1. What You Must Do After a Slip and Fall Accident
Immediately obtain medical attention. If you have been involved in a slip and fall accident, but have not received medical attention, a doctor will need to see you immediately. The value of your slip and fall accident case is diminished every single day you wait. Some explanations that insurance providers and corporate defendants often argue that your injuries were not caused by the accident, or that your injuries are not as severe as you argue. Delays and lack of care reinforce those points. Without medical reports and expenses, you still can’t prove medical accidents. For any form of recovery, they are completely critical. You can either go to the emergency room (best for your legal case) or go to your own family doctor or a walk-in clinic. Don’t postpone medication. If you can, you can call me from your ER waiting room. In addition, tell the doctor or care professional that you were in an accident and were injured in order to make your medical records show that your injuries happened when you slipped and fell, this can be quite important. ALL of your symptoms, no matter how mild, should also be reported. Here are some common symptoms of a slip and fall.
2. Do not miss medical appointments and obey the prescribed care by your doctor.
If you have a history of missing medical appointments, many jurors would conclude that when you began missing appointments, you were not seriously injured or had started to recover. The same thing if you decline the medication prescribed. The only thing is that pain medications should be avoided, even though that’s the treatment your doctor recommends. Instead, you should recommend that the doctor consider alternative types of treatment in cases of serious injury, such as physical therapy, chiropractic treatment, injections or even surgery.
3. To the property owner or manager, report your slip and fall accident.
The landlord, store manager, homeowner, or the person with the highest rank in charge of the property where you fell should immediately report your slip and fall accident. The landlord or manager can make a recording of the incident if the accident occurred at a company or rental property. When you are being transported to the hospital for care by emergency services, you or one of your friends or family members can call back as soon as possible to confirm your slip and fall accident. In addition, you need to get a copy of the accident report either before leaving the scene, or after you leave the hospital, even if the police didn’t take the report.
4. Limit contact with owners of businesses, workers or witnesses.
Also, keep the discussion to a minimum, other than documenting the accident. Do not get into lengthy talks about how you fell and slipped. Such individuals will testify later on whatever you said, so keep talking to a minimum without being rude. When the person downplayed their injury, clarified the reason for their fall, or took responsibility for the fall in casual conversations, I’ve seen cases that lost all meaning.
5. Call me quickly.
There are too many things to list that must be done right away in a slip and fall accident case. You can call or text me 24/7. If I do not answer, I will return your call quickly. Slip and fall accident cases involve complexities that should not be trusted to large settlement mill law firms, or non-attorney intake people answering calls. You need to talk to an attorney who will provide aggressive and highly personalized service, including an extremely detailed intake interview. I can help you increase the value of your slip and fall case damages. Juries appear to seriously challenge injuries of slip and fall that were not recorded at least the day after the accident. In other words, you may still have a legal argument, but because you reported the accident right away, a jury would award you much smaller damages (or none at all). Refuse to finish some portion of the form and refuse to sign the form. Or, if you do, make sure you record your fall very accurately. Refusing to complete or sign any paperwork is my best advice. You are not legally bound to complete their forms or sign them. Click here to contact me.
6. Limit contact with the owners of home.
You should tell them that you fell, if you fell on their land, but try to avoid getting emotional or angry. Talk to them as much as you can, and don’t disagree with them. If you stumbled and fell on the property of a client, note that slip and fall accident lawyers normally demand compensation rather than the defendants assets from their homeowner plan. So, the insurance provider covers the claim in most situations, try to get the homeowner’s name and his or her insurance details, if possible.
7. Take LOTS of pictures.
You need to take Plenty of pictures immediately, including close-up and wide-angle views, of the exact spot where you fell, from several different directions, as well as any factors that led to your slip and fall accident. I can not overstate the significance of immediately taking these pictures! Send a trusted friend or family member if you’re too injured to take them yourself. Without these images, many lawyers (including me) can’t even analyze a case. In addition, when deciding who is to blame for your slip and fall injury, and who owns the house, these photographs are very significant. Often, after any accident, a business owner might very well clean or fix whatever caused your fall, very easily (on the other hand, several times they don’t, so if the accident happened in the recent past, you should also want and go back and take photos, don’t just assume they’re going to get the problem repaired because they don’t often). If you fell on some fluid (such as rainfall), or fell into a hole of mud, or fell on something that was clearly in need of repair, taking pictures quickly would be extremely valuable. The explanation is that liquid can alter, dry, or be washed easily, dirt can be transferred, and it is possible to repair items that need repair. Often, you should take videos of your own injuries.
8. Determine what has caused you to fall and slip.
For example, you could decide what caused the floor to be slippery, such as spilled grease or other liquid, if the floor was slippery. If you do not know the reason, it will not prove your case very much.
9. Determine how long there had been a dangerous situation.
We have to show, in certain ways, how long the unsafe condition has existed. A banana peel is the classic example. If a banana peel dropped 20 seconds before you stumbled and fell on the ground, particularly if it was caused by anyone other than a store employee, then they would probably not be liable. So, to prove your point, we need to know more about the banana peel. So you need to observe (or look back and remember) information carefully about something that caused you to fall: was there soil in the peel of the liquid or banana? Were the track marks there? Any time before you slipped, did you notice something falling? Did, for some reason, the material look old? We also need to show that the material was on the ground for at least 15 minutes, if not 30 minutes. (Note: if you slipped and fell on anything other than a foreign material, such as any portion of the building foundation, there is a different rule.)
10. Contact Information for Witnesses.
You should try to get the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of everyone who witnessed your fall, or the circumstance that caused your fall, or how you responded to your fall. Try to include the names of any workers in the store who witnessed the fall, who were in the area near your fall, or who completed the notes of the accident. Make a mental note if someone says that similar falls have occurred before, and try to get their contact information. After your slip and fall accident, you might also use a recording device (such as a smartphone) to capture their initial observations.
11. Never take part in giving a statement that is being recorded!
Unless and until you have hired an attorney, please (I’m begging) do not consent to give the company or insurance company working for the company a written statement. I promise that their only purpose is to get you to say something they can use later to disprove your case of slip and fall accident. They are not your mates, and they won’t measure the worth of your injuries equally. There are an infinite number of ways that your slip and fall accident case can be absolutely ruined by a documented comment. Don’t hand them over. Never. Never. No exceptions at all. If you’ve already provided one, however, then you can always call me. Injured victims often manage to get through these without damaging their case. I will check every reported statement to decide whether something that might harm your case has been said by you.
12. Just save anything.
Place the shoes and clothes you wore in a secure place for storage. Take videos of them as well.
13. Contact me before any insurance firm or other documents are signed.
Sometimes, in return for promising not to sue them, insurance providers or corporate defendants will promise to cover the medical bills. This idea is really unfair. They’re trying to make themselves sound rational, but they’re not going to pay the true value of the compensation. Believe me. They’re not your mate. They could pay for the initial medical attention, but future medical care is most often required for clients critically injured in a slip and fall accident. You will give up the right to sue them if you sign their documents, or make them pay for any possible medical care, the pain and suffering, and any loss of income. You are entitled to extra damages, but they will never tell you. Contact me.
