Bakersfield Slip-and-Fall Attorney

In the Bakersfield area, if you are injured on another party’s property in a slip-and-fall or trip-and-fall accident that was not your fault, you may be able to recover compensation for your injuries with the help of a Bakersfield slip-and-fall attorney at The Paris Firm.

Thousands of people are injured each year, right here in Southern California, because of poor lighting, slick floors, broken floor tiles, dilapidated stairs, curled-up carpeting, and potholes in parking lots. Slipping or tripping and falling can cause painful and debilitating injuries.

Falls are the predominant cause of injuries and injury-related deaths in the U.S for adults 65 and older. Falls are also the foremost cause of spinal cord injuries. Slip-and-fall victims may also suffer head, neck, and back injuries, broken and fractured bones, and traumatic brain injuries.

Often, slip-and-fall injuries could have been prevented by timely action on the part of a property owner or manager. If a property owner’s or manager’s negligence is the reason you are injured, contact The Paris Firm immediately.

What is a Property Owner’s Responsibility?

Thousands are injured in falls each year, but no one should jump to conclusions about liability in any specific case. A property owner or manager cannot be held accountable if someone is injured by slipping or tripping on something that an ordinary person would see and avoid.

Owners have a legal duty to keep properties reasonably safe and free of hazards. Premises liability cases often hinge on whether an owner attempted to meet the legal duty to keep a property safe and whether the injured party was careless for failing to see or avoid a hazard.

What Causes Slip-and-Fall Incidents?

Slip-and-fall incidents have several causes, including slick, wet, or greasy floors, obstructions and clutter in hallways and store aisles, and uneven or cracked floors, sidewalks, and parking lots. In particular, older adults are at risk because of factors such as:

foot pain or poorly-fitting footwear
medications
vision problems
issues with walking or balance

What is a Property Owner’s Duty of Care?

The duty of care is the legal codification of our well-established, implied responsibilities toward one another. Drivers in this state have a duty of care to operate vehicles responsibly and safely, in accordance with the rules of the road.

Homeowners owe visitors to their homes a duty of care that depends on the visitor’s status. A person on your property may be a trespasser, a contractor or salesperson, or a friend or relative you have invited. Generally speaking, homeowners must keep properties reasonably safe, warn visitors of known hazards, and avoid creating conditions that could put visitors at risk.

Business owners owe a strict duty of care to clients, customers, employees, and contractors. If a sidewalk is cracked in front of your home, you can tell friends and neighbors to be careful, but a cracked sidewalk in front of a business property must be repaired swiftly if it creates a hazard.

When is a Property Owner Liable?

To be held liable for a fall victim’s injuries, the property owner or manager must have known about a hazard and did nothing about it, or the owner or manager did not know about the hazard but should have known.

The latter situation (the owner or manager didn’t know about the hazard but should have) is common, and it’s the toughest kind of slip-and-fall injury case to decide.

In personal injury trials in California arising from slip-and-fall incidents, juries and judges determine whether a property owner or manager met or violated a duty to keep a property safe by deciding whether the steps the owner or manager took to do so were reasonable.

How is “Reasonable” Defined in Slip-and-Fall Cases?

To determine whether a property owner acted “reasonably,” California law focuses on whether the owner exercised the same degree of care that a reasonable property owner would in the same or similar circumstances.

Below are some of the questions that may be considered during a premises liability case that arises from a slip-and-fall injury:

Was the hazard there long enough that the property owner should have known?

Does the owner have a routine procedure for maintaining the premises? If so, what proof does the property owner have of regular maintenance?

Could the property owner have marked or roped off the area or provided some other warning to prevent a slip-and-fall accident?

If the answer to one or more of these questions is against the property owner, that owner may be deemed negligent and ordered to compensate the injury victim for pending and future medical treatment, lost wages, projected lost wages, pain, suffering, and related losses and damages.

Report Slip-and-Fall Accidents Promptly

If you are injured at a retail location or another private property where it’s the practice to submit accident reports, you should complete a report immediately. Do not write a lengthy statement. Just explain the bare facts in the simplest terms.

