The dedicated Utah slip and fall lawyers at Swenson & Shelley have a proven track record of recovering full compensation for our clients. When you trip over something, most of the time it’s no big deal. You may not hurt yourself and you just try to brush off the embarrassment. If you are here, that is probably not what happened to you. You may be eligible for a slip and fall claim if you were seriously injured due to someone else’s negligence. These slip and falls can cause injuries that can truly shake your normal life. We want you to know that we are here for you. After you read a little bit about your slip and fall claim, please contact our office as soon as you can so that we can get the ball rolling and ensure you are on track for a very successful claim.
A slip and fall lawyer in Utah will usually take on cases where the victim was injured due to another person’s negligence. This could be a business owner who did not properly place a wet floor sign after mopping, or it could be a homeowner who left a toy in the middle of the stairs. If you have been injured due to someone else’s negligence, you may be eligible for a slip and fall claim.
Slip and Fall Statistics
The number of slip and fall victims each year, as well as the many injuries they suffer, are quite startling. The statistics for slip and fall accidents include injuries from many different places. From employees hurt at work, to customers injured while patronizing a business, the statistics take a sweeping look at all the people who suffer from these accidents each year. It is evident that slips and falls are extremely common, and injuries suffered can be extreme. These statistics provide a look into the devastation of slip and fall accidents throughout the year.
Falls are the number one cause of accidental injury
Slips and falls account for nearly one million emergency room visits each year
Slips and falls are the leading cause of workers compensation claims
In 2015, 15,000 people over the age of 65 suffered a fatality from a fall
Dealing with Insurance Companies
Victims of a slip and fall should never talk to insurance companies. The property or business owner’s insurer is likely to get in contact with the victim. They will make it seem as if they have the victim’s interests in mind. In reality, these insurers are focused on settling for the lowest amount possible. Anything a victim says to an insurer, or anything they sign from the insurer, greatly decreases their chance of winning a settlement. Rather than the victim talking to, and being questioned by, an insurance company, they should let their attorney do the talking. The right attorney can make sure an insurance company doesn’t harass a victim after a slip and fall accident. A slip and fall lawyer can help make sure you’re taking the right steps after your accident.
As mentioned, these accidents are sometimes severe and can lead to missed time at work which makes it harder for you to pay any medical bills that are coming your way. Here are the most common slip and fall injuries that we see in our clients:
Broken bones
Fractures
Cuts and lacerations
Bruising
Concussion
Dislocation
We will sit down with you shortly after the accident and discuss your health condition. We need to get an idea of how bad you are and how long it will take to get back to 100%. If 100% is not an option, we will take that into consideration. Once we know how long your recovery will take and what you will need to get better, we will have a better understanding of how much compensation we need to ask the liable party’s insurance company for.
What to Do After You Fall
A key thing to know after your slip and fall is that your health is more important than anything else. You might be embarrassed if you fell in public and want to get right out of there, but you should not leave the scene without reporting the incident. Then you can head off to the urgent care and get the medical attention you probably so badly need. If you were at a friend’s house, take photos of what you tripped or slipped on and ask your friend for their homeowner’s insurance information. Don’t worry, you are not personally suing a friend. You are bringing a claim against their insurance and those companies are well prepared for slip and fall cases.
Once you know you have reported the incident, taken photos of the cause of your injury, and perhaps gotten contact information from witnesses, you can then get to a medical professional. That might be an urgent care facility, an emergency room, or your primary physician. Whatever it is, do not hesitate to get there after you have settled things at the scene of the accident. You don’t want to run the risk of worsening your condition by waiting. You also run the risk of having the liable party’s insurance company say that you could not have possibly been that injured and that you do not deserve compensation. They will use that against you to try to throw out your case. Those are the things that you should do after a slip and fall accident.
Utah Slip and Fall Claims
The laws for slip and fall claims vary from state to state. Who is responsible, what victims are entitled to, and how the suit is handled can be very different from one state to the next. In Utah, there are laws in place to protect people from slips and falls, as well as laws regarding what responsibilities businesses have. Any person who has suffered a slip and fall on another person’s property should contact a personal injury attorney, such as Swenson and Shelley, for more information about slip and fall claim laws.
Property and business owners are required to make their property safe for all visitors
Slip and fall accidents fall under premise liability, which also includes dog bites and negligence
Filing slip and fall claims that occurred on government property can be more difficult
The way the case is treated may depend on the victim’s relationship with the property owner
How to Get the Most Compensation
Utah has shared fault rules and you can fall into one of three possible categories when it comes to compensation. First, if you are 50% – 100% at fault for your accident (which barely happens) you will be completely barred from receiving compensation. The next category is when you are less than 50% at fault for the accident. You may have been on your phone you fell. Let’s say you were 20% at fault. When you get your compensation award, it will be reduced by 20% to account for your fault. Lastly, you could possibly share no fault in the accident and not have any reduction in your compensation which is obviously the best case scenario. The best way to make sure you don’t have any reduction is to avoid talking to the insurance company when they ask you for a recorded statement. They don’t really want to help you. They want to throw out your case. Also, to avoid having your case thrown out, you should be aware of the statute of limitations. You have four years from the date of the accident to get your case started or settle it in court. Do not delay this process because if you miss the deadline, you will no longer be eligible for compensation and there’s nothing we can do to reverse that.
