FAQs about slip-and-fall personal injury lawsuits

What should I do after experiencing a slip-and-fall?

The fresher the details are in your memory when you complain, the more accurate a conclusion the court can draw about the event. There are a few actions to consider for keeping memories clear:

  • Photography was invented to make details easier to recall, so take advantage of that if possible. Try to get close-up shots of the spot where you fell, objects you ran into, etc.
  • Carefully store the shoes and clothes you had on at the time for a clearer image of the impact.
  • If possible, alert the location’s management right away.
  • Seek contact info from anyone who was or might’ve been around you at the time of the event.

Doing these things will help the court see what you saw when you were injured.

If the person responsible is someone close to me, do I have to request compensation from them personally?

Not necessarily. If you win in court, you can get your cash from the person’s insurer. Almost every property, personal and public alike, is insured to guarantee the owner remains economically secure should anything happen to it.

So if a loved one has caused you pain, there shouldn’t have to be hard feelings. Their services can right the wrong, giving both of you a win.

Should I delay medical treatment until I’ve met with a lawyer?

You really should seek medical help immediately. Sometimes an injury that looks minor can become much worse within a few short hours. Try to get service from an ER or at least your regular physician. The sooner you’re tended to, the sooner you can return back to normal health.

What is informed consent? How can it affect your medical malpractice case?

To some extent, most opinions are in some way controversial; some agree with it, others don’t. You can see crystal-clear evidence of that throughout the media, the political world, and even between the closest of relatives and friends…generally.

There’s usually a few reasons to support an idea as well as some not to. In order to ensure both sides win, doctors will usually check with a patient before going through with any treatment they believe is the best course of action for addressing the problem.

When they have a certain strategy in mind, the doctor will explain in extensive detail how the performance is accomplished and how it can affect that patient positively and negatively. Then the client, provided with pros and cons to weigh against each other, can choose to accept or decline the proposed action.

Should they accept, they are typically obligated to sign a formal document confirming their understanding of what they’ll experience and the risks involved.

As long as your condition does not call for urgent action and you are mentally healthy enough to be reasonable, law requires that your physician checks with you before executing a treatment. If you’re in one of the above two situations, it’s considered too time-consuming and too life-threatening for them to do so. If you’re in the latter situation, have a mentally stronger person there with you to handle the decision if possible.

Can you sue your doctor for failure to diagnose?

When a doctor is not completely honest in their description of a situation, the patient is at rapidly increased risk. This is especially serious, given the fact that the job of these professionals is to protect the health of their fellow citizens.

The more that’s edited out, the more likely the patient is to be taken by heart-attack-like surprise later. Negligence to disclose details has resulted in multiple aggravated cases of organ cancers, heart attacks, and even meningitis in children. Often, this negligence has even been fatal.

How are you supposed to know what to expect without a warning, right? So if you chose to put your confidence in a particular physician to help you get better and they didn’t handle you with proper care, they should probably be penalized.

Examples of illegal medical negligence may include:

  1. Failure to ask certain questions.
  2. Failure to deliver test results to the appropriate lab.
  3. Using a false name for your condition.
  4. Insisting the condition is relatively minor or non-existent.

You might not be able to win against them if:

  1. Any problem you had going into the appointment was extremely likely to linger even long after treatment.
  2. Your service came from a professional who does not specialize in the body area affected.
  3. You were not completely honest with your physician.
  4. The condition is relatively vague.

What are injury attorneys? Do I need one?

You’re barely even in the aftermath of your agonizing injury when documents and demands start flooding your mailbox. Medical insurance and police are mercilessly nagging on you, saying you better hurry up and give them answers and money.

Do they not understand that you can barely even walk around without a heavy ache in your body? Do they not understand that you’re already on a rapid slope to poverty as it is? Apparently, they don’t. This might call for an injury attorney.

A personal injury attorney could be the perfect lifeline if you’re suffering an injury from:

  1. Slipping.
  2. A vehicle collision.
  3. A defective product.
  4. A messed-up or non-consensual medical service.
  5. Chemical poisoning.

If one of these things happened to you and there wasn’t anything you could’ve done to prevent it, this professional could be your “get out of debt free” card. It may be your only chance to avoid replicating your wage losses and to walk away from the incident financially unscathed.

Give them all the details—verbal and visual—you can, and they’ll organize them in the most telling way they can. Defense will try their best to convince the court you brought the problem on yourself in at least some minor way, but you can expect your lawyer to always have a ready comeback and point out how the real story contradicts what they’ve just heard.

Different types of injury attorneys

If you get an injury that leaves you heavily damaged and is too hard for you to heal all on your own, you most likely will be expected to pay a fortune to recover. A significant injury can mean a drastic loss of money that took so long to get into your pocket in the first place. Why put up with that when you know you couldn’t really avoid getting hurt? Why let yourself be punished for a problem caused by someone else? Here are a few examples of incidents that you might want a personal injury lawyer for:

  • Mesothelioma. Asbestos is a group of silicate minerals that can wander throughout the air and cause painful problems with all internal organs. 2,000-3,000 people a year are coming down with this cancer. It’s not as avoidable as you may assume, because these minerals are used to make most products and buildings. Even long after a construction or manufacturing job is complete, the finished building or product can have one mineral or another wandering around it.
  • Medical malpractice. Approximately 400,000 people die annually because of a doctor’s unnecessary treatment, performance mistakes, or incorrect prescriptions. One time or another, a doctor has persuaded a patient to agree to a certain service for healing, but then done something very different than described. Some physicians have held back vital information about patients’ issues, or poisoned clients with too much medicine.
  • Premises liability. A lot of times, you have to pass by countless buildings to get someplace important. Sometimes you have to linger awhile in one place on your way to another. In a situation like that, lots of people have ended up getting severely hurt because their surroundings were hazardous. Usually, it happens because they couldn’t see a problem or they weren’t fairly warned prior.