Slip And Fall Lawyer

Should There Be a Cap on Slip and Fall Awards?

by Slip and Fall

Slip And Fall Lawyer

Each year, thousands of people are injured in slip and fall accidents. Sometimes, injuries sustained from these accidents can be severe, particularly in instances where an individual has preexisting medical problems, say in his or her hip. In certain slip and fall cases, the damages sustained can be staggering.

 

Because slip and fall cases can result in such serious injuries, lawsuit payouts following these cases can rack up some high sums. It’s not uncommon to see slip and fallawardsreach six figures, or even rise to the millions.

 

In one case, Marriott International was ordered to award $1.2 million for injuries sustained by one of its hotel guests. In this case, the court had to consider not only the case of the guest’s shattered ankle and the two surgeries that followed the fall, but also the arthritis that had developed in the ankle, the fact that the woman now walks with a limp, and countless other problems that tie in with emotional and physical suffering. Marriott International plans to appeal the $1.2 million verdict.

 

When payout amounts get so high, it’s common for major companies to argue and try to appeal these verdicts. During those appeal cases, the question inevitably arises: Should there be a cap on slip and fall awards?

 

What Would a Slip and Fall Cap Mean?

 

To individuals who sustain injuries following a fall, high slip and fall payouts seem fair. For defendants, though, high payouts are rarely as appealing, especially when the award numbers climb into the multiple thousands or millions.

 

When award prices get this high, one of the first arguments that people jump to is that there should be a cap on these types of awards. In injury cases, this debate has been going on for years. Usually the cap people advocate for relates to the amount that can be paid towards “non-economic” damages (that is, damages that are difficult to put a price tag on, such as emotional trauma). In almost all cases, a cap would not apply to “economic damages” (namely, those that include set amounts, such as hospital bills).

 

In many states, non-economic caps are already in place. Usually, the cap is set somewhere around $250,000 to $500,000. This means that, regardless of the details of your claim and your level of suffering, you will never be awarded more than the set amount.

 

The Business Perspective

 

Injury Attorney

Aside from the obvious benefits that award caps would have for defendants in slip and fall cases, it has also been argued that limiting damage payouts can reduce liability insurance losses in the long term. Some say that capping non-economic damages means that insurance companies will not have to fork over large sums, which means they won’t be trying to recuperate the losses from citizens by increasing premiums.

 

It has also been argued that capping damage payouts would lessen medical expenses across the board. Advocates claim that damage caps would allow doctors to be less fearful of being sued, meaning that they would no longer need to practice so much “defensive” medicine. (“Defensive” medicine refers to the practices of ordering an excessive number of tests and procedures to effectively cover all possibilities and lessen the likelihood of a lawsuit.) If defensive medical practices decrease, the cost of health care would go down,as well.

 

Damage Caps: Who Do They Benefit?

 

Contrary to the findings noted above, information from a 2006 report from the Confessional Budget Office showed that,“Lower premiums alone would not cut overall health care costs.” According to this report, malpractice costsare, in fact,marginal when considered in light of the wider realm of health care spending, which means that lowering them would have very little impact on overall health care costs.

 

In the above article, Chris Mather, the Communications Director for the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, states, “There’s nothing to back up the correlation between the high cost of premiums the doctors pay for medical malpractice insurance and lawsuits. This is about the insurance company wanting to pay the least amount possible for injury. … The civil justice system, the courtroom, is [the victims’] last resort. It’s the last place they can go to get what they need.”

 

Since damage caps likely will have no significant effect on health care costs, it is very unlikely that you or anyone who files a slip and fall claim would see any benefit from these caps.On the contrary, damage caps would only work against you.

 

The Victims’ Perspective

 

Accident Attorney

First, caps could discourage slip and fall victims from filing lawsuits. Lawsuits can be exhausting and expensive, so if the possible award amount is not substantial enough, individuals with legitimate cases may choose not to go all the way.This is unfair, as all injury victims should be entitled to plead their case.

 

Furthermore, if an injured individual decides not to file a suit, the responsible parties will be let off the hook.Not be held accountable for their actions means they may continue to endanger others’ lives through their recklessness or negligence.

 

Lastly and most importantly, if you’re the party injured in a slip and fall accident, you might not get what is due to you.Every slip and fall case is different, and the legitimacy of your claim should not depend on a cap that was set in place by people who have no knowledge of you or your claim. Caps like these would essentially concede that your injuries and your accompanying emotional and physical suffering are worth no more than whatever pre-determined amount has been settled on as a cap.

 

You deserve more.

