St. Louis Slip and Fall Attorney
St. Louis slip and fall accidents can be highly damaging, both to the physical well-being of the victim and their financial stability. Often, slip and fall accidents can leave the victims maimed or temporarily wounded, reducing their earning ability when they need to pay expensive medical bills.
If you’ve been a victim of a slip and fall accident, you can demand maximum compensation from the defendant for the injury damages that they have caused. Missouri’s law entitles the victims of slip and fall accidents to compensation for their damages. You can file for a slip and fall claim against the defendant’s insurance company and recover the money spent on the medical bills and lost wages.
Before you consider filing for a fall injury claim, you need to hire an experienced slip and fall lawyer to help you understand the necessary legal procedures. Hipskind & Mcaninch LLC is a law firm in St Louis that can recover compensation for the serious injuries you suffered in a slip and fall accident.
What Is A Slip And Fall Accident?
Slip and fall accidents occur when someone slips on someone else’s property and gets injured. The premises liability law covers this kind of accident, as they happen on the premises of the negligent party.
According to the law, property owners are responsible for the upkeep of their properties. If somebody gets injured due to a dangerous condition on the property, it will be the property owner who is liable for failing to fulfill their duty of care to the fall accident victim.
Some of the most common injuries associated with St. Louis slip and fall accidents due to a dangerous condition on the property are:
- Broken bones
- Neck injuries
- Back injuries
- Spinal cord injuries
- Internal injuries
- Head and brain injuries
However, it can be difficult to prove negligence in slip and fall accidents. The personal injury attorneys of the defendant would assert that it was your inattentiveness that led to the accident when it was poor property conditions. However, you could prove the defendant’s negligence with the help of a personal injury attorney.
If you’ve sustained severe injuries due to a slip and fall accident and want to file a fall claim against the negligent property owner, contact the slip and fall lawyers Hipskind & Mcaninch LLC for legal advice and representation today. We have years of experience fighting premises liability cases and have a 99% success rate. We have recovered millions in the personal injury cases that we’ve fought.
Schedule a free consultation with an experienced slip and fall lawyer to learn more about your rights and options in your premises liability case.
What Is Premises Liability?
In personal injury cases, you might encounter the term premises liability law. This law is an umbrella legal concept covering several property-related slip and fall accidents. According to the law, property owners are expected to maintain safe property conditions. Their actions need to be motivated by a duty of reasonable care to visitors, which holds a property owner responsible for any mishap that happens to visitors on the property.
A property owner is responsible for your personal injury if:
- They failed to maintain safe property conditions.
- They failed to warn you about the dangerous conditions of their property.
- They failed to put up required warning signs to keep you safe.
- They ignored dangerous objects and circumstances that led to your slip and fall injury.
- They failed to put proper security measures in place.
All these conditions are signs of negligence and inattentiveness on the property owner’s part. However, proving that the property owner was negligent is easier said than done. It certainly cannot be done by an individual who has no experience in personal injury and slip and fall law.
When insurers are contacted by law firms representing victims of fall injuries, the adjuster immediately understands that they will not be able to simply work towards the absolute lowest settlement in order to resolve the case against the property owner while protecting their financial interests.
A fall injury attorney at Hipskind & Mcaninch LLC can help you navigate the premises liability law and use it to protect your interests after such an accident. We have fought several St. Louis slip and fall accident cases and have an impeccable track record of winning them. If you want to receive fair compensation for your slip and fall injuries, schedule a free consultation with us today so we can begin working right away.
How Much is a St. Louis Slip And Fall Accident Case Worth?
Each slip and fall accident is unique due to several variables, including how many injuries you sustained, the cause of the accident, whether your inattentiveness played a role in the accident or not, and more. You can’t calculate your slip and fall accident’s worth through a simple formula, as it is more complex than that.
If you want to know the value of your damages, you need to contact a fall accident attorney for a free case evaluation. An experienced personal injury attorney will calculate your case’s value by taking the following factors into account:
- The severity of your fall accident injuries
- Whether the injury is short-term or long-term
- Whether the injury caused any permanent damage
- Whether you would require long-term medical care to get back on your feet
- Medical bills, lost wages, and potential loss of wages
- If the injury affects your future and your earning capabilities
To have your case evaluated, contact Hipskind & Mcaninch LLC today to schedule your free consultation. We are a personal injury law firm in St. Louis that can provide you with expert legal advice and legal representation in a court of law. The impacts that will be included in the calculation of your damages are:
- Medical bills and other medical expenses
- Lost wages
- Potential loss of wages
- Loss of wage-earning capabilities
- Compensation for pain and suffering stemming from things like spinal cord injuries or emotional anguish
Frequently Asked Questions About Slip and Fall Accidents
The following are a few of the many different questions that arise from a personal injury case like a premises liability issue. Our legal team offers a free consultation where we can provide formal legal advice about your fall injury case. If you have suffered injuries caused by a hazard that a property owner knew about, we will be able to help you make sense of your options.
