Rome Slip and Fall Lawyer
Slip and fall accidents happen every day. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 734,000 victims of falls were admitted to the hospital in 2013 alone. In 2015, approximately 37,757 deaths resulted from unintentional falls.
If you or a loved one were hurt in a slip and fall accident, contact a Rome slip and fall lawyer to discuss your case. A skilled personal injury attorney could work with you to figure out what injuries and losses you could get money for and how best to seek compensation for them in court.
Elements of Negligence Law
Slip and fall lawsuits are generally filed under negligence law. In a legal sense, “negligence” occurs when a person or business fails to act reasonably and causes someone else to be hurt as a result.
If an injured person can prove that their injury was caused by someone else’s negligence, they may be able to seek monetary compensation in civil court to pay for any costs and losses related to that injury. Typically, though, injured people—along with their Rome slip and fall lawyer—must prove the four elements of negligence in court in order to receive any money.
Duty of Care
Proving a duty of care is the first step to proving negligence by someone else. Basically, a duty of care is the duty a person has to act reasonably and ensure other people are not hurt because of something they do or fail to do — or, in the case of slip and fall accidents, something they should have fixed on their property.
This element of negligence is centered around foreseeable of harm to others. For instance, a property owner has a duty of care to take care of their property the same way anyone else under the same or similar circumstances. Depending on the situation, this could include cleaning up spills quickly, shoveling snow and ice off a sidewalk, or simply roping off a hazard they cannot fix immediately.
Breach of Duty
A person or business breaches—or breaks—their duty of care if they fail to live up to a reasonable standard of safe behavior. For instance, if a customer tells a store owner about a spill that needs to be cleaned up, but the owner does nothing to fix this problem, they could be held liable if another customer slips on the spill and gets hurt. This would qualify as a breach because the owner knew about the problem and could reasonably expect that someone might slip on the wet floor.
Causation
Causation is the direct connection between a breach of duty and the harm that was caused. To show how important this connection can be, imagine if someone slipped and fell in a store, but then suffered a heart attack due to a bad medication they were taking. Are the two situations related? Would the heart attack still have happened if that person had not slipped and fallen? These are questions that a slip and fall lawyer in Rome could help to answer.
Recovering Damages Following a Slip and Fall
Finally, to recover money from a slip and fall lawsuit, an injured victim must suffer an actual physical injury. This injury can be just about anything—including sprains, strains, contusions, soft tissue tears, broken bones, slipped discs, and more—but it has to be physical in nature. Property damage and intangible losses like pain and suffering can be incorporated into a settlement demand, but only a physical injury can actually stand as grounds to file suit in the first place.
Reach Out to a Rome Slip and Fall Attorney for More Information
Official Code of Georgia §9-3-33 requires that any lawsuit for a slip and fall be filed within two years of the accident. Failing to file suit within this period could result in your claim being rejected by the court, which means you could end up receiving no money at all.
A Rome slip and fall lawyer could work with you to discuss your claim, evaluate your injuries, and recover as much compensation as possible for your loss. If you are interested in learning more about your claim and how you could obtain justice for yourself, call today to schedule a consultation.
