Contact the Experienced Personal Injury Lawyers Who Get Results
A New Jersey slip and fall accident can leave you with serious and permanent injuries. Sometimes, the victim’s family are the ones suffering the worst after a fatal slip and fall accident.
Slip, trip, and fall accidents are often preventable, but too many property and business owners fail to keep their premises safe. Whether the owner was negligent or trying to save money at the expense of customer safety, the result of their carelessness is that you are suffering.
Many who fall through the neglect of others deserve financial compensation for what happened, but the process can be complicated. The experienced New Jersey personal injury attorneys at Shebell & Shebell, LLC can help get you the most possible compensation for your injuries.
Where do slip and fall accidents occur?
Falls account are the leading cause of emergency room visits. They account for over 8 million hospital visits every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While a fall can seriously injure anyone, people who are ages 65 and older are at a higher risk of serious and even fatal injuries.
Accidents on any type of property can lead to a slip, trip and fall claim. We represent people injured in all types of slip and fall accidents on private, commercial spaces, and public places.
We’ve handled cases arising from slip and fall accidents across the state. Just a few examples of our New Jersey slip and fall verdicts and settlements include:
- $2.5 million for a trip and fall on a condominium walkway
- $925,000 for a nurse who was injured on a hospital elevator
- $900,000 for a worker’s slip and fall on ice
- $800,000 for a person who slipped at a gym
- $700,000 for an elderly gentleman who tripped on a defective walkway at a country club
- $650,000 for a person who slipped and fell on ice at a condominium complex
- Other places where slip and fall accidents are common include private and public property like stores, office buildings, parking lots, private homes, restaurants, and public sidewalks.
Many of slip and fall accidents happen when people are enjoying bars, events, activities, and being with friends and family. Contact Shebell & Shebell for a free consultation and learn of your legal rights.
What causes slip and fall accidents?
Regardless of the type of property, in New Jersey, property owners have a responsibility to take various reasonable measures to keep their premises safe for visitors or warn them of dangerous conditions. When they fail to meet these responsibilities, people can be permanently hurt. A slip and fall accident can happen due to various conditions, including:
- Wet floors
- Cracked pavement
- Cluttered walkways
- Damaged carpeting
- Loose floorboards
- Poor lighting
- Broken stairs and poorly maintained staircases
- A lack of handrails
- Lack of snow and ice removal
- Failure to reasonably respond to weather conditions (for instance, letting rainwater leak into a building)
What types of injury result from slip and fall accidents?
When there’s a slip and fall accident, people can be seriously hurt. Few people realize that fall down injuries are one of the leading causes of premature death in our Country. People involved in these accidents can suffer disfigurement, fractures (broken bones) or injuries to their head (Traumatic Brain Injuries or TBIs), back or neck. They may need surgical procedures, medication and physical therapy. Injuries to the foot, ankle, or leg can limit your mobility, and elbow, arm, knee, or shoulder injuries may require surgery and cause permanent loss of use.
Recovery can take weeks, months, or last an entire lifetime. Many people are left with a permanent disability, or chronic pain such as migraine headaches or back pain. Our attorneys always fight for the compensation our clients deserve, and we are never looking for a handout from the insurance company. Property owners and business have insurance for a reason. Don’t fall into the trap that insurance companies set by making you try to feel bad for pursuing compensation for exactly what the property owner or business had insurance coverage to protect.
Our New Jersey personal injury law firm understands the seriousness of slip and falls
Many people think of falls as minor accidents, but if you’ve been hurt in a bad fall, you know firsthand that that’s not the case. In fact, falls are the leading cause of concussions and traumatic brain injuries. A broken nose or injury to the face can cause disfigurement. These, and others, are all serious injuries that demand serious compensation.
Injuries to the foot, ankle, or leg can limit your mobility, and elbow, arm, knee, or shoulder injuries may require surgery and cause permanent loss of use. It’s common for injuries sustained in a fall to require surgery or cause chronic pain. A broken nose or injury to the face can cause disfigurement. These are all serious injuries that demand serious compensation.
That’s why it’s important to see a doctor right away if you are injured after a trip and fall accident. Go to urgent care, the emergency room, or your primary care doctor, and tell them what happened. Doing this not only protects your health but also creates a record of your injuries in case an insurance company later disputes them. It’s also why you need to talk to a New Jersey attorney about your legal rights as soon as possible.
There are various time restrictions that apply to your ability to pursue compensation, so do not delay in contacting our experienced team of trial attorneys.
Should I sue for slip and fall?
When someone slips or trips and falls due to a hazard and is injured, we can file a claim so that the property owner or business owner can be held liable for injuries. There are many options in pursuing compensation, and our team is in the best position to advise you all your avenues of recovery. For example, victims of injury have the right to bring a premises liability claim and recover compensation from the person, business or government entity that owns or manages the property where the accident occurred when their negligence caused the hazard to exist.
