Bakersfield Slip-and-Fall Lawyer
Bakersfield slip-and-fall accidents can claim a victim's mobility and require a long, difficult recovery.
Victims will have to keep a positive attitude as they heal, but there are a few worries our attorneys never want to see victims face alone:
- Injured victims struggling with medical debt while business and property owners do nothing.
- Injured victims going without paychecks while they can’t work and falling behind with their normal monthly bills, like rent and car payments.
In slip-and-fall cases, these hardships are 100% the responsibility of careless business and property owners.
Maison Law Accident & Injury Lawyers of Bakersfield offers a free, no-obligation consultation for all accident victims in Kern County.
It’s a chance to help determine who is to blame and to find out how to hold those at fault and their insurance companies fully accountable.
How Do I Know When to Call a Slip-And-Fall Attorney?
If you take a fall in a business or a public place and you are left with a serious injury, it’s a good idea to speak to a Bakersfield slip-and-fall accident lawyer about your options. A serious injury may include a broken bone, a hip or knee injury, or head trauma. A business or public place may include a grocery store, a mall, a public park, or an apartment complex.
The owners and operators of these locations are liable under California law for the safety of visitors, but they may have lawyers of their own ready to try to pin the blame on you. A commercial insurance company may also downplay how badly you are hurt, so they can provide you with less in compensation.
Your attorney fights back on your behalf, investigating your accident and securing evidence that keeps the facts from changing. The experience of a great attorney often means you’ll be getting much more for your injury than if you decide to handle your claim yourself.
Common Slip-And-Fall Accident Dangers Around Bakersfield
In legal terms, a slip-and-fall accident occurs when a property owner fails to remove, fix, or clean up a hazard that causes someone to fall. It might involve a landlord putting off fixing a rotting stairwell on a rental property and someone taking a devastating tumble.
The culprit might be a broken jar on a store aisle that created a puddle, taking someone’s foot out from under them. It may be a customer spilling a soft drink as they shop that creates a slippery spot that should have been spotted and mopped. The presence of a “wet floor” sign doesn’t excuse businesses from all liability.
It could be an object left on the steps of an escalator that causes harm. It might be a pothole left unrepaired in a business’s parking lot that sends someone into a trip-and-fall to land on a knee cap.
Victims may be in a parking garage or a pubic park when debris sends them falling forward. They may catch themselves with their arms, only to fracture a wrist in the process. This would involve liability for City departments that operate parking garages and parks like Truxton Park. City, county, and state governments can absolutely be held responsible.
Who is Responsible for a Slip-and-Fall Accident in California?
Businesses and property management companies in Bakersfield are just there to take your money or your rent payment.
Under premises liability laws, business owners and property owners are responsible for your safety. Retail chains like Walmart must protect you as you park, walk across a parking lot, and stroll through the store. Landlords must protect you from fall dangers along walkways and on stairs, even around pools.
When they don’t show this basic care to remove debris and clean up wet floors and cement, they are liable for any accidents that occur. They’ll try to shift the blame in an accident and even question how bad your injury is, but a lawyer can be an effective safeguard to make sure the details of what happened can’t be twisted.
The Tactics Used by Insurance Companies to Escape Blame for Slip-And-Falls
Premises liability laws in our state put the finger of blame firmly on the business owner or property owner. However, instead of providing for victims as they get expensive medical care and must miss work, owners and corporate chains can rely on their own lawyers and insurance providers to help them escape fault.
The danger beyond the accident itself is when careless business owners try to stick the victim with all the recovery expenses.
They can try to avoid liability with these tactics and others:
- Claim the fall victim was simply clumsy – Insurance adjusters definitely look for ways to blame your fall on you. Your Maison Law Accident & Injury Lawyers representative fights to make sure you don’t receive the blame for a negligent store owner.
- Claim the fall victim wasn’t paying attention – Corporate lawyers may try to say that you were looking at a cellphone or not watching where you were going. It’s a weak argument when business owners attempt to imply that you should have been able to avoid the hazard they created.
- Claim the fall victim was wearing old shoes – Insurance adjusters even try to blame people’s sneakers for a fall. They’ll say the tread was too worn, and that caused your tumble. Don’t accept this treatment. It’s a good idea to save the shoes you were wearing in an accident and not wear them again. Your attorney will be using them as great visual evidence for your case.
- Claim the victim was in an off-limits area – This one is fairly easy to refute. Owners and operators have a duty to keep people out of dangerous areas. They must post signs, put up caution-tape, and even physically block entrances to off-limits areas.
- Claim they had no knowledge of the accident – This has little bearing on the case. Owners are liable for accidents even if they find out about them later. However, victims should always notify a manager or owner at the scene right after a fall. The owners will usually create an incident report that will serve as evidence for your case.
Your Bakersfield trip-and-fall accident lawyer would get aggressive with insurers to make sure you weren’t blamed unfairly.
Can I Receive Support If I Was Partially At Fault for My Fall?
In some cases, victims are found partially to blame for falling, but that doesn’t mean they can’t ask a business owner for support. In California, a fall victim and a property owner can share blame in a slip-and-fall.
A slip-and-fall victim may be assigned a percentage of the fault, but the store might be assigned the remaining blame. Perhaps the victim was texting at the time of the fall, but the retail chain had also left a rolled-up rug on the ground to create a tripping hazard.
The victim could still win an injury settlement, but it would just be reduced by the percentage of blame the victim had to absorb. Of course, a skilled lawyer would be fighting to keep your percentage of blame as low as possible. And if you really deserved none of the fault in your fall, your lawyer would build a strong case showing who was really responsible.
What Can I Receive in a Slip-and-Fall Settlement Claim?
The amount on your slip-and-fall settlement check will be determined largely by how high your medical bills go and how many paychecks you miss while in recovery. The total of these two damages would make up a big part of your award.
But your lawyer would be asking for support on your behalf for other, non-economic damages that many fall victims face.
These are just a few of the things that would only increase the value of a settlement:
- Support to cover all of your current medical bills, your physical therapy costs, and all medical equipment, and those costs expected in the future.
- Support for a lifetime if your injuries result in a permanent disability.
- Support for the hip, knee, back, or neck pain you experience and that you may suffer with for months or years.
- Support for the emotional trauma you experience after a scary fall and a difficult recovery. This can include the loss of enjoyment of life, which you may have to cope with if you must be off your feet. You may have to give up hobbies you love and participation in family activities.
- Support to replace the job income and benefits you have to go without while you are in injury recovery.
- Support to cover the costs of travel to make doctor’s appointments and to see out-of-town specialists. An escalating cost if you are in a wheelchair or on crutches.
Contact a Slip-and-Fall Accident Attorney Who Backs Your Claim with Evidence and Fights to Earn You More
You can wait up to two years to file an accident claim. That’s the statute of limitations in California. But don’t wait months or years to act. Waiting can mean evidence gets lost and witnesses become harder to find. Surveillance video can be erased after a few weeks. Go over your case with a skilled attorney as soon as you can.
If you have a serious injury, and a negligent owner contributed to your fall, contact Maison Law Accident & Injury Lawyers of Bakersfield to schedule a free consultation. It’s a confidential, no-obligation review of your case with a real trip-and-fall accident lawyer.
If you need our help, there are no worries about how you’ll pay a lawyer. We will sign a contingency agreement with you when you officially hire us. It means we cover all upfront case costs. We also don’t earn anything unless we win your case for you. Then our fee comes out of the settlement money that an insurance company must pay out to you and your family.