Walking up and down stairways is a routine activity for many of us, and in most instances, no injuries or accidents arise from it. However, most of us remember the feeling of falling down the stairs when we were children, and some of us are unfortunate enough to have fallen down the stairs as adults. If you have recently had an accident where you slipped, tripped, or fell on a stairway because of a maintenance issue or avoidable hazard that someone else was responsible for, then you are the victim of a premises liability accident and may be able to seek compensation through an insurance claim or lawsuit. The first step towards understanding your rights and your options as a victim in this situation is to partner with a slip and fall attorney who can help you make sense of your situation and give you advice about what to do next.
Contact CarAccidentAttorney.com For a Free Consultation About Your Stairway Accident and Injuries
CarAccidentAttorney.com is an attorney and medical referral service. Instead of trying to take on the stress of finding a personal injury lawyer on your own after an accident, we can take care of this step for you and connect you with an attorney in your area who is ready to take your case. This step can be a major hurdle for many people to take in the early days or weeks following an injury, which is one reason why many people simply go through the insurance claims process alone and walk away with much less than what they deserve for a settlement. Working with a personal injury attorney will give you the legal firepower you need to fight for a fair settlement and to have a clear understanding of your rights as a victim in this situation.
Seeking Compensation After a Stairway Accident
If you are injured in a stairway accident on someone else’s property, then you may be able to file a claim with their homeowners’ or commercial property insurance for your damages. One of the first steps that you should take, however, is to file an incident report at the establishment where the accident occurred. This record will be a vital piece of evidence for your attorney.
When you are working with an insurance company after an accident that their client is responsible for, you will have a claims adjuster assigned to your case who will go through the relevant details while determining a “fair” amount to offer you for a settlement. The problem is that the insurance company is interested in their own priorities, meaning that the settlement they are working towards may be far less than what you actually deserve.
When you have an attorney handling your claims process, your lawyer will initiate their own investigation concurrent to the adjuster’s research. They will go through each detail about your accident and the impacts on your life and will work to ensure that each individual damage is both accounted for and calculated as a clear line item for when it comes time to counter the insurance company’s offer. In many cases, the offer from the insurance company is far less than a victim is owed, and the personal injury attorney will need to negotiate aggressively to reach a fair settlement amount.
Types of Damages For a Stairway Accident
As with other types of personal injury claims, you are entitled to both economic and non-economic damages for your accident and injuries. Economic damages are the basis of your claim and include 1 to 1 compensation for damages with measurable dollar values, like your medical bills and associated recovery costs, and your income-related impacts like lost wages, vacation or sick leave used, and impacts to your long-term earning capacity.
Non-economic damages are trickier to calculate, simply because they seek compensation for damages that do not have set financial values associated with them. These include things like the pain and suffering of your injuries, the trauma that you experienced during your accident, the resultant depression you may endure as your mobility is limited during recovery. As you can imagine, quantifying the dollar amounts for these damages is trickier than simply compiling receipts, but your attorney will be able to handle this process for you.