Los Angeles’s Slip-and-Fall Injury Lawyer
Los Angeles offers a million destinations for residents and visitors to head out to each day. Locals can travel to work, make a grocery stop, or pull into a gas station for a fill-up. Visitors might be drawn to the famous shopping and entertainment venues.
All of these locations, businesses, and destinations strive to draw people in, but they also bear an important duty to their visitors. Property owners, proprietors, companies, and corporations are required to keep their customers and clients as safe as possible. When someone takes a dangerous fall at a public place or a place of business, those responsible for creating the hazard must be held accountable for the costs of recovery.
When someone trips or slips and is injured, the property owner’s insurance company might be responsible for paying for the victim’s recovery. Even so, the insurance company might put up a fight to pay out as little as possible. A slip and fall lawyer in Los Angeles can help you hold them accountable for paying for the entire recovery process.
Los Angeles Slip or Trip and Fall Injury Claim Process
Free Consultations for Slip-and-Fall Victims
After falling to the ground and suffering a serious injury, you may have some doubts that the at-fault party’s insurance provider will offer full coverage for your recovery costs. Insurance companies will always put their profits ahead of your well-being and your family’s protection.
To make sure you know about every benefit available to you and your family, contact the Offices of Maison Law. We work hard to make sure victims aren’t left in the dark about their rights and about the amount of compensation they should expect after a slip-and-fall accident.
We offer a free case evaluation to trip-and-fall victims and strive to make sure they know about every benefit available to them. Tell us what happened to you in a confidential consultation session so that we can determine your best options for getting the financial support you need in recovery.
Common Slip-And-Fall and Trip-And-Fall Hazards in Los Angeles
Grocery chain operators, landlords, and local governments all owe shoppers, tenants, and visitors a “duty of care.” It’s the legal responsibility of owners and operators to provide a reasonably safe visit to a store, restaurant, public building, or park.
This duty extends to property owners who maintain an apartment building or a parking lot under the legal concept of “premises liability.” Employers are also responsible for the safety of their employees in the workplace.
When a proprietor neglects to repair a hazard or clean up an obstacle in a reasonable amount of time, they can be held fully responsible when you get hurt. It doesn’t matter if the property owner created the hazard or if a customer created the hazard. Those liable must clean up or fix these dangers before you have the chance to fall prey.
These hazards can pop up anywhere you may go in Los Angeles during a busy day or night. Here are just a few of the potential obstacles that might leave you or a family member hurt:
- Puddles and Spills – A common hazard in Los Angeles in maintained public buildings and public bathrooms. This danger arises in big box stores, restaurants, and gas stations. Customers drop drinks and ice, freezer units may leak puddles. These hazards should be clearly marked with signs and promptly mopped up before visitors have the chance to lose their footing.
- Floor Hazards – Floor mats, carpet damage, exposed wiring, and cluttered displays might catch a foot and send a victim down for a hard fall on a knee or for a blow to the head. Boxes or loose candy unseen on the floor might send someone tripping.
- Los Angeles Sidewalk Hazards – Broken pavement and tree root damage are constant obstacles for pedestrians in the city. Working to prove the City of Los Angeles knew about a particularly bad spot before you ended up getting hurt can be enough to earn you financial support through recovery.
- Stair and Handrail Issues – Crumbling stairs at a restaurant, a parking garage, or an apartment or condo building can send someone into a tumble to receive multiple broken bones. A loose stair railing could also be the issue when that means of support isn’t solid enough to lend help to people going up or downstairs.
- Weather Hazards – During rainstorms operators are required to clear a safe path into their stores and keep water tracked in at entrances mopped up.
- Parking Lot Hazards – The duty of care extends to parking lots for businesses, city government facilities, and even around gas station pumps. Cracked asphalt, unsafe sidewalks, cars that leak motor oil all create opportunities for a slipping injury. Landscaping obstacles might also leave customers on the hard pavement.
What Our Clients Say
Common Injuries from Falling In Los Angeles
A fall at a grocery store like Ralphs or Albertsons may, at first, seem like just an embarrassing moment. But you may try to stand and find out just how seriously you’ve been hurt.
The National Safety Council reports that in 2019 alone over eight million people were treated in emergency rooms for fall-related injuries. In a split second, someone can go from walking across a parking lot to finding themselves on the ground with a fracture, lacerations, internal bleeding, and many other serious ailments.
