Los Angeles Slip And Fall Attorney
Slip and fall accidents are among the most common causes of accidental injury in the Los Angeles area. Each year, more than 8 million people visit emergency departments across the United States for treatment for injuries sustained in fall accidents, and many of these incidents are the direct result of the negligence of a property owner or other party responsible for the maintenance of a property.
Thankfully for people who are hurt in slips and falls, victims are often able to recover compensation for the losses they sustain. At Injury Justice Law Firm, we are dedicated to representing the rights of people who have been hurt after slipping and falling on the property of another person and do everything we can to ensure that our clients obtain the compensation to which they are legally entitled.
To recover compensation, a person who has been hurt in a slip and fall accident must be able to show that their accident was caused by the negligence of the person or business responsible for maintaining the property on which the accident took place in a safe condition.
To learn whether you have a claim, call our Los Angeles personal injury law firm for a free consultation.
Common Causes of Slip and Fall Accidents
Slip and fall accidents can easily occur as a result of dangerous conditions on either public or private property. Examples of conditions that cause slip and fall accidents come in many various forms.
A dangerous condition usually involves a localized spot, such as a pothole, debris in the entryway or walkway, improper flooring material, torn carpets or rugs, that causes the unsuspecting and unprepared pedestrian to slip and fall.
Here are some of the most common hazardous conditions that can cause slips, trips, and falls that are often attributable to someone else's negligence:
Wet floors – When there is a wet or slippery floor, property owners have a legal duty to resolve the condition by cleaning up the liquid or placing adequate warning signs of the presence of a dangerous condition. Property owners can be held at fault for any injuries caused by failing to properly clean, dry, and inspect their premises.
In Los Angeles County, wet and slippery floors are frequently a dangerous hazard to visitors or shoppers of commercial properties, including shopping malls, gyms, sports stadiums, swimming pools, convention centers, and hotels.
This also includes public buildings such as schools, libraries, and courthouses. Common injuries caused by a fall on a wet surface include head injuries, traumatic brain injury, internal bleeding, collapsed lungs, knee and ligament damage, broken bones, fractured pelvis, facial fractures, broken nose, broken wrist, broken teeth, separated shoulder, and spinal cord injuries.
Inadequate Lighting – Accidents often happen when property owners fail to keep their premises adequately lit. The injuries caused by improper lighting can be extremely serious or even fatal. Injured people may be able to recover compensation from property owners who failed to keep their premises safe.
Some common examples of inadequate lighting accidents include: inadequately lighting in staircase and stairwell accidents, which occur when property owners leave their stairs without proper lighting that puts their visitors in danger. Anyone attempting to walk down a staircase without proper lighting can easily trip and fall down the stairs.
Inadequate lighting in walkways can also cause slip and fall accidents. In locations where there is poor lighting, such as a parking lot, it's difficult to see uneven spots, holes, cracks, or a wet surface. Inadequate lighting in a pool area can be a serious hazard as an individual can slip and fall after dark, causing serious injuries on the hard surface, or fall in the pool and drown.
Unsafe Stairs – Property owners must take reasonable steps to ensure their premises are safe, including the stairway used to get in and out of their property. When an individual falls on unsafe stairs, the owner of the premises could be held financially liable.
Stairways are not safe when they are broken or excessively worn. This could include broken handrails, crumbling steps, or wet and slippery conditions. When a stairway handrail is broken or nonexistent, it typically makes it difficult for individuals to maintain their balance and certainly makes it close to impossible to catch themselves should if they start to fall.
All private and public buildings in California are required to be properly equipped to prevent accidents. A slip and fall accident on stairs is very dangerous, potentially causing spinal injuries, broken bones, head or back injuries, paralysis, or even death.
Uneven Floors – A slip and fall accident fall on an uneven floor can easily cause someone to suffer serious injuries. When floors have an even surface, it's often very difficult to even notice and a person can easily stumble, slip, trip, and fall. In most cases, it's almost impossible to even see the difference in the elevation of a surface.
Typically, customers and visitors to businesses have no way to know in advance of the condition of an uneven surface. Property owners have a legal duty to maintain safe conditions on their property.
