California business and property owners must protect their guests from harm, starting with each step visitors take. Owners must remove all slipping and tripping hazards.
When customers, clients, or tenants suffer a slip-and-fall accident, California owners and operators can be liable for the victim’s injury recovery costs.
This support isn’t guaranteed. Victims may need a lot of evidence to force a business to accept fault. Victims who take the right steps to build a strong case have a much better chance of getting help with their medical bills.
Building Your Case (From the day of your accident and up to a few months)
An important part of the claims process will be building your claim. A business will have lawyers trying to blame you for what happened. You’ll want plenty of evidence to include in your case so it’s much harder for owners and operators to deny fault.
The first place you’ll find evidence is at the scene, right after your fall. Try to collect as much proof of the business’s negligence as possible.
- Call 911 if you are hurt.
- Get checked out by paramedics. Go to the emergency room if they feel you should.
- Identify what caused your fall. (e.g., a spill on the floor, a damaged stair railing)
- Take photos of the obstacle. If there are no warning signs or caution tape out, make sure to show that. Take pictures of any visible injuries you have.
- Alert a manager as to what happened. Assist them in filling out an incident report for business owners.
- Don’t say things like “I’m all right” or “my bad” at the scene. Opposing lawyers and insurance adjusters will try to twist these statements later to imply that you weren’t hurt or that you admitted to causing your own fall.
- Get witness contact information.
Victims should also start collecting all important documents. This includes medical charts and hospital receipts. They should keep any shopping receipts if they fell at a store.
Contact a California Slip-and-Fall Lawyer (Within the First Few Days)
You should speak to a California slip-and-fall attorney as soon as possible. California allows personal injury victims to wait up to two years to file a claim. However, waiting months to explore your options can lead to lost evidence, missing witnesses, and erased footage.
It’s best to explore your legal options as soon as possible with a free consultation with an experienced trip-and-fall lawyer.
Your attorney will also want to start a full investigation into what happened. They’ll also gather evidence before it disappears. That can include evidence that will be more closely guarded by the owners.
- Requesting copies of the incident report that was written up.
- Making legal requests for surveillance footage before it’s erased.
- Securing witness testimony and even statements from helpful store employees.
Your lawyer will also work with your doctors to make sure there’s plenty of medical evidence to back up how severe an injury is and how long recovery will take.
Your lawyer will combine this evidence and other details with the evidence you’ve collected to build a strong case.
Seeing Your Own Doctor (Within the First Few Days)
If you haven’t already, your attorney will also recommend that you see a personal physician, even if you’ve already been to the ER.
You should have every injury checked out and documented. In the days following an accident, victims can also experience new pain, indicating injuries they didn’t know they had. The shock of an accident can mask the pain of some injuries until a day or two later. Victims can wake up the next day with extreme pain. These pains must be checked out.
You should follow your doctor’s orders, including seeing specialists and attending physical therapy. You’ll want to show that you did everything possible to help with recovery, so that insurers can raise questions about your injuries.
See: Securing Medical Evidence for Your Case
Ready to Submit a Claim (Often a month or two after an accident)
Slip-and-Fall victims can face a stack of hospital bills in just a week’s time. They may also be unable to go into work to earn a paycheck. The financial crunch is a critical reason why victims will need support as soon as possible.
It’s why there should be no delay in filing a claim once all the evidence is in place. The claim directed at an owner’s commercial liability insurer should include a full list of what the owner is responsible for.
A skilled lawyer would include every hardship that the victim had been through and those damages that lie ahead.
When determining the “damage calculation” of all economic and non-economic harm, and what victims should demand, these and other details factor in:
- Totals on all medical bills and estimates on future care
- Totals on all lost paychecks and work benefits lost income
- All travel costs going to see doctors and out-of-town specialists
- Appropriate compensation for the victim’s physical pain endured
- Appropriate compensation for the victim’s emotional trauma suffered lingering from the crash and during a difficult recovery
These factors and others must be included in an initial demand letter. This letter informs the insurers of what victims are seeking support for and how much they are demanding.
A lawyer can handle this letter and filing for you. You can visit our page on sending your own demand letter.
Slip-And-Fall Settlement Negotiations (Hopefully after only a few months)
An experienced attorney will also be a skilled negotiator. Your lawyer will be fighting to earn you the best outcome possible.
That will include going over every settlement offer you receive to make sure it covers all of your needs. If it doesn’t, an attorney can help you reject it and go back to the negotiating table.
If you accept a settlement, the ordeal should be over. The store owner’s insurer would send you a check.
Investigative fees would come out of this money. Your lawyer is also paid out of this settlement. You don’t pay anything to your lawyer unless you win your case. The rest would be yours to help you pay off medical bills and catch up on your normal monthly bills while you had been out of work.
The Threat of a Lawsuit (Getting a court date can take months or over a year)
In some cases, a settlement can’t be agreed upon, and you would need to file a lawsuit to seek justice.
Going to court may be the only option if a property owner refused to accept blame for your injury, or an insurer wouldn’t offer a fair settlement.
Your Maison Law representative would have a strong lawsuit prepared if it became necessary. A court date would be obtained, and your attorney would be ready to represent you before a judge and jury.
Most personal injury claims are taken care of with a settlement. Business owners don’t like to go to court to fight a lawsuit, because it’s expensive and can be damaging to the business’s reputation.
When you have a lawyer on your case, your lawyer represents the threat of a lawsuit. The threat is often enough to force insurers to offer a fair settlement.
Contact a California Slip-And-Fall Lawyer If You’ve Been Hurt
Not every slip-and-fall victim needs a lawyer to file a claim. But if you’ve suffered a serious injury (e.g., a broken bone, a Traumatic Brain Injury, a neck or back injury) and a property owner was at fault, it’s a good idea to talk over your case with a lawyer.
Martin Gasparian, the founder of Maison Law, offers a free case consultation for injured victims and their families. It’s a chance to determine what you should demand and how to force insurers to accept full responsibility.
