A slip and fall settlement can help you pay off medical expenses, make up for lost wages, and give you the compensation you need to recover from an injury. While slip and fall lawsuit settlement amounts can vary, it’s important to understand what to expect when you are considering a claim. In addition, understanding the process involved in pursuing your rights to compensation for an injury that wasn’t your fault can help you build a stronger case. This will help your attorney fight for the maximum slip and fall case settlement amount in negotiations or in court.
Average Slip And Fall Settlement Amounts
Every case and every injury is unique, so previous results in cases are not the best way to judge your claim’s potential settlement amount. However, slip and fall settlements of $10,000 to $50,000 are fairly common for relatively minor injuries. As the severity of an injury escalated, these amounts can go much higher based on a variety of factors:
- Amount of medical bills
- Lost wages
- Expected future monetary damages
- Other costs associated with your recovery
- Pain and Suffering
The Amount of Medical Bills
Real monetary damages in the form of medical bills are the top-most determining factor in slip and fall lawsuit settlement amounts. If you are harmed by another party’s negligence, they are responsible for medical costs arising from that injury.
Lost Wages
Doctor and therapist appointments take time, as do surgeries and rehabilitation appointments. If your injury and the treatments it causes force you to miss work, you can seek to recover these damages as part of your claim.
Expected Future Monetary Damages
Because the statute of limitations on a personal injury claim is only two years from the date of the injury, it’s not uncommon for a slip and fall settlement to be sought before recovery is complete. Reasonable costs for expected future medical bills and lost wages can also be sought.
Other Costs Associated Directly With Recovery
Costs for transportation, lodging, and adaptive devices that are meant to help with your recovery can all be included in a personal injury claim.
Pain And Suffering
These non monetary damages are personal, subjective, and hard to quantify, although they can have a dramatic impact on your life. Pain and suffering can lead to mental and physical issues that hamper your recovery, affect the quality of your life moving forward, and impact your finances. Pain and suffering can be both the most unpredictable and the largest portion of any slip and fall case settlement.
Not Always A Slip Or Fall
While commonly referred to as slip and fall accidents, the broader category of premises liability injuries and claims doesn’t necessarily require either. You can be injured by poorly maintained facilities that lead to a simple fall, an obstructed walkway that causes you to trip, or slip on a patch of wet floor and twist your knee, although you may not actually fall to the ground. Each of these personal injury cases would be litigated under the same principles as a traditional “slip and fall”. Slips and falls account for millions of injuries a year.
What is Premises Liability?
Your rights to a slip and fall settlement are predicated on the idea of premises liability, the concept that the owner or controller (such as a leasee) of a property has a responsibility to maintain it in a safe manner for those who will access it.
When a visitor, customer, or client is injured due to a failure to uphold this responsibility, they have a right to seek compensation with a personal injury lawsuit. Even if the injured party is found partially at fault, the defendant who had a responsibility to maintain a safe property can still be found liable for the actions or inaction on their part that led to the unsafe situation and eventual injury.
Building Your Premises Liability Case
When you file a claim with insurers or a case in court, you’re asking for compensation based on the other party’s negligence in an amount based on the damages done to you. A successful slip and fall settlement comes from proving three important facts:
- Responsibility To Provide A Safe Premises – The first step of showing negligence is showing a duty to uphold a certain standard. From keeping a sidewalk in good repair for passers-by to making sure spills in a store aisle or pallets on the warehouse floor are properly managed, there is an expectation of safety in publicly accessible areas.
- A Failure To Meet Their Responsibilities – Whether through an action, such as breaking down boxes and leaving them piled on the floor, or inaction, like failure to repair a broken sidewalk, the defendant did not perform in a reasonable manner to create safe premises.
- Without This Negligence, You Would Not Have Been Injured – While in some cases a slip and fall settlement may be reduced if your own actions contributed to your injury, if an unsafe situation was created or allowed to stan by the defendant, you are entitled to compensation for their part in the damages done to you.
Calculating Damages In A Slip And Fall Lawsuit Settlement
When estimating the amounts for a settlement in a slip and fall case, start with the known monetary damages. Existing medical bills, lost wages as proven by pay stubs, and receipts for transportation and lodging when non-local care is needed all provide actual dollar amounts as a starting point for your calculations. If treatment is ongoing, a reasonable estimate based on the medical costs likely as you recover can be drawn from these sources, by looking at customary pricing models for similar services in the area, or by asking your providers for estimates on treatment.
Non monetary damages, like pain and suffering following a work injury or emotional distress, are often calculated using a multiplier of your monetary damages. This generally falls between a 1X or 5X range, with more serious injuries that have longer-lasting impacts being assigned a higher factor. A sprained knee that requires rehabilitative therapy for a period of months might be given a 1x multiplier, essentially doubling the amount of monetary damages as your full slip and fall settlement.
A traumatic brain injury that results in a potential lifetime of complications could get five-times the significant monetary damages already assigned for extensive diagnostic testing and therapeutic interventions, far surpassing average settlement amounts and driving the total into the millions-of-dollars range.
Maximize Your Slip and Fall Settlement With the Help of a Personal Injury Lawyer
One of the best ways to ensure you’re building a stronger case is to work with an experienced personal injury attorney. Contact us today for a free initial consultation with a Philadelphia lawyer who can talk to you about the specifics of your claim, the next steps in the process, your options, and the appropriate expectations as you pursue the compensation you need to recover from your injury. Let Anapol Weiss make your case our cause today.