McLean Slip and Fall Lawyer

Comedic though they may be in movies and cartoons, slips and falls in the real world are deceptively dangerous incidents that can—and often do—lead to serious injuries. Across the United States, up to eight million visits to the emergency room each year can be attributed to accidental falls, and a significant portion of those stem from someone slipping or tripping over a hazard on someone else’s property.

If you were hurt in a fall because someone else failed to care for their land appropriately, you may have a cause of civil action that a McLean slip and fall lawyer could help you pursue. However, these cases are rarely simple to get started and even hard to achieve a successful outcome with, so retaining a knowledgeable personal injury attorney’s assistance is often crucial to boosting your odds of success.

How Negligence Could Lead to Slipping and Tripping Accidents

Most of the time, personal injury claims involving slips or trips and falls fall under premises liability law rather than traditional negligence law, which means these cases work a little bit differently from other injury claims. The most important thing for prospective plaintiffs to understand is that, under premises liability law, property owners and managers are not always automatically liable for accidents that happen on their land.

Instead, property owners owe different “duties of care”—implicit legal responsibilities to act reasonably and keep others safe from avoidable harm—to different types of visitors. For example, landowners in Virginia generally have no duty whatsoever to keep trespassers safe from potentially dangerous conditions on their property. Conversely, they have some responsibility to licensees like contractors lawfully on their land for their own financial benefit, and even more responsibility to protect invitees lawfully visiting for the owner’s financial benefit.

In addition to proving that a property owner or manager owed them a duty of care, a plaintiff must also prove that the defendant(s) named in their claim breached that duty by failing to address a hazardous condition they did know about or should have known about—for instance, by not cleaning up a spill in an aisle even after it had been there for several hours. A McLean trip and fall attorney could provide further guidance about what situations might give rise to litigation and what options for recovery could be available as a result.

Establishing Fault for Specific Recoverable Losses

After proving a property owner was liable for their injuries, the final step in the litigation process that a slip and fall plaintiff must complete is demonstrating that they suffered specific compensable losses as a direct consequence of the defendant’s negligence. These losses can be objective or subjective—economic or non-economic—in nature, and they can include both losses that have already happened and losses that will very likely happen in the future due to the incident in question.

Recoverable damages that a slip and fall lawyer in McLean could help pursue may include:

• Medical expenses
• Physical pain and suffering
• Lost work income and/or earning capacity
• Lost consortium
• Personal property damage
• Lost enjoyment of life

However, as per Code of Virginia §8.01-243, claimants generally have a maximum of two years after their accident occurs in which to start pursuing litigation, regardless of how substantial or long-lasting their damages are.

Consider Working with a McLean Slip and Fall Attorney

Recovering financially after a slip and fall accident can be complicated even if you have strong evidence that a property owner’s neglect caused your injuries. There are numerous rules and regulations for claims like this that could sidetrack your pursuit of compensation, and you will likely face strong opposition from both insurance providers and the defense counsel retained by the defendant(s) in your claim.

For these reasons and many more, hiring a knowledgeable McLean slip and fall lawyer may be your best and only way of effectively protecting your rights in this kind of situation. Call today for a consultation.