causes PTSD. Extreme stress causes the amygdala to swell and the hippocampus to shrink. This imbalance causes symptoms like hypervigilance and depression. In some cases, the chemical imbalance auto corrects. But in many other cases, it doesn’t.

A Los Angeles personal injury lawyer connects fall injury victims with doctors who know how to diagnose and treat these and other fall-related injuries. Seeing a doctor is important for legal reasons as well. If the victim puts off such treatment, insurance company lawyers often later argue that the victim’s injuries are exaggerated.

Attorneys take care of the aforementioned financial concern as well. Usually, lawyers connect victims with top-notch doctors who charge nothing upfront for their professional services. As a bonus, a lawyer usually negotiates with doctors so they reduce their fees. These negotiations could mean victims get to keep more of their settlement money, under California’s complex collateral source rule.

Call a Lawyer

When you meet with a Los Angeles personal injury lawyer, the attorney’s vision for your case, or lack thereof, should tell you pretty much all you need to know about his/her litigation and negotiation skills.

Vision begins with the ability to see the legal issues and evidence challenges a case presents. A lawyer should zero in on a certain liability theory and also anticipate possible insurance company defenses. A lawyer must also know the most compelling kinds of evidence, and how to obtain this evidence.

Practicing law isn’t complicated. It’s usually a matter of planning your work and working your plan. So, if the lawyer doesn’t have a good plan, don’t count on a good result.

On a related note, an attorney should have professional relationships with doctors, as mentioned above, expert witnesses, and other lawyers. Experts often provide critical evidence, and other lawyers offer additional insight into a case.

Consult our slip and fall personal injury attorney today!

A good understanding of what to do after a slip and fall accident is the foundation of a winning case. For a free consultation with our slip and fall injury lawyers, contact the Law Offices of Eslamboly Hakim. Virtual, home, and hospital visits are available.