Frequently Asked Slip and Fall Questions
If you’ve been injured in a slip and fall in the state of Utah, selecting the correct attorney is critical to your claim. When choosing which attorney you’re going to work with, you want to look for a few things. First, you want an attorney who dedicates their practice to personal injury. Second, you want to choose an attorney who has handled slip and fall claims in the past, and understands the rules that apply to the different types of slip and falls that can occur. Third, you want to make sure that you choose a trial attorney who is willing to take your case to court and hold the insurance company accountable.
If you’ve been injured in a slip and fall accident in the state of Utah, you probably talked to the manager, filled out an incident report, and gave them some basic information. Most likely, in a day or two, you’re also going to get a call from an insurance company wanting a recorded statement about the fall. I recommend that people generally do not give that statement without talking to an attorney first. The reason for that is that the attorneys or the insurance agents that call have been trained to ask questions in a specific way, and the way they’re asking questions is to get the information they need to drive down the value of your case. Talk to an attorney first, then decide if you want to give the recorded statement.
If you’ve been seriously injured in a slip and fall in the state of Utah, oftentimes, early in the process, the insurance carrier will want to come in and talk with you and get a written or recorded statement. People often think that providing this information and answering their questions is going to help their claim move along quicker and resolve for fair value. What we have found is just the opposite. When people open up to the attorneys of the company itself, the way that their questions are crafted, the answers are later used against the injured individual.
We recommend that you do not talk with the company, insurance carrier or attorneys of the company, but, instead, come in and seek out your own attorney who can help protect you from some of the questions that they’re going to ask you early on.
We have a client that was involved in a slip and fall case in a restaurant. He walked into one of the entrances of the restaurant, took a couple of steps, his foot hit wet floor, and down he went. As we were discussing the case with the insurance company, the insurance company said, “Your client doesn’t have a case because we had a caution sign out that said there was a wet floor.” When we looked into it further, we discovered that the wet floor sign was over by a separate entrance, where it would’ve been very hard to see for anybody, including our client who was walking through the other entrance. We helped him understand that, in this case, even though there was a caution sign out, he does have a case against this restaurant.
If you have been injured in Utah due to a faulty handrail, there are a number of things we suggest that you do. First, we would recommend that you get pictures or video of the faulty handrail. Sometimes those handrails will get repaired or changed rather quickly, and it helps preserve the evidence of what the handrail was like at the moment that you were injured. We also recommend that you seek medical care for the injuries that you sustained so you can start to make a physical recovery. Third, we recommend that you hire an attorney to come in and make sure that all evidence gets preserved and that nothing gets destroyed. Hire a trial attorney who will take your case to a jury verdict and can see if the handrail was up to code and that the owner of the handrail was doing what they needed to do under the law.
If you slipped and fell on faulty stairs in Utah, whether or not you have a case depends on a number of factors. The biggest factor is to determine whether or not the stairs that you fell on are up to code. The construction code requires that stairs meet certain dimensions and requirements. That’s why it’s important to bring an attorney into your case, so that we can help you understand whether or not there is a case against the owner of those stairs.
If you have been injured as a result of a sidewalk that is broken, uneven, or is in disrepair, whether or not you have a claim against either the homeowner or the municipality depends on a number of factors. What we recommend is, if you have been injured, to come in and talk with us. We can look into the location of where your injury took place and look and see who the responsible party is.
If you have been injured on a sidewalk that is owned and maintained by a city or municipality, whether or not you have a claim depends on a number of factors. One of the most important things to understand is the time frame that you have to bring a claim against a governmental agency is much shorter than it is against a private party. It’s important to hire an attorney and get an injury attorney involved early on in the case, so that we can make sure that the steps are followed and the hoops that you have to jump through are jumped through, so that we can preserve your claim.
Trying to determine the value of a case, if you’ve had a slip and fall accident in the state of Utah, is tough because you’ve got to look at a couple of different things. First is the severity of the injury that you have. That includes the medical treatment that you’re going to get, that you’ve already gotten, how well it worked, and how much better you got. The other thing you need to look at in these cases is if some of it is your fault, you need to take that into account in determining the value of the case, and that makes it very difficult to do, especially early on in a case.
Call Our Office Today for a Free Consultation on Your Slip and Fall Accident
If you have been seriously injured in a slip and fall incident, you should not hesitate to call our office for a free consultation. Our Utah slip and fall lawyer will be your strong, dedicated, and experienced guide through this legal situation. You deserve to feel like a priority and we want to give that to you. We will work hard to get you the compensation you deserve so that you can get back to normal after this accident.
