Insurance companies are in the business of minimizing payouts for personal injury victims. Here’s what you need to know about slip, trip, and fall claims.
Insurance companies and defense attorneys often attempt to minimize liability in slip and fall lawsuits. What does this mean? Well, in a slip and fall action there are generally only two parties: Plaintiff and Defendant.
The plaintiff is the injured party – the one who slipped/tripped, fell, and then became injured as a result. The defendant is generally the property owner of the property manager of where the personal injury occurred. The defendant is usually a store or a business. However, they can also be a homeowner or the government if the injury occurred on public property.
What the insurance companies do not want you to know is that when a plaintiff initiates a slip and fall case, they are going after the insurance policy on that defendant. Meaning that the Plaintiff is not going after the personal assets of the defendant or their business.
Why Won’t The Insurance Company Pay A Fair Amount In My Slip & Fall Case?
See, these defendants pay insurance premiums on their home or business. This insurance is called premises liability insurance. It is intended to cover the costs of things like medical bills, lost wages, pain & suffering, and permanent disfigurement to people that are injured on their property. The really crooked thing about this is that in order to get the full compensation they deserve. A plaintiff usually always has to sue the property owner/manager (keep in mind we are still going after the insurance company). Insurance companies like taking people’s money by collecting premiums, but they don’t necessarily like losing that money by paying out claims to those who need it.
Why Should I Hire A Lawyer For My Slip & Fall Case?
This is where the experienced slip and fall attorneys at Sand Law come in. We are a litigation law firm. That means we don’t bicker back and forth with insurance adjusters. The power we have as attorneys is to file lawsuits and that is what we do. If an insurance company is not being fair and does not want to pay an injured victim the money they are owed, we hold them accountable be taking them to court.
How Does A Slip & Fall Lawsuit Work?
First, we contact the defendant’s insurance company and let them know our client has a claim for a slip and fall injury on their insured’s property. We supply them with the pertinent information necessary to set up the claim such as incident reports, audio/video recordings, pictures, medical reports, and an investigative report. We then give them a set number of days to respond with a good faith offer of settlement. The moment our deadline expires – we serve them with a lawsuit and proceed to formal litigation.
Formal litigation entails the case being assigned to a judge in the jurisdiction that the slip and fall injury occurred. We then have a conference with the defense attorney to work out the scheduling of certain deadlines in the case.
How Long Will My Slip And Fall Lawsuit Last?
Our goal is to move fast. There is nothing more insurance companies want in a case than to drag it out. We don’t let that happen. By expediting deadlines, the case then moves much faster and we move closer to an end result. Most cases do not go to trial. There are settlement conferences and mediation scheduled that are designed to resolve the case prior to trial. However, we handle every case as if it is going to trial. That means we hire the best medical experts, investigators, and building code experts to work up the case.
We prepare you for depositions as well as in court testimony should that occur. By doing these things, we are able to show the insurance company that we mean business, which most times result in much higher settlements. If the case fails to settle, then we have the defendant right where we want them because our experts are prepared, our clients are prepared, and our lawyers are prepared.
Contact the Slip, Trip, and Fall Attorneys at Sand Law Today
If you have been injured in a slip & fall or trip & fall accident – don’t hesitate to call the personal injury attorneys at Sand Law today. The longer you wait to contact a lawyer, the harder it is to collect evidence or interview witnesses. This is because people’s memories are not as fresh or there has been a change to the location where the injury occurred. By contacting us as soon as possible, we are able to have investigators go to the scene and take photographs, interview witnesses, and review evidence.
Contact the slip and fall lawyers at Sand Law today for a free, no-obligation consultation. You can contact us online or call us at 651-291-7263.