In Arizona and everywhere else in the United States, slip-and-fall accident claims rarely go to trial. On average, for every 20 slip-and-fall accidents, only one makes it into court proceedings. The rest of these personal injury cases settle out of court.
In this post, we cover why slip-and-fall accidents often result in settlements, what goes into the legal process of settlement, and why, even though your slip-and-fall claim may never go before a jury, an experienced personal injury attorney can be a valuable ally in helping you seek compensation through settlement.
If you have experienced a slip-and-fall accident, call Stone Rose Law at (480) 631-3025 or use our contact form to get in touch with a personal injury lawyer for a free consultation.
Slip and fall injury victims and defendants both have reasons to avoid going to trial that they often find compelling. Most of these reasons have cost concerns as their origin.
An individual or business being sued for a slip-and-fall accident will consider the risk of being held liable in court if the claim does not settle. The biggest risk to a property owner in losing such a claim at trial is the unpredictability of a judge or jury when it decides the value to attach to the plaintiff’s claims.
Although many slip-and-fall judgment awards are in the mid-five-figure range, once a jury begins to deliberate, there are no guarantees.
Your injuries related directly to the accident, like medical bills and lost wages, are readily calculable. But other, non-economic damages, can be much more subjective and hard for a defendant to predict or contain. These indirect kinds of damages include:
It is not unheard of for a case that might involve tens of thousands of dollars in medical treatment costs and lost income to amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars once a jury adds on non-economic damages.
In a negotiated settlement, it is easier for the defendant and the defendant’s insurer to try to contain non-economic damages claims, usually by including them as a multiplying factor of agreed-upon economic damages claims.
In a trial, a jury is unmoored in its decision-making by considerations of how much the defendant’s insurance will pay to cover a damages award. This raises the possibility that if the plaintiff wins at trial, the verdict amount can surpass the insurance policy coverage limits and leave the defendant personally liable for the rest.
In a settlement negotiation, because the objective is, at least in part, to avoid litigation, insurance policy coverage limits become more significant because as soon as they are exceeded, the plaintiff wonders whether the defendant can pay anything more.
This consideration can have a “speed brake” effect on plaintiff damages claims in negotiations making a reasonable settlement (from the defendant’s point of view) more likely than risking a huge jury verdict.
Court verdicts and damages awards are matters of public record.
Especially if the property owner is a business, the idea of a slip-and-fall judgment award against it becoming public knowledge is unsettling. If prospective customers feel unsafe, it might drive away future business or even encourage unsavory people to attempt to make “copycat” claims.
Even if the plaintiff’s slip and fall claim is unsuccessful, the negative publicity of being put on trial can be something a business owner will want to avoid.
Slip-and-fall settlement agreements usually have a confidentiality clause that prevents the plaintiff from disclosing the settlement or its amount. This can be a powerful incentive for businesses and individuals to favor settlement over litigation.
Many times, a plaintiff in a personal injury claim, like a slip and fall case, can find a plaintiff’s lawyer willing to work on a contingency basis. The attorney only gets paid if the plaintiff receives a favorable judgment award or a settlement payout (like our attorneys at Stone Rose Law).
Defense attorneys are much less likely to accept a contingency fee arrangement because even if their client wins there is no payout for the defense lawyer to be paid from.
Defense attorneys often bill their clients by the hour. Preparing for and conducting settlement negotiations is almost always considerably less time-consuming and, therefore, less expensive than preparing for and conducting a trial defense.
When this consideration is combined with the relative unpredictability of what an unfavorable judgment award might cost, property owners will often be receptive to negotiating a slip-and-fall settlement instead of taking a chance in court.
In a related sense, most people involved in a legal dispute want to resolve it and put it behind them as soon as possible. Civil litigation is a lengthy and arduous process in which the trial court establishes when you receive a court date, and that can be months in the future. It is not uncommon for trial dates to be delayed.
During this drawn-out period, a defendant can feel that life, business, or both are being put “on hold” while the litigation process grinds on with deadlines and court dates they have no control over. Many would prefer a faster solution where the parties can agree to meet outside the court system and resolve the dispute quickly.
Although your plaintiff’s attorney will prepare your slip-and-fall claim as thoroughly as possible, and you may have a strong case backed by considerable evidence, whether you win or lose in a trial depends on a jury, whose impressions and thinking you might influence but cannot control.
This is why responsible slip-and-fall lawyers will never guarantee results, especially from litigation.
Also, trials do not occur in a vacuum where you only present your side of the story. The defense will have the opportunity to influence the thinking of the jurors. In most slip-and-fall cases, the defense will raise several arguments to deny or minimize liability and to attempt to shift at least some of the blame for the accident and your injuries onto you. This is the “comparative negligence” defense.
Comparative negligence is a legal defense that can reduce your damages award even if you prove liability by the defendant. It reduces the award by the percentage of fault the court might assign to you.
For example, let’s say you slip and fall when you step on a liquid left on the floor in a supermarket. You establish liability on the supermarket owner by showing that the management should have cleaned up the spill. But the defense successfully argues that when you slipped and fell, you were running through the aisles, and this contributed to your fall.
If the court decides that you were 10% at fault, your judgment award will be reduced by 10%.
Compared to going to court, a negotiated settlement offers certainty.
