Virginia Personal Injury Law: The Slip and Fall

The purposes of a personal injury lawyer is to help someone who has been wrongfully injured to recover money from the person or business that caused that injury. There are many different types of injuries. This post contains basic information about the “slip and fall.” So what is the slip and fall, and how can a personal injury lawyer help you if this happened to you?

What is a Slip and Fall Case?

The most common type of slip and fall is a case where someone was in a grocery store or some other retail store. While walking through the store, that person might slip on a wet or slippery surface. Maybe a water heater was broken and dripping water on the floor. Maybe an employee came through and forgot to mop up a spill from another guest.

There are many other scenarios where these kinds of cases come up, but the essence of a slip and fall is that you are on someone else’s property, you slip, you fall, and you are injured.

What Do You Have to Prove to Have a Good Slip and Fall Case?

In order to be successful in a slip and fall case, there are a number of obligations Virginia law places on the injured person. The injured person has to prove that:

1) A dangerous condition existed at the property;

2) The owner of the property (or agent) either had direct knowledge of the condition or the condition was so obvious they should have known;

3) The owner of the property (or agent) failed to fix the condition;

4) The injured person slipped and fell because of that conditiion;

5) The injured person sufferred an injury as a result of the slip and fall.

Why You Need a Personal Injury Lawyer.

Virginia law makes it complicated and very difficult to get money from a business as a result of a slip and fall. These businesses keep an army of lawyers on stand by to fight these claims and to minimize the amount they have to pay. Because of all these pitfalls, it is important to have a personal injury lawyer help you as soon as you are the victim of a slip and fall.

The personal injury lawyer can walk you through what actions to take to maximize your chances of recovering money from the business by getting the documentation related to the incident, helping walk you through talking to a medical professional for further diagnosis, and negotiating with insurance providers.

Make sure you talk to a personal injury lawyer ASAP if this happens to you.

Virginia Personal Injury Law: How Personal Injury Cases Work

If you have been injured because someone else did something wrong, you are probably considering hiring a lawyer. One of the common things I see when talking to people looking for a personal injury lawyer is that they do not understand the basics of how a personal injury case works.

So what are the basic steps in a personal injury case, and what do you need to know before talking to a lawyer?

Understanding The Significance of Your Medical Bills

The first thing any personal injury lawyer needs to know is how much a case is worth. There are several reasons why a personal injury lawyer needs to know that. A personal injury lawyer decides to take a case depending on how much a case is worth. Some personal injury lawyers take cases contingency, which means that you don't pay anything unless they win. Some cases are not worth enough to be contingency.

Your medical bills are a good place to start in understanding the basic value of your case. A case is not only about medical bills, but it certainly informs the personal injury lawyer what they can expect from settlement or trial.

If you want to increase your chances of finding a personal injury lawyer for your case, it's important to have your medical bill information available prior to sitting down with the lawyer. You can obtain medical bills from your service provider by talking to their administrative staff.

Without substantial medical bills, it is likely that you will have to hire a lawyer on a non-contingent basis. There may be other damages, but it likely will not be worth enough money for the lawyer to pay upfront on your behalf.

What Personal Injury Lawyers Look For During A Consultation

The second step in the process is to bring your bills to a personal injury lawyer to discuss the case in more detail. most personal injury lawyers will not charge for them initial consultation so long as the case is worthwhile. If the case is not high value or if it is particularly complex, you may have to pay a consultation fee.

The purpose of a consultation is to discuss the facts of what happened, to go over who would be sued and how much the cases worth, and to tell you how long the case may take.

The Personal Injury Settlement Process

Once you and your lawyer have come to an agreement on cost, your lawyer will likely submit a claim to the insurance company requesting payment. There is a lot of work that goes into this claim statement. Lawyers with typically put your medical bills in the claims statement, they will put a statement of fact in the claim statement, they will put a demand for payment, and there may be additional information they put in there.

Once the insurance adjuster receives the claim statement, they will be a series of negotiations where the insurance adjuster will probably offer a specific amount of money to settle the case. These negotiations go back and forth until the client accepts the settlement or rejects it and it goes to trial.

Going to Trial in Personal Injury Cases

If settlement negotiations are successful, then the parties will execute a settlement agreement. The agreement will go through details of how the settlement will be paid and when it will be paid. If settlement is not successful, then the case will go to trial. At that point, there will likely be expert witnesses hired. These expert witnesses will talk about the value of the case and the nature of the damage. At the end of the trial, the finder a fact will determine whether or not you are entitled to money and by how much.

Why You Need a Personal Injury Lawyer

Navigating a person injury claim is very complicated and time-consuming. You can also hurt your case by submitting bad information to the insurance adjuster. A good personal injury lawyer understands what information the insurance adjuster needs to make a fair decision. If you cannot come to a settlement, a good lawyer is needed to navigate trial because there are many pit falls. Talk to a lawyer if you are injured because of someone else's wrong doing.

Virginia Personal Injury Law: What To Do When Injured

If you are injured in a car accident, at work or in public there are certain steps you need to immediately take in order to protect yourself. Failure to follow these basic steps may result in an otherwise strong personal injury case being denied or dismissed.

So what are these basic steps, and what should you know if you get injured?

Make a List of Witnesses to the Accident

The very first thing you need to do if you are injured is to identify individuals that may have witnessed your injury. Witnesses are important, as you need other people to support your side of events. Failure to have witnesses on your side may result in a “he said, she said” scenario.

These are scenarios in which it is solely your word versus the person who may have injured you. There are several ways of securing witnesses to an event. One is to immediately call the police in the event that you are injured. Police will often show up to a scene and take down names and contact information.

If you are unable to contact the police, consider having yourself or someone who is with you talk to those nearby. The information you need to gather includes, but is not necessarily limited to, full name, age, address of where they reside, and a phone number. This information will help your lawyer locate the witnesses and request that they be at trial or submit statements to insurance.

Go to the Hospital

The second thing you need to do is to make sure there is a record of your injuries. The most common way of doing that is to go to the hospital immediately after being injured. Many people forget this step, and feel that, in the heat of the moment, the injury is not that bad.

However, adrenaline could be going through your system immediately after being injured. You may not feel the injury until several days later. Additionally, there are some injuries which will not manifest themselves immediately. For example, it may take several days for soft tissue damage to become apparent.

If you fail to go to the hospital immediately, you may have problems down the road proving that your injuries are a result of the accident that occurred. One of the most common tactics of insurance providers and businesses is to claim that something else may have aggravated the injury. This is a common tactic to deny your claim.

Contact a Personal Injury Lawyer

The third step is to contact a personal injury lawyer. Many people may think to contact insurance first, but you may accidentally say something to the insurance adjuster would could hurt your case. Insurance adjusters are specially trained in trying to get you to answer questions that may harm your claim. Their job is to try and prevent payouts.

Therefore, contact a lawyer as soon as possible to protect yourself and your claim. Most personal injury lawyers offer free consultations.