This includes regular inspections of their property to see if conditions need repair. Even if they were not aware of an uneven surface at the time of the slip and fall accident, they can be liable. This is because California law imposes a legal responsibility on property owners to repair any conditions they should have known might present a danger to the public.
Unsafe Conditions – There are a variety of unsafe conditions on properties that could cause a slip and fall accident causing injuries. In California, property owners have a legal obligation to maintain a reasonably safe condition for others. If a property owner is negligent in the maintenance of their property, and someone is injured, due to their negligence, they could be held liable for the injuries and required to pay damages.
In California, many types of unsafe conditions can cause a slip and fall accident to be found on private property, including exposed cables and wires, hidden holes, cracks in cement, defective handrails, cracks in the floor, sidewalk accident, improperly fastened carpet, among many others.
In some cases, it may not be apparent to you or your friends or family that a slip and fall accident was someone else's fault, as negligence is a complicated legal concept that requires significant study and experience to fully understand.
Consequently, it is extremely important for anyone that has been hurt in a slip and fall accident to have an experienced attorney thoroughly evaluate their case.
In addition, this evaluation should happen as soon as possible after an injury-causing incident, as waiting runs the risk of losing evidence critical to the success of your case or the lapsing of the time limit within which you have to file a claim.
Slip and Fall Accidents Can Cause Serious Injuries
While you may be under the impression that people who are injured in slip and fall accidents typically do not sustain serious injuries, in reality, any accident has the potential to result in injuries that could affect a person for the rest of their life and require emergency medical treatment.
Examples of serious injuries that you can sustain if you slip, trip, or fall include the following:
- Traumatic brain injuries (TBIs)
- Spinal cord injuries
- Dislocations
- Broken bones
- Nerve damage
- Concussions
- Hip fractures
- Sprained ligaments
- Bulging disc and pinched nerves
- Brain injuries
- Soft tissue injuries
- Eye injury.
These and other serious injuries have the potential to result in thousands of dollars in medical bills and leave victims in serious pain and unable to work. As a result, it is critical for anyone hurt in a slip and fall accident to protect their legal rights by retaining a lawyer as soon as they can.
How Much Will a Personal Injury Lawyer Cost?
It is completely understandable to be concerned about how much it will cost to retain a lawyer after an accident. Between medical bills and taking time off of work, it may seem like hiring an attorney to represent you would be out of the question.
Fortunately, there are no up-front costs with retaining us and we will not collect any legal fees from you unless we successfully recover compensation on your behalf.
Using this type of arrangement allows us to ensure that everyone who is hurt in an accident has access to quality legal representation, regardless of their ability to pay for a lawyer out-of-pocket.
We Seek Compensation for Your Injuries
Depending on the cause of your accident, and depending on whether any laws were violated or negligence occurred, you may be entitled to more than just compensation for the medical bills, including compensation for pain and suffering, lost wages, lost earning capacity, and future medical care and training for a new career.
We handle slip and fall accidents involving insufficient lightning, crumbling curbs or stairs, uneven floors, wet and slippery floors, failure to fix unsafe conditions, among others.
We have a reliable team of experts, from medical experts to accident reconstruction experts, professional engineers, and vocational experts, ready to investigate your case. These experts will go out to the premises, take photographs, measure the cracks in pavement and traction of the floors, talk to witnesses, examine the scene of the accident, review reports, and conduct any investigation necessary.
In slip and fall accidents, evidence may become lost or destroyed over time. Witnesses forget the details and become unavailable. Insurance companies will do their best to pressure, scare or intimidate you into accepting a lower settlement than you might be entitled to.
If you have been injured in a slip and fall accident, you should speak to an attorney as soon as possible. Under California law, you may be entitled to damages for your past and future medical expenses, lost income, loss of quality of life, physical and emotional pain and suffering, and any other losses you may have experienced.
To schedule a free consultation, call us at 310-734-7974 or send us an email through our online contact form.
We can protect your rights and ensure the maximum possible recovery for you and your family.
Related Information: Trip & Fall Accidents | Premises Liability Injuries