The insurance company’s efforts would be to pin the blame of the slip and fall accident on fall injury victims. In a slip and fall case, insurance companies will use comparative fault in their defense to pin as much liability on fall accident victims as possible.
According to this doctrine, you can pursue compensation even if you were 99% at fault for your accident. Therefore, regardless of the circumstances that led to your accident on someone else’s property, you would receive at least 1% of the compensation. This means the insurance company will try to prove negligence that holds you partly or completely responsible for the accident, and thus, you don’t deserve full compensation.
Accident victims have to hold a negligent property owner accountable by giving evidence of dangerous conditions of the property that posed a huge risk to any visitor and ultimately caused a victim to suffer injuries. Moreover, you need to prove that the owner did not take any action to fix the hazardous property condition before the accident occurred, therefore further proving their premises liability for your medical expenses and any other damages.
While you can file a slip and fall lawsuit on your own, it’s always best to consult a St. Louis slip and fall attorney to help you pursue your legal options. Here is how a St. Louis personal injury attorney is able to help you receive a fair settlement for your serious injuries:
Legal representation
You cannot effectively negotiate with the insurance company or present your case in front of a judge or a jury without any knowledge of the state’s personal injury laws. An experienced personal injury lawyer knows how things can unfold within the office of insurance companies and the courtrooms and is prepared for the questions that might be thrown at them.
They also know how to effectively use the state and federal laws to represent you and get you maximum compensation. Therefore, it’s always best to have a slip and fall attorney do the talking if you choose to file a lawsuit. Otherwise, you may end up losing a large portion of compensation.
Gathering Evidence
Providing the insurance companies or the court with solid evidence is important if you want to stand any chance of winning fair compensation. If you’ve suffered severe injuries, chances are you won’t be able to collect the necessary evidence.
A slip and fall lawyer would be able to collect important evidence such as footage of the accident, statements from witnesses, pictures and videos of your injury and the scene of the accident, photos of hazardous property conditions, statements of doctors and physicians, and so on.
Your fall injury lawyer will also organize the evidence to be presented to the court. All of this can prove extremely difficult if you deal with everything on your own. If you require an adept slip and fall lawyer to help you, call Hipskind & Mcaninch LLC and schedule a free consultation with us to get started.
If you have the right legal guidance, it’s very simple to sue for a slip and fall accident. It’s all about the experience of the slip and fall attorney you choose to fight your case. Although, before you choose litigation, ask your lawyer to educate you on what a slip and fall lawsuit entails, so you know exactly what to expect as you move forward with your case to recover damages related to your fall injuries.
Without having an experienced slip and fall accident lawyer go over the many details of your case, it is impossible to say with any certainty how much you should be seeking following a premises liability accident, whether through the Missouri courts or in direct settlement negotiations with your slip and fall attorneys representing your case.
What is certain is that the insurance company is focused on settling your case for as little as possible. By working with slip and fall attorneys, you can count on your lawyer’s experience and legal understanding as they work to reach a fair and reasonable agreement on your behalf — or they prepare to file a lawsuit to recover the money they believe you are truly owed.
Slip and fall attorneys have years of experience calculating a wide range of damages, including the complex and abstract area of non-economic damages. Trying to place a dollar value on something as subjective and abstract as “pain and suffering” can be overwhelming for the inexperienced, and insurance companies capitalize on this fact as they work aggressively to shut down any areas of a claim that the claimant cannot vigorously defend.
When working with slip and fall attorneys, you will benefit from their ability to quantify these types of damages before applying specific calculation methods that are well-known to fall lawyers. Things like the length of time after your accident that you continue to suffer from pain, as well as the widespread impact that this suffering will have on your life moving forward, are all factors that slip and fall lawyers work to include in their calculations to ensure they are seeking the appropriate amount for their clients.
For every accident, the state of Missouri imposes a statute of limitations that gives the injured party a time limit within which they need to file a personal injury claim or a personal injury lawsuit. The statute of limitations for a slip and fall case in Missouri is five years. If you fail to file a lawsuit before the five years lapse, then you would lose your chance to demand compensation from the defendant.
Ideally, if you wish to file a slip and fall claim against the at-fault party, you need to do it as soon as the accident occurs. A long delay can severely dent your chances of winning a fair settlement. Evidence can be affected by waiting too long to file a claim or lawsuit. It’s simple enough to gather important bits of proof at the time of the accident. However, if you wait too long, the hazardous condition that caused your accident could be repaired or removed.
If you want to know how to proceed with the fall claims or lawsuits stemming from slip and fall accidents, call Hipskind & Mcaninch LLC now to request a free case evaluation. We will educate you on the whole procedure and advise you on the best course of action following a premises liability accident caused by a dangerous condition that property owners must be held accountable for.