Don’t sign anything before you consult a Bakersfield slip-and-fall lawyer at The Paris Firm. If the police or emergency personnel become involved in the incident, find out how to obtain a copy of their written report. It could become key evidence if you file a personal injury claim.

Take photos of the spot where the slip-and-fall occurred, and ask for the names and contact information of anyone who witnessed it. Seek medical attention as quickly as possible and make copies of any test results, records, or medical bills generated by your injury.

It is not in your interests to speak with the property owner’s insurance company after a slip-and-fall injury. Do not provide an insurance company with a statement or accept a first settlement offer. Let your Bakersfield slip-and-fall attorney speak and negotiate on your behalf.

If You Slip and Fall on the Job, Can You Sue Your Employer?

California employers usually cannot be sued for injuries that happen on the job. Workers’ compensation insurance almost always covers injuries sustained at work, so a workers’ compensation claim, and not a premises liability claim, is usually the proper legal response.

Employers may be sued only if they engaged in egregious, reckless, or intentionally dangerous behavior. If a third party is responsible for a slip-and-fall injury at your workplace, you may have grounds for legal action against that third party.

What if You’re Injured on Public Property?

When a government entity is the defendant in a slip-and-fall case, it’s complicated legally, and you’ll need an attorney’s help. Governmental agencies, including school districts, are generally protected from personal injury claims by the legal principle of “sovereign immunity.”

California law spells out specific exceptions to sovereign immunity. Before you can bring a lawsuit against a government agency, you have six months from the injury date to file a notice with the agency. A lawyer can help you complete and submit the notice, which gives the agency:

a chance to settle the claim out of court
time to investigate the claim and prepare a defense
the opportunity to remedy the practices or conditions that led to your injury

After filing your notice, the agency has 45 days to respond. Don’t accept any settlement offer without first consulting your slip-and-fall attorney. You will be notified in writing if your claim is rejected, at which time you may proceed with an injury lawsuit.

How Can You Prevail With Your Injury Claim?

Whether you’ve been injured on public or private property in the Bakersfield area, to recover compensation, you and your Bakersfield slip-and-fall lawyer may have to prove that one or several of these conditions applied when the accident and injury occurred:

A reasonable owner or property manager would have known about the hazardous condition and would have remedied it.

The owner or property manager knew about the hazard and failed to remedy it.

The owner or property manager caused the hazardous condition.

Slip-and-fall cases involve what a property owner “should” have known and whether the owner made repairs. It may take several days to repair sidewalk cracks or plumbing leaks. Meanwhile, owners should post warning signs or use another method to inform people about the hazard.

What Are a Property Owner’s Defenses?

If you are injured in a slip-and-fall accident because a property owner was negligent, and you bring a premises liability claim seeking damages, the owner may try to transfer the blame to you. The defenses that property owners may offer in slip-and-fall cases include:

The injured party was not paying attention to the surroundings.
The injured party was in a no-trespassing area or a restricted zone.
The injured party wore inappropriate or unsafe footwear or was barefoot.
Yellow cones and warning signs were in place to alert visitors about the hazard.
The hazard was obvious to an average, reasonable person.

If you were trespassing or in a restricted-access area when you slipped and fell, you probably do not have legal grounds to bring a personal injury lawsuit. A slip-and-fall lawyer at The Paris Firm can help you determine if you have standing to sue.

After a Slip-and-Fall Incident, Take These Steps

If you are injured slipping and falling because another party was negligent, seek medical treatment at once. Some injuries may be latent or difficult to detect, appearing days or weeks after an accident. Even if you don’t feel injured, schedule a thorough medical examination as soon as possible after you slip and fall.

If a property owner’s negligence is the reason you were injured, after a healthcare professional has examined and treated you, discuss your slip-and-fall case with a premises liability lawyer at The Paris Firm. Call our law offices at 909-325-6185 to schedule a free first legal consultation.

You must take action within two years of a slip-and-fall injury (or within six months if a government agency is the at-fault party), or you cannot pursue damages under California’s statute of limitations. You should not wait six months or two years. Evidence deteriorates, and memories fade. Contact The Paris Firm immediately after a medical provider has treated you.

How Are Slip-and-Fall Claims Resolved?

