If your fall and subsequent injuries occurred while on another person’s property, you may be entitled to compensation for your injuries from that property owner. A skilled Bridgeport slip and fall lawyer can work with you to get the compensation that you deserve to help you recover from your injuries. Reach out to a tough, legitimate, and credible attorney today.
Slips and Falls Explained
Slips and falls can occur on residential, commercial, or government properties. They can happen any time that a walking surface is slippery or uneven, or if there are unexpected foreign objects on the walking surface. Commonly, people trip and injure themselves while:
- Grocery shopping
- At restaurants
- At malls
- At office buildings
- On stairways
- On sidewalks
- On icy and snow-covered walkways
People can severely harm themselves from falling on hard surfaces. Many injured people break bones from falling. In particular, people often break their wrists and hands when they outstretch their hands to brace themselves to prevent damage to other parts of their bodies. Frequently, people who trip also suffer from head trauma, and may suffer from skull fractures as well as concussions or other traumatic brain injuries.
How Negligence Contributes to Recovery Efforts
Many people trip, but not everyone who trips is entitled to legal relief from those falls. The most significant difficulty in slip and fall cases is determining who is liable for a claimant’s injuries and how much damages the claimant is entitled to. For a claimant to recover damages, a claimant needs to prove that the owner of the property where their injury occurred was careless or negligent. Specifically, a claimant will need to demonstrate the four elements of negligence.
Duty of Care
The claimant needs to prove that the property owner owed the claimant a duty of care. If the claimant was legally on the property, then the property owner owed them a reasonable duty of care. For example, a customer at a grocery store is owed a duty of care by the grocery store’s owner.
Breach of Duty of Care
A claimant will need to prove that they slipped because of dangerous conditions on the property and that a reasonable property owner would have removed those dangers. A Bridgeport slip and fall attorney can help by examining the evidence and asking the right questions. They can look at the defect or the hazard that caused the claimant to slip, and determine if the property owner either created it or was aware of it. Even if the property owner was not actually aware of the defect, a court could still find that property owner liable if the hazard had existed for a long enough period that they should have been aware of it. For example, if there is a pothole in a grocery store’s parking lot for two weeks, that property owner has breached their duty of reasonable care to their customers.
Causation
The claimant must prove that the property owner’s negligence caused their injuries. If the claimant trips on a pothole in the grocery store’s parking lot and sustains a severe concussion, then they can claim that the property owner’s negligence caused their injuries.
Damages
A claimant will need to demonstrate the injuries that they have suffered in order to recover the maximum amount of damages. A dedicated attorney can help a claimant recover compensation for their medical costs and lost wages, and even for their pain and suffering. Connecticut operates under a theory of modified comparative negligence. If the court finds that the claimant was 25 percent responsible for their own injuries, such as by being drunk, then, according to Connecticut General Statutes Section 52-572h(b), the court will award the claimant 25 percent fewer damages. Importantly, if the claimant is found to have been 51 percent or more responsible for their injuries, then they would be barred from recovering any form of compensation.
Reach out to a Local Lawyer Today
Falls can leave you in immense pain and facing extraordinary debt. A Bridgeport slip and fall lawyer can help by looking for compensation from the owner of the property. Call today to let a compassionate local attorney that uses aggressive tactics begin working for you.