 

Victims of slip and fall cases are entitled to financial reparations for their pain and suffering . Calls for caps are essentially calls to sweep these claims under the rug, claiming that victims’ injuries are invalid or not worth adequate compensation. But you deserve to be treated with fairness and respect. If your injuries exceed the cap’s value, you should receive the total payment that you are justly entitled to.

 

 

Slip and Fall Attorney

“Help! I’ve Fallen and It’s All Your Fault!”

by Slip and Fall

Slip and Fall Attorney

We’ve all heard a story like this one before: a man walks into a department store with a banana peel, surreptitiously tosses it on the floor, then gets down on the ground and pretends to have seriously injured himself by slipping on it.

 

Of course, slipping on banana peels is mostly just a myth, but that’s beside the point. When most people think of injury lawsuits where someone hurts themselves at a business and tries to sue them for it, a version of this is what they imagine – scam artists out to earn a big payday by faking a problem and blaming someone else.

Why is this the image that we picture? Two reasons:

 

1)      Because the media loves stories that catch people in the act of doing something wrong. It’s a lot more entertaining watching a security video of someone pretending to slip and fall than it is learning that the teenager cleaning up at the local Walmart forgot to put up a wet floor sign.

2)      Because faking falls in order to get money from a lawsuit is a real problem that costs our country a lot of money.

 

How Big of a Problem Is Insurance Fraud for Falls?

 

By some estimates, fraudulent slip and fall claims cost around $2 billion each year in our country when litigation costs are factored in. But that’s just the beginning. According to the National Insurance Crime Bureau, slip and fall claims that they deemed “questionable” increased by 12% from 2010 to 2011. This news report from KXJB in North Dakota makes the problem sound even worse, saying that “suspicious” claims have gone up an astounding 57% since 2008!

 

The worst part, though, might be the belief that many faked incidents never even turn into claims since the scam artist in question goes directly to the business owner and cuts a deal for cash. Why would businesses agree to such an arrangement? Because they are afraid of the costs and bad publicity involved if the situation ends up going to court. And even if it is simply handled through their insurance, they believe it may end up costing them more by raising their premiums.

 

Personal Injury Attorney

The Case of Florida and Slip and Fall Reform

 

About a decade ago, the Florida Supreme Court presented a ruling on a personal injury liability case that essentially said businesses were responsible for hazards on their property even if they weren’t aware that those hazards existed. This led to a sharp increase in claims, as well as giving the state a reputation as an easy place to win money for slip and falls.

 

Naturally, businesses weren’t happy because this put the entire burden on them, and in 2010, the legislature created a new law. It required claimants to show that businesses either knew about the specific problem that caused their accident or that it was a hazard that occurred frequently enough that the company should have known and done something about it.

 

This was deemed a good compromise because it lessened the chance that a scammer could just come into a business and create the circumstances of their own accident, but it also left protections in for those who truly had suffered an injury that could have been prevented by the property owner. All they needed to do was provide evidence that the hazard that caused their injury was something that should have been dealt with.

 

Did it work? Well, that depends on who you talk to. Again looking at numbers from the NICB, Florida was second only to California from 2010 to 2011 in what they determined were “questionable” claims, beating out more populous states like Texas and New York. Even after reform, a lot of people were apparently still trying to scam their way to a big payout – at least according to statistics from the NICB. But statistics are a funny thing, and often there are two ways to look at them.

 

Are Slip and Fall Fakers Really That Big of a Problem?

 

The answer is an unfortunately complicated yes and no.

 

Yes, because it’s impossible to deny that something costing $2 billion each year is minor. Moreover, the bad publicity generated from these kinds of cases makes it that much tougher for people who legitimately suffer falls and deserve to be compensated for their pain and suffering.

 

Case-in-point: recently, a woman was awarded $10,000 after her apartment failed to clean away ice and snow, and she fell and seriously injured herself. Now that kind of money is nothing to sneeze at, but there’s a problem: the judge assessed the case before the trial and estimated that she should receive $65,000 to cover the cost of medical bills, litigation, and so on. The $10,000 she won doesn’t even cover the cost of going to trial!

 

But fakers are also, arguably, not that big of a problem when you look at the big picture from another angle. How so? According to the National Floor Safety Institute, only 3% of slip and fall claims are fraudulent. Some basic math tells us that means 97% of claims are real and valid and deserve compensation.

 

You’d never imagine that from all of the negative publicity, though. And you would also probably think that $2 billion dollars represents a huge portion of overall insurance fraud, when in fact it’s only about 5% of the $40 billion lost each year. The problem seems bigger than it is because we’re constantly being bombarded with stories about it.