For the most part, slip-and-fall claims are resolved out of court when the attorneys for both sides meet to negotiate an agreement acceptable to all parties involved. If your claim cannot be resolved privately, your lawyer may recommend going to trial and letting jurors determine if the property owner should be held liable for your accident and injuries.

If your claim goes to trial, California’s “pure comparative negligence” principle may apply. Under the state’s pure comparative negligence system, damages owed to an injury victim are decreased by the percentage of that victim’s fault for the accident and injuries.

Let’s say your damages after a slip-and-fall on a wet supermarket floor total $100,000. But if jurors decide you were 20% at fault because you were looking at your phone and did not see that the floor was wet, the property owner will be liable for only 80% of your damages ($80,000).

What Can You Recover?

A catastrophic slip-and-fall injury can lead to a lifetime of expenses for treatments, therapies, and medications. The cost of a slip-and-fall injury includes not only medical expenses but also lost wages, personal care costs, and housekeeping costs.

Slip-and-fall victims who prevail with an injury claim may recover compensation for their pending medical costs and projected future medical expenses, including surgeries, physical therapy, and nursing care. They may recover their lost wages and projected future lost earnings.

Victims can also receive compensation for their current and future pain, suffering, and emotional anguish. Those who have sustained catastrophic, disabling, and/or permanent injuries will need to recover the maximum available compensation amount. The Paris Firm can help.

Punitive damages are available but are seldom awarded in California slip-and-fall cases. Punitive damages are ordered only in the most egregious cases to punish defendants for intentionally dangerous or reckless behavior and to discourage such behavior in the future.

When Should You Call The Paris Firm?

Whether you were injured on private or public property, call The Paris Firm immediately after you’ve been examined and treated by a healthcare provider. If you are bringing a claim based on a slip-and-fall injury against a private individual or business, you have two years to file a claim.

If your claim is against a government agency, you have six months to notify the agency of your intention to sue. But you should not wait six months to bring your case to a slip-and-fall lawyer at The Paris Firm. Your lawyer should be able to:

Examine evidence before it disappears, deteriorates, or becomes contaminated.
Speak to eyewitnesses while their recollections are fresh.
Have sufficient time to develop a strong, effective case on your behalf.

How Are Slip-and-Fall Claims Handled?

At The Paris Firm, Bakersfield attorney Eric Paris has 26+ years of experience fighting for the rights of injury victims. He can help you compile and preserve key evidence, advise you on your legal rights and options, and negotiate with the property owner’s insurance company.

Attorney Eric Paris can prepare a strong case on your behalf. Most slip-and-fall claims are resolved out of court. Slip-and-fall cases go to trial only if liability for the incident is in dispute or if no fair and reasonable settlement offer is forthcoming in the out-of-court negotiations.

What Happens at a Slip-and-Fall Trial?

If your slip-and-fall injury claim goes to trial, you and your attorney must persuade the jurors that the property owner (the “defendant”):

owed a duty of care to visitors, employees, and/or tenants to keep the premises safe
breached that duty with negligence
directly caused the victim’s (or “plaintiff’s”) injury as a result of negligence
should compensate the victim for losses and damages

Your attorney can explain to the jurors how and to what extent you were injured and why the property owner should be held liable and ordered to pay damages. To bring an injury claim, there must be damages. If you fall in a stairwell or parking lot, but you get up and walk away uninjured, you do not qualify to bring an injury claim.

Bring Your Slip-and-Fall Case to The Paris Firm

At The Paris Firm, our record speaks for itself. If you are injured in the Bakersfield area because of a property owner’s or manager’s negligence, you should be advised and represented by an attorney who:

knows how to prove a property owner or manager was negligent
knows the insurance companies and understands their negotiating strategies
fights effectively for the injured victims of slip-and-fall accidents

We represent our Bakersfield clients on a contingency fee basis. If you take legal action based on a slip-and-fall accident, you owe no lawyer’s fee to The Paris Firm unless and until we recover your compensation with a jury verdict or a negotiated settlement.

You can learn more or initiate the legal process by calling The Paris Firm at 909-325-6185 to schedule your free first legal consultation. If you’re injured, and it was someone else’s fault, The Paris Firm can fight vigorously and effectively for your rights.