As we have seen above, defendants usually want to avoid litigation as long as it appears that the plaintiff has a viable claim. This means that they will have an incentive to negotiate and pay at least some amount to resolve the matter, especially if their insurance will cover it.
Settlement can significantly reduce the risk of going to trial and having a jury award nothing or a reduced amount because of a successful comparative negligence defense.
Additionally, when the parties are negotiating among themselves instead of trying to persuade a group of jurors that everything was the other side’s fault, there is less incentive to play to the emotions of a jury. This allows both parties to get to the heart of the supporting evidence and come to an agreed-upon amount based on practical considerations.
This comparative informality gives the plaintiff and the defendant’s attorneys more control over the resolution of the slip-and-fall claim.
If you suffer injuries from a slip and fall accident, then there is a good chance that you will be paying medical bills and lose time at work. This can become a double-hit on your household budget, and the longer it goes on, the greater an impact it can have on your life. Waiting for a court date can prolong this state of affairs long before you see a judgment award that can pay your treatment costs.
Settlement negotiations ordinarily take much less time to arrange and complete than litigating a personal injury claim.
Even if your personal injury lawyer is working for you on a contingency basis, a civil trial still takes a lot of time to prepare. Evidence needs to be gathered and analyzed, witnesses need to be contacted and their statements taken, pretrial discovery needs to be completed, depositions conducted, and all of this happens under the court’s calendar, not yours.
A settled resolution means that you can receive financial compensation sooner and put the matter behind you so you can get on with your life. For many people, this sense of comparative convenience and control is worth as much as money.
Often the largest jury verdict awards from trial are based on non-economic damages. Just because it does not involve a jury does not mean that a settlement agreement cannot take non-economic damages into account.
As we mentioned above, when you and your attorney can establish that pain and suffering, mental anguish, loss of companionship, or other indirect damages exist and that a jury would likely include them in a judgment award, these non-economic damages are often factored into the settlement agreement.
Although the majority of slip-and-fall cases settle, in about 5% of cases, the two sides do not settle, and the matter goes to trial.
The reasons why this happens depends on the plaintiff and/or the property owner.
In some cases, the property owner may believe that no liability exists and that you cannot prove negligence. This is not a comparative negligence argument; it is a total denial of liability.
If the defendant believes it is not the at-fault party, it is much less likely to agree to a settlement and more likely to want to have its day in court to prove its innocence.
Parties may be too far apart in settlement negotiations when agreeing on how much the claim is worth. For example:
When this happens, if you believe that you have significant damages claims, then instead of walking away from them, you may have little choice but to resort to litigation to resolve the question of how much compensation you are entitled to.
In cases where your slip and fall injuries are serious, or your non-economic damages claims are high, such as a claim for punitive damages, the potential value of your claim may exceed whatever insurance coverage the property owner may have.
Settlement agreements often do not have provisions to force a liable defendant to use its own assets to pay for amounts beyond insurance policy limits.
A judgment award, on the other hand, can be at least partially converted into a judgment lien if the defendant does not have enough liquid assets to pay the damages amount. This lien attaches to some property of the defendant, so when that property is sold, the lien must be paid.
If the plaintiff believes that the slip-and-fall accident resulted from intentional behavior on the part of the property owner, then at least part of the plaintiff’s motivation may be to punish the defendant and not just to receive their actual damages. This can lead to either a breakdown of settlement negotiations or no attempt to settle.
Similarly, and related to the issue above of the defendant believing it has no liability for your injuries, if the property owner believes that the slip and fall claimant is making a baseless, or even fraudulent, claim, then it may have little or no interest in discussing a settlement.
As long as you and the property owner are willing to negotiate, then one action you can take to maximize your chances of receiving the fair settlement amount is to hire an experienced slip-and-fall case attorney.
An old saying goes, “If you want peace, then prepare for war.” In a personal injury claim like a slip and fall, an equivalent expression might be, “If you want the best possible settlement offer, then prepare for trial.”
Insurance company adjusters and personal injury defense lawyers are skilled negotiators. They understand the importance of compelling evidence in supporting slip-and-fall cases and will be carefully evaluating the strength of the evidence supporting your claim.
The stronger your evidence, the more seriously they will take your claims.
Similarly, if they believe that your evidence is weak or that you are not serious about the possibility of litigating your claims, they will be more inclined to play hardball in negotiations and offer you a low settlement amount.
This is where having a highly experienced slip-and-fall attorney on your side can be crucial in the outcome of your settlement negotiations. An attorney can convince the insurance company and the defendant’s lawyer that you will not be reluctant to take the matter to trial if negotiations do not lead to a fair result.
If you have been in a slip-and-fall accident in Arizona, Stone Rose Law can help you settle it and receive the full and fair compensation you deserve.
This means thoroughly investigating the facts of your accident, finding all the people who might be liable for your injuries, gathering evidence to support your claim, evaluating possible counterclaims and defenses the property owner might raise, and preparing for them.
All this happens before serious settlement negotiations begin.
When you have the Stone Rose Law legal team on your side, you can rest assured that the property owner and its insurer will take you seriously because we will be ready for a slip-and-fall lawsuit if they try to play games.
And if settlement negotiations fail, we will represent your slip-and-fall case in court.
Request your free consultation today by calling (480) 631-3025 or using our contact form.