 

What Needs to Be Done for Future Fall Cases

 

The trick in engaging in this type of reform is that you need to be careful to strike a balance. The Florida legislature was on the right track, but more probably need to be done. Businesses can’t be afraid that they’re going to be sued from the second they open their doors, but people who suffer from real injuries also can’t be so afraid to seek compensation that they simply back down. Depending on the severity of a fall, you can sustain damage that can haunt you for your entire life.

 

Personal Injury LawyerFor those who are truly suffering, filing an injury lawsuit isn’t about getting some kind of windfall or even punishing the person or company that caused them harm. All they want is to get the money they need to help themselves to heal and make sure this kind of incident doesn’t happen to someone else.

 

If we really want to limit fraud, perhaps more of the burden should be placed on lawyers to thoroughly examine the stories of their potential clients and look hard at the evidence before taking on these kinds of cases. Most well-respected litigators already do this, because they don’t want to gain a bad reputation. However, more can be done to standardize the process and hold people accountable. This will cut down on lost revenue for businesses, increase the likelihood that personal injury lawyers will win the cases they take, and free up valuable time in our court system.

 

Slip and fall Lawyer

Could a Slipperiness Index Help Reduce Slip and Falls?

by Slip and Fall

Slip and fall Lawyer

We all know that there are all kinds of different reasons that a person might fall down and injure themselves. Uneven walkways can cause people to trip. Spills that haven’t been properly cleaned or marked in stores and other areas are known to put people on their backs. And, of course, the weather can cause a significant uptick in the number of falls that occur.

 

Unlike other areas, of the country, Floridians don’t really have to worry about snow and ice causing more falls. But that doesn’t mean we’re exempt from weather related problems. Instead of the cold, we have to fear the wet from hurricanes, thunderstorms, and the like.

 

Now, plenty of information is out there telling you what to do after a fall. But while it’s incredibly useful to know what you should do if you suffer a fall yourself, there’s something else that’s even more helpful – learning how to avoid a fall altogether. Naturally, there are plenty of things that you can do to take better care when you’re out and about, buta new University of Michigan study has come up with a way to tell you when you shouldn’t go outside at all – a Slipperiness Index.

 

What Exactly Does the Slipperiness Index Tell You?

 

Injury Lawyer

The idea behind the Slipperiness Index is to let people know when the weather outside mathematically increases their chances of not just suffering from a slip and fall, but actually suffering a fracture. The Michigan study was able to create a scale from 0 to 7 and determine how much more likely people are to get hurt at different points along the scale.

 

For example, if you knew that your risk of falling and breaking a hip was going to go up 21 percent because the Index read 4 for that day, you might decide to stay home and go out the next day. In this way, it is similar to how the Air Quality Index uses numbers from 0 to 500 to tell you how polluted the air in your area is (anything over 300 is generally considered bad), or the smog alerts used by environmental agencies in many cities.

 

Fewer Falls Favors the Aging

 

If this kind of thing catches on and cities all over start using it, there’s a chance that it could significantly lower the number of falls that plague our country – almost 9 million as of 2011. Fewer falls will mean fewer injuries and less time spent in the emergency room repairing broken bones.

 

This is especially important to Florida’s burgeoning elderly population, because older people are far more likely to experience a significant injury if they fall. By creating a sort of “early warning system” like the Slipperiness Index, more senior citizens will be able to avoid the most dangerous days and stay safer.

 

No Index to Warn You About Others’ Negligence

 

Unfortunately, while many slip and fall accidents are caused by inclement weather, a lot of them are due to the negligence of people and organizations in your area. So far, no one has ever heard of any researchers coming up with an index to warn you about times when negligence is going to be worse than others, which means you just have to be wary. And if you do fall because someone else created an unsafe environment, make sure that you contact us  as soon as possible so that we can work hard to help you get the compensation you deserve.

 

Slip And Fall Attorney

Slip and Fall Accidents Often More Serious for the Elderly

by Slip and Fall

Slip And Fall Attorney

Nobody ever enjoys falling—it can take you by surprise, cause both immediate and long-lasting pain, and bruise both your body and your ego. However, if you’re young and spry, you can heal relatively quickly from a lot of slip and fall injuries. Elderly people, on the other hand, are more likely to encounter complications and require medical treatment after this kind of accident.

 

According to the Center for Disease Control, more than 1 in 3 adults 65 and over fall each year, and between 20% and 30% of those people suffer hip fractures, head lacerations, and head trauma. Those injuries can result in costly medical treatment and, if the elderly adult has been living on their own, sometimes makes it difficult for them to continue doing so.

