Best Chicago Slip and Fall Attorney

What is often viewed as a minor event, a slip, trip, or fall accident, can result in serious harm to the victim. These injuries can be life-altering, permanent, or disabling, even causing brain injury in extreme cases. Sometimes injuries are immediately apparent, while other times, they take hours, days, or even weeks to manifest. For these reasons, you should never take a slip and fall incident lightly. If you do happen to trip while in public, document the incident, take photos, and schedule a visit with your doctor immediately. You should consider hiring the Chicago slip and fall and premises liability lawyers at Saks, Robinson & Rittenberg, Ltd. to ensure that, if you do sustain or develop a severe injury, you have the knowledgeable legal representation you need on your side to recover compensation for your harms.

Common Injuries That Result from Slip, Trips, and Falls

In some lucky instances, a slip and fall results in nothing more than embarrassment. However, luck is not always on one’s side. At Saks, Robinson & Rittenberg, Ltd., our Chicago slip and fall lawyers have helped countless victims and their families recover compensation a few of the following types of injuries:

• Traumatic brain injury
• Closed head injuries (internal bleeding and concussion)
• Back pain and spine fractures
• Neck and spinal cord injuries
• Facial lacerations
• Internal bleeding
• Leg and arm fractures

Each of the aforementioned types of injuries can be both painful and costly. Not to mention, each requires extensive medical care, which means time off work and lost wages. If you are the victim of a slip and fall, you should not have to be held financially accountable for another person’s negligence. The negligent party should be held liable for all costs associated with your injury, and it is our goal to ensure that this occurs.

Damages You Can Recover in Slip and Fall Accidents

The goal of awarding damages in slip and fall claims is to make the plaintiff “whole,” or to put him or her in the same position in which he or she would have been had the incident not occurred. The type of damages designed to do this are called compensatory damages. Compensatory damages typically include the following:

• Medical expenses
• Lost wages, past and future
• Pain and suffering
• Loss of consortium
• Mental anguish
• Disfigurement

How much in damages and the type of damages the court will award depends on the extent of the injury and the total financial cost of the injury. The courts may award punitive damages. However, it will only do so if the defendant’s conduct was particularly malicious or intentional, which is why they are generally not appropriate in tort actions based on negligence.

Proving Negligence in Slip and Fall Claims

Proving negligence in slip, trip, and fall claims hinges on proving four elements to be true: duty, breach, causation, and damages. 

• Duty: The duty a property owner has to a person varies depending on the guest’s status. For instance, a person invited onto a property for business or social purposes is called an invitee. Property owners owe the highest duty of care to invitees. A licensee is someone who is on a property either by invitation or with permission. Though property owners owe licensees a heightened duty of care, the duty is not as great as that owed to invitees. Trespassers are those who do not have permission to be on a property but enter nonetheless. Property owners owe a minimal duty to trespassers.
• Breach: Whether or not a breach occurs depends on the type of duty a property owed to the injured party. However, breach generally occurs when the property owner creates a dangerous condition, knows a dangerous condition exists but does not attempt to correct it, or the condition existed for such a length of time that the owner should have discovered and corrected it.  
• Causation: Causation is fairly easy to prove and simply involves showing that the dangerous condition was the proximate cause of the injury.
• Damages: To have a slip and fall claim, an injured party must show that actual monetary damages resulted because of the injury. Damages can be in the form of medical expenses, lost wages, rehabilitation costs, and the like.

Work with an Experienced Chicago Slip and Fall Lawyer

If you sustained serious injuries in a premises liability accident such as a slip and fall, contact the Chicago personal injury attorneys at Saks, Robinson & Rittenberg, Ltd. as soon as possible. If we agree to work together, our attorneys can help you gather the appropriate evidence and build a substantial case. We can also aggressively pursue a sizeable settlement or verdict on your behalf. Schedule your free consultation today.