Insurance companies have spent millions of dollars trying to make you feel bad about pursuing compensation that you are entitled to. The insurance company wins when you decide not to pursue a claim. Also the negligent property owner also wins by allowing a hazardous condition to continue, which might affect and injure even more people. By pursuing claims, you are protecting your own future, and are protecting the safety of others by showing lazy property owners that they must maintain their property. You are also showing the insurance company that they can’t just take these property owner’s insurance premiums without actually paying the people that coverage is meant to compensate.
How do slip and fall cases work in New Jersey?
If a person was hurt in a slip and fall accident, they have the right to file a lawsuit to recover money to compensate for injuries, pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, medical bills and lost time from work, and other damages the victim may have suffered. This compensation can cover various issues such as doctor’s expenses, lost wages, pain and suffering, and loss of the ability to do one’s normal activities.
How much should I settle for a slip and fall?
There is no straightforward answer on what an average slip and fall settlement may be worth, because it depends on many factors. Recovery from injuries can take weeks, months or an entire lifetime. A victim suffering an injury may need surgery, hospitalization, medication, physical therapy and other forms of treatment. A person may miss work because of injuries, resulting in a loss of income. Every person’s body and life is different, and every individual suffers a different kind of impact from an injury. Our experienced team of trial lawyers has recovered millions of dollars on behalf of people injured in fall downs, and we can explain in detail the process and potential ranges of settlement after reviewing your case.
Are slip and fall cases hard to win?
If a person is hurt in a slip and fall accident caused by the negligence of a property or business owner, they deserve financial compensation for injuries. Recovering compensation can be a complicated process. Property owners typically deny responsibility for the accident, and don’t admit to doing anything wrong. Our experienced team has successfully pursued compensation for people injured in falls for almost 100 years, starting when Thomas F. Shebell, Esq. started the firm in 1927.
Insurance companies are supposed to help when a person is hurt in an accident, but they are mostly concerned with protecting their profits. They will try to pay as little as possible, or nothing at all. They may argue that injuries were pre-existing or that the victim was to blame for causing the accident. Let us use our collective experience dating back almost a century on your behalf.
The insurance companies try to take advantage of slip and fall victims
They work this way because they know how high the cost of a slip and fall can be. If your injury requires surgery, hospital care, and physical therapy, the cost of treatment can easily stretch into the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. If you have chronic pain, you may need to be on pain medication for the rest of your life. In addition to medical bills, you need compensation for your lost income and other costs. You deserve to be made whole again, but as far as the insurance company is concerned, you’re just exposure to their bottom line. That’s where we come in.
Our Attorneys Fight For Your Rights
Our firm has been helping the injured recover the financial compensation they deserve since our founding in 1927. We know how insurance companies try to limit compensation. Our attorneys take on the insurance companies and build strong cases that they can’t ignore.
We start by investigating your accident to find out every possible avenue of pursuing compensation on your behalf. Our legal team gathers evidence. We carefully review documentation, such as police reports and medical records. We identify witnesses and interview them. If needed, we hire experts such as engineers, safety experts, and medical experts to inspect the premises, or examine you to provide added support to our claim.
We also put in the effort to build a case for the full amount of compensation you need. Depending on the extent of your injuries, that may include compensation for:
- Medical expenses. Everything from the ambulance ride to the hospital, to diagnostics such as X-rays, to surgery and other treatment, to follow-up care such as rehabilitation and physical therapy, and even mileage to and from your appointments should be covered.
- Future medical costs. For instance, if you hurt your knee in a hard fall, and a doctor can ascertain that you are now at an elevated risk of future knee surgery, the cost of that future surgery should be covered.
- Medication and medical devices, including assistive devices such as canes or walkers.
- Lost wages and lost future earnings if the injury affects your ability to work, as well as vocational rehabilitation if you need to change careers due to a permanent injury.
- Modifications to your home or vehicle to accommodate a disability.
- Pain and suffering, loss of consortium, lost quality of life, and other non-economic damages.
Our job is to assess the available insurance coverage, understand the full extent of your injury, and find the best path forward to get the compensation you need to rebuild your life. This can be a challenging process, but we’re committed to see it through. We use our experience to build strong cases that the insurance company can’t ignore.
Call The Law Firm That Knows How To Get Results
When insurance companies see that we have built a strong case, they usually agree to start talking about a settlement. We’re only interested in a settlement that meets your needs. This includes compensation for all current and future medical expenses related to your injury. It includes any lost wages and compensation for other damages, such as pain and suffering. If they won’t make a fair offer, we are always prepared to take them to court.
Managing Partner Thomas F. Shebell, III is Board-Certified by the state Supreme Court in Civil Trial Law. Only 2 percent of attorneys in the state have earned this certification. The other attorneys in our team, including Jack Sanders and Mark Apostolou, are also Certified by the Supreme Court of New Jersey in Civil Trial Law. It is a difficult process that requires experience, peer references and rigorous testing but we work harder for our clients in order to serve them better.
If you were hurt in a slip and fall or trip and fall accident, contact us to learn more about how we can help. We offer a free consultation with one of our personal injury attorneys. We’ll review the details of your case, explain your options and answer any questions that you have. Our office is conveniently located in Shrewsbury.