 

Why Fall Risk Increases as We Age

 

One of the most obvious reasons that fall injuries become increasingly likely as we age is because we become more susceptible to breaking bones and don’t heal as quickly as younger people. As you get older, your bone density decreases, making your bones more prone to fracturing on impact.

 

Of course, that’s not the only reason the elderly are more at risk for slip and fall injuries. There are a wide range of risk factors, including:

 

  • Difficulty balancing. There are a number of different balance disorders, such as vertigo and labyrinthitis, which become more common as you age. Dizziness or difficulty maintaining a center of balance can lead elderly people to fall more easily.
  • Limited physical activity. Although some elderly people do make a conscious effort to exercise on a regular basis, others become more sedentary as they age. A lack of regular physical activity leads to muscle atrophy, decreased strength, and loss of flexibility—all of which puts people at greater risk for falls.
  • Vision problems.If an elderly person has difficulty seeing due to cataracts, glaucoma, or other vision problems, they may have trouble seeing potential tripping or slipping hazards around them.
  • Environmental hazards. Sometimes falls are caused by something as seemingly minor as a folded over corner on a rug, an electrical cord on the floor, or an uneven step. If an elderly person falls due to an environmental hazard, the person or organization responsible for keeping that area safe may be liable.

 

How to Reduce the Risk of Falls for the Elderly

 

Personal Injury Attorney

There are steps that both elderly people and their loved ones can take to reduce the odds of experiencing a serious fall. Elderly people can:

 

  • Practice balance exercises for seniors on a regular basis
  • Maintain physical activity by walking, taking a water aerobics class, or playing a sport like tennis
  • Talk to a doctor if they begin experiencing dizziness, vision problems, or other health issues
  • Understand that they may have limits when it comes to certain activities, such as riding an escalator or climbing a ladder, and seek assistance when necessary

 

Family, friends, and caretakers of seniors can also help by:

 

  • Maintaining homes that are free of tripping hazards: remove clutter from walkways, store electrical cords, and make sure rugs are flush with the floor
  • Carefully supervise seniors with dementia when walking in areas with snow or ice, as they may not know to be careful around potential slipping hazards
  • Make sure all staircases have sturdy handrails
  • Install grab bars on the sides of toilets and bath tubs used by seniors
  • Contact a slip and fall lawyer if an elderly loved one falls due to the recklessness or negligence of another person; while a lawyer can’t heal the injury, they can help you recover the compensation you need to cover medical and care expenses

 

The effort it requires to take a few simple precautions is well worth it in order to protect the people you love from the potentially serious injuries of a slip and fall accident.

 

Did You Know That You Don’t Necessarily Have to Slip and Fall in a Slip and Fall Case?

by Slip and Fall

If you have suffered an injury while in a commercial establishment or at another’s residence, friends and family may suggest that you consult with a West Palm Beach slip and fall lawyer in order to determine whether or not you might be able to pursue compensation from the property owner. In many instances, a viable slip and fall case exists even if you did not actually slip, or for that matter, fall.

 

Although you will often hear of slip and fall injuries, the actual term for such cases is premises liability because you are seeking to hold the owner of the premises on which you were injured liable for your injuries. Often, such cases involve a victim who slips on a slick floor and falls, and so they have come to be known as slip and fall cases despite the fact that neither element is essential to a premises liability case. For example, if you are shopping in a West Palm Beach wholesale club and one of the shelves is stacked with merchandise such that the shelf becomes unstable and topples over on top of you causing serious injury, you may have a premises liability suit despite the fact that you did not slip or fall.

 

Regardless of the circumstances surrounding your injuries, if you have been injured because of a property owner’s negligence, your West Palm Beach slip and fall lawyer at the Law Offices of The South Florida Injury Law Firm will have the experience necessary to review your case and determine the extent to which the property owner may be held liable for the medical costs and other expenses related to your injury. Get the remuneration that you may be due by calling The South Florida Injury Law Firm today.

 

When you need a West Palm Beach slip and fall lawyer, the Law Offices of The South Florida Injury Law Firm are located in Fort Lauderdale, FL and handle cases throughout the state, including Broward County, Indian River, Okeechobee, Delray Beach, Martin County, Palm Beach, West Palm Beach, and all other cities and counties. We have years of experience and success in handling cases like yours. Contact us for a free case evaluation at 954.764.7377 or via the web at https://southfloridainjurylawfirm.com.