Common Slip-and-Fall Injuries
- Traumatic brain injuries (TBI) involve a dangerous blow to the head. This strike can come from a shelf edge, a pylon around a gas pump, or just a hard impact to the back of the head on the ground. The symptoms may lead to something as serious as memory loss and a loss of control in parts of the body.
- Back and spinal injuries could result in a permanent loss of mobility and lifelong pain.
- Dislocations and broken bones are other devastating outcomes for fall victims. Hip fractures often occur in older victims who are sent sideways in a fall.
Common Trip-and-Fall Injuries
- Arm injuries occur when victims try to catch themselves before they hit the hard floor or pavement. The bones in the wrists and hands are common casualties.
- Facial Bone Breaks – Victims can have their arms give way to allow a face-first impact. The cheekbones, jawbones, and nose often suffer a break.
- Dental Injuries – Impacts can knock teeth out or leave them broken. These injuries can lead to permanent facial scarring and disfigurement.
- Knee damage – Patellar sprains are especially common when a victim falls onto a hard floor like concrete.
Compensation for Slip-And-Fall Victims in Los Angeles
It’s absolutely necessary to hold insurance companies responsible for every physical, emotional, and financial hardship you and your family face during injury recovery. This means filing a claim that properly lists every damage you’ve incurred since a slip-and-fall incident.
Your personal injury attorney is there to ensure you receive financial support for these factors and more:
- Hospital and medical expenses in the present and those expected in the months to come.
- Costs associated with a permanent physical disability such as future medical equipment needs, house upgrades, and training for a new career.
- Physical pain. The devastating effects chronic pain can have on a patient over a lifetime and the cost of pain medication over months and years.
- Emotional Distress. The anxiety and depression that can follow a terrible accident and being unable to enjoy the freedoms the victim once did. Emotional distress may include the trauma experienced by family members as they cope with the loss of certain activities the victim can no longer participate in.
- Paychecks lost while missing work.
- Travel costs. The expense of traveling to numerous doctor’s appointments. The expense of seeing out-of-city or out-of-state specialists.
How Can a Los Angeles Slip-And-Fall Lawyer Improve My Case?
Unfortunately, insurance companies and corporate lawyers representing store chains and property owners will use more than just your own statements to try to reduce their liability in an accident.
Insurance Adjusters will also purposely delay responding to your accident claim. This waiting game leaves you facing more and more hospital bills while your desperation levels only rise. They hope to get you even more vulnerable and more likely to jump at a “lowball” settlement offer.
They will also attempt to pin the blame on you for your fall in order to clear their powerful clients of responsibility. Your attorney deals with these shady insurance tactics for you, while you are free to focus on healing.
A skilled, Los Angeles slip-and-fall attorney will know exactly what level of support you should receive and stand up to property owners and corporations until they offer you what’s fair.
There are benefits and reimbursements you should receive that you may not know about. Your attorney makes sure these factors are all itemized in your claim for damages so that you receive the maximum compensation possible for your injuries and hardships.
Frequently Asked Questions About Slip-and-Fall Accidents in Los Angeles
Yes. Make sure you have their contact information and get them to write down what they saw or record a video of their testimony if they are willing. Make sure they sign and date any written report. At least try to find out what they observed so you can inform your personal injury attorney later.
Yes. In California, the injured victim and a store or business can share responsibility. Even if you are found to have been a bit careless when you fell, a store or business can still bear partial liability, perhaps most of the blame, and still have to provide you with partial compensation.
Property owners may claim you weren’t watching where you were going when you fell. They could also assert the poor condition of the tread on your shoes was to blame. They might say you were in an area not meant for the public or in an area marked off by signs or caution tape.
Even so, they might bear some of the blame so they should pay for some of your recovery. Contact a Los Angeles trip-and-fall lawyer to discuss whether you have a viable claim.
Los Angeles Slip-and-Fall Lawyer
After a slip-and-fall accident, be sure to discuss your case with an experienced slip-and-fall attorney serving Los Angeles and Los Angeles County. You should be able to focus on your recovery without worrying over the hospital bills piling up and the rent and a car payment coming due while you’re out of work.
Allow Martin Gasparian, the founder of Maison Law, to go to work on your case to secure the most compensation possible for your recovery. Contact us today for a free case evaluation to find out how we can help you.
Additional Resources:
Trip-And-Fall Accidents At Los Angeles Walmarts
Trip-And-Fall Accidents On Los Angeles Sidewalks
Slip-And-Fall Accidents At Los Angeles Grocery Stores
Slip-And-Fall Accidents At Los Angeles Gas Stations
