What Factors Determine Slip and Fall Settlements
Sometimes, accidents occur when you’re minding your own business. This might be due to when things are wet, when you trip over items, or whatever it is. But, if you’re in a specific place where it isn’t delineated, you might be liable to a claim for the injuries.
When it comes to slip and fall settlements, there’s a lot of factors such as liability, negligence, and others, and here, we’ll go over the primary factors that go into slip and fall settlements.
Negligence
Negligence by definition is not paying attention or caring about the safety of others like how reasonable people normally would.
For example, if there is a pothole that’s not being fixed, or a sidewalk that’s messed up, that’s a sign of negligence.
The key part of this is whether or not a person would be able to see the condition as a dangerous thing. If not, then it is negligence of the property owner.
However, if there is signage and warnings and such, then it isn’t a slip and fall case. But, if the lighting is bad, you can’t see much, not much policy on it, or other factors, then yes, the responsibility does fall on the business.
Liability
Liability is essentially the responsibility for who pays for the injury in the location where it occurs. This can be the owner if it’s a slip and fall case, or the person themselves if it’s not, and essentially, it’s who the person responsible for this.
Freedom from Fault
This occurs when there might be conditions that created this issue, so the plaintiff needs to be in this case free from guilt in order to make the other person take responsibility for the injury.
If the person who got hurt is part of the problem in any way, then the claim immediately falls onto them, and not the owner of the property.
In most cases, states that have this in place won’t give settlement to those who made the claim if there is any way to blame this on the other person.
Those states which use what’s called comparative negligent laws will give compensation when there is partial negligence, where both parties are responsible so both get awarded in this case. However, the settlement is much less because of this.
Figuring out who is liable is through looking at the scene, seeing what the plaintiff got into, and if there was any warning that they were at risk and they caused the injury.
If for example the injury occurs in a place where the plaintiff wasn’t supposed to go, like a construction site, or they didn’t wear hard hats and ignored warnings, then that’s going to fall on them.
How are You Compensated?
Typically in these cases, you get settlement for one of three different areas, such as:
- Losing companionship
- Mental anguish
- Suffering and pain
Then of course, you’re compensated for the following:
- The bills associated with it
- Fees for the attorney
- Costs of the medical services to get back to the battery
- Bills and necessities while you’re not working
Typically, the injuries involve the following: neck and back, head, pelvic injuries, and ligaments and tendons that are torn.
If any of these happen, you can file a claim, and the settlement, if you win, does fall into one of these major areas.
But if you’re not sure whether or not your claim is valid, the best thing for you to do is to go talk to an attorney and figure out if you can be compensated.
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