While some people may brush off a slip and fall or trip and fall as nothing major, the fact of the matter is that a fall can be incredibly detrimental to both your short term and your long term health. This is especially true of the elderly or individuals with health issues. After all, a slip and fall can send you careening down stairs depending upon where the incident takes place, and may even break bones, cause deep bruising, concussions, sprains, herniations, bulges, and much more. Keeping that in mind, it’s important to act diligently to protect your rights if you are involved in a slip and fall accident, as memories fade and evidence tends to disappear or become less credible over time. Even if you aren’t sure if you were injured in the fall, you should seek medical attention and speak with an attorney to pursue appropriate legal action for financial compensation if you incur damages.
Get Medical Help
The first thing you should do if you’ve fallen is to see a medical professional. This might seem a bit reactionary, but you never know how a fall has impacted your body until you are evaluated by a physician. Small aches and pains can turn out to be the symptoms of an injury more serious and allowing the symptom worsen without attention could be very detrimental to your health. Additionally, sometimes our bodies and minds react to pain and injury with surprise. In these instances, you may not realize the extent of your injuries. The next morning, however, you could wake up in severe pain due to an injury in which you didn’t feel any pain the day before.
Stay ahead of medical emergencies by seeking medical help immediately after an accident. This also helps establish a paper trail and documentation of your injuries should you end up needing to pursue legal recourse.
Document the Slip and Fall
Although you may be lying in pain on the ground, if at all possible, attempt to take photographs of the accident scene and names and phone numbers of any witnesses. These forms of evidence can be invaluable to your attorney as we pursue the claim or file suit on your behalf.
Don’t Engage with Insurance Companies
If you’ve been injured, particularly if that injury occurred on the property of an entity or business, you might begin to receive calls from insurance adjusters. These often start while you’re still recovering from your injury, that’s no mistake. An insurance adjuster may implement a strategy designed to resolve your claim before you even know the full extent of your injuries. Once you agree to a settlement agreement for your claim, you will sign a waiver or release terminating your rights to pursue the claim in the future. You should not agree to anything, and certainly you should not sign anything, until you speak with an attorney. Insurance adjusters might seem sympathetic and kind, but the fact of the matter is that their job is to ensure that your claim is paid as little as possible. An attorney who understands how this process works can help make sure that you receive financial compensation to which you are entitled. If the adjuster continues to be unreasonable, your attorney should have significant experience litigating slip and fall and trip and fall claims.
Stay Off of Social Media
It might be tempting to jump online and chronicle every step of the accident and recovery process but doing so could have a negative impact upon your settlement if you choose to pursue legal action. Stay offline until legal proceedings have concluded – and this includes posting even innocuous pictures or status updates. You never know what could be used against you or how something will be twisted in an attempt to somehow show you are being dishonest about your injuries.
If you’ve been injured in a slip and fall or a trip and fall, your first priority should be your health. However, as soon as possible, reach out to the attorneys at Thompson Legal, P.A., especially if medical expenses are piling up and you can’t afford to pay them, or if you do not have health insurance. An attorney familiar with the laws regarding slip and falls, and the claims process will have the best strategy with how to get the most recovery from your injury claim.