Slip and Fall Attorney in Nashville

The personal injury attorney assigned to your case by Morgan and Morgan needs the answers to several questions during your free case evaluation. One of the first questions to answer involves discovering where you slipped and fell. Although you can slip and fall at just about any type of business, the following venues experience a higher percentage of slip and fall incidents than other venues.

Convenience Store

Does it feel like every time you walk into a convenience store, everybody inside the venue is on a mission to get in and out as quickly as possible? The frenetic pace of the business that comes and goes at a convenience store is just one reason why this venue experiences one of the most frequent rates of slip and fall incidents. Another contributing factor is the large beverage area typically located at a prominent location in a store. Spilled beverages from customer cups or the central dispensing unit play a huge role in causing slip and fall incidents.

Convenience store operators owe customers a duty of care to clean up spilled beverages as soon as an employee notices the safety hazard.

Restaurants

As another type of business where the action is fast and furious, a restaurant presents several opportunities for a customer to slip and fall. The primary reason why restaurant operators require an employee to check on the status of the restrooms concerns the pooling of water that falls from the sink area. Ice bins located near a bar and service stations can leak water onto the floor, which poses a significant safety hazard. Grease from the kitchen transferred by foot into the dining room also can cause a slip and fall incident. Because of the fast pace operation, restaurant operators must constantly monitor the facility to prevent potential slip and fall hazards.

Arenas/Stadiums

From 19,000 concertgoers packed into Bridgestone Arena to more than 69,000 fans cheering on the Tennessee Titans at Nissan Stadium, slip and fall incidents are a common personal injury case. Dozens of people filing into a restroom at the same time creates quite a slick mess after the fans leave. Slip and fall incidents also frequently occur at concession stands where spilling beverages leave safety hazards at multiple locations at the same time. Venue management is responsible for preventing slip and fall incidents by setting up a tightly coordinated plan not only to respond to potential safety hazards but also to prevent slip and fall incidents from unfolding as much as possible.

You have two ways to receive compensation to recover the financial losses that are associated with a slip and fall incident. With the help of a Nashville personal injury lawyer, you file an insurance claim to request compensation. The second way to recover financial losses involves filing a civil lawsuit that seeks monetary damages. However, to file a successful personal injury lawsuit, your attorney must prove the presence of the four elements that constitute negligence.

Duty of Care

As the easiest element of negligence to prove, duty of care represents a legal doctrine that makes business owners responsible for ensuring the safety of everyone that enters a publicly accessible property. For example, the owner of a convenience store owes you a duty of care to prevent you from slipping and falling while in the store or outside on the convenience store’s parking lot.

Breaching the Duty of Care Doctrine

After establishing the plaintiff owed you a duty of care, the next element of negligence to prove involves establishing that one or more negligent acts caused you harm. Using our convenience store example, if you slipped and fell on a slick surface where there was not a Wet Floor sign to warn you of the imminent danger, then the store has breached the duty of care doctrine.

Causation

Causation is a legal principle that connects a negligent act with your injuries. The plaintiff’s attorney might claim you sustained your injuries from another event. If you slipped and fell at a convenience store and the incident caused a fractured wrist, the other party’s lawyer might try to argue that you sustained the injury by falling from a ladder. Referring to the formal incident report should help you prove the third element of negligence.

Financial Losses

The last element to prove negligence involves showing the judge hearing your case that your injuries generated financial losses. Copies of medical bills provide the physical evidence you need to demonstrate the extent of your financial losses. If you missed work because of your injuries, copies of bank records and timekeeping records verify that you lost wages because of the slip and fall incident.

The immediate aftermath of a slip and fall incident can leave you dazed enough to cause considerable confusion. Nonetheless, you must shake off the initial trauma of slipping and falling to the floor or ground and take swift action by following a few steps.

Receive Medical Attention

If you do not get medical care following a slip and fall incident, the insurance company processing your claim might argue that you did not sustain serious enough injuries to warrant compensation. Getting medical care provides you with the results of diagnostic tests, as well as a detailed description of treatment programs and physical therapy sessions. Even if you feel healthy enough to remain at the venue where you slipped and fell, you should eventually get checked out to ensure you have not developed delayed symptoms. 

Inform Management

A member of the management team needs to learn of the slip and fall incident to complete a formal report of which your Nashville slip and fall lawyer receives a copy. The incident report should include the date and time of the slip and fall incident, as well as a thorough explanation of what transpired before, during, and after the incident. You might have to alert a staff member to communicate what happened to a manager or if you sustained a serious injury, someone you trust should notify a member of the management team.

Contact a Nashville Slip and Fall Lawyer From Morgan and Morgan

Before you report the slip and fall incident to your insurance company, you should meet with one of the experienced personal injury attorneys at Morgan and Morgan. Insurance companies love to process claims filed by policyholders that do not retain legal representation. Without the legal support of a Nashville slip and fall lawyer, the insurance company processing your claim might deny it or approve a value for compensation that falls way below what you deserve.

The day of the slip and fall incident also is the day when the clock starts clicking on the filing of a civil lawsuit that seeks monetary damages. Tennessee law grants plaintiffs just one year to take legal action, which means you should act with a sense of urgency to recover the financial losses produced by the slip and fall incident. Another reason to act swiftly is to help your Nashville slip and fall lawyer to receive the most accurate accounts provided by witnesses.

Your attorney asks for three types of compensation. You have the right to request compensation to cover all tangible expenses, such as lost wages, medical bills, and property damage. In addition to recovering tangible expenses, you also have the right to request compensation for pain and suffering, such as the anxiety that often develops after an event that caused you considerable harm. The judge also might award you punitive damages to penalize the plaintiff for committing one or more acts of negligence.

Act with a sense of urgency by scheduling a free case evaluation and seeking help from a Nashville slip and fall lawyer from Morgan and Morgan.