While there is no single, average payout for a slip-and-fall injury, many settlements run between $10,000 and $50,000. In this post, we will discuss what goes into putting together a settlement claim for a slip-and-fall injury case and what you might expect in fair compensation from a slip-and-fall settlement payout.
If you have been injured after a slip and fall, you can talk with an experienced Phoenix personal injury lawyer in a free consultation by calling (480) 498-8998 or using our contact form.
There is no single, average payout for slip and fall injury cases. Each case, including yours, depends on the specific facts of your injury, its severity, its duration, the strength of your supporting evidence, and other factors, including the negotiating prowess of your attorney.
That being said, average slip-and-fall settlement amounts run between $10,000 to $50,000. But if you suffer especially severe injuries, including permanent injuries, the value of your settlement amount may be much more than that.
The fundamental considerations that go into negotiating a slip-and-fall settlement are:
We consider each of these elements below.
You can be injured in a slip-and-fall accident in many ways and places. The popular notion of slipping and falling in a retail establishment like a supermarket is certainly possible, but you can suffer serious injuries and have a possible personal injury claim wherever you are on property owned or controlled by someone else.
This includes commercial office spaces, private residences, construction sites, open spaces, apartment complexes, and government-owned facilities.
The sources of injuries can take many forms, including being struck by vehicles or falling objects, wet floors, electrical hazards, exposure to hazardous substances, or even being exposed to physical assault by others on the property. This is why the legal term for slip-and-fall cases is “premises liability law.”
There are many kinds of injuries you can suffer from premises liability. Some common kinds of injuries personal injury plaintiffs have experienced in slip-and-fall cases include:
When evaluating the value of your settlement claim, it is also important to assess the severity of the injury.
Some injuries are more significant than others, and the time to recover from injuries also varies. This has a direct impact on the value of your settlement amount:
It is an important part of your slip-and-fall attorney’s role in your legal representation to help you determine the potential future impacts of your injuries by carefully reviewing your injury diagnosis, medical records and doctors’ notes, current medical treatment and medical costs, and expert medical opinions about your recovery prognosis.
On top of the costs of treating your injuries, your personal injury lawyer must consider other cost factors. One of the most important of these is lost current earnings and earning potential.
How much compensation you can receive for current lost wages depends on when you can return to work.
What you may receive for lost future earning potential depends on whether you can return to work at all and, if you can, whether you can still do the work you used to do before the injury. How old you are also has a bearing in this consideration, as the more years of potential lost or reduced earnings you have will need to be part of payout calculations.
There are multiple ways your attorney can help you to calculate lost wages. These include paystubs from prior earnings and multiplying your pre-accident daily wages by how many days of work you have missed. In the case of lost earning potential, this includes expert witness statements and the potential for future promotions and pay raises you reasonably could have anticipated.
If your injuries require you to pay for assistance to do activities you otherwise could have done personally, like lawn and home care and maintenance, these added costs are candidates to be calculated into settlement negotiations.
Non-economic damages are also known as indirect damages.
Unlike direct damages, such as medical expenses and lost wages, non-economic damages cannot be calculated using bills or receipts and are more subjective. Non-economic calculations compensate victims for physical pain, mental anguish, scarring or disfigurement, loss of enjoyment of life, and loss of consortium.
Sometimes, non-economic damages are measured by taking the value of your direct or economic damages and multiplying it by a factor of 1.5 to 5. In other cases, a per-diem method may be used, assigning a daily value to non-economic damages and multiplying it by an agreed-upon total of days.
The two most common ways that insurance companies and defense attorneys seek to lower the value of settlement amounts are to argue that no duty of care was owed to you or that you contributed to the harm you suffered.
Slip-and-fall law in Arizona classifies visitors to another’s property as one of three types: invitees, licensees, and trespassers. Each is owed a different duty of care by the property holder.
For example, if you were an invitee on the property, the property owner or manager’s duty of care to you is to keep the property reasonably safe for business purposes and to warn you of known dangerous conditions, but if the property owner can claim that you were trespassing at the time of the accident then that person may argue that no duty of care was owed to you under the property owner’s insurance coverage.
Sometimes, if you were on the property to attend or participate in an event, the property owner may require you to sign an agreement in which you agree to assume the risk of harm if something happens to you during the event.
If the property owner or manager can show that you were at least partly at fault for the harm that occurred to you, then in Arizona, the legal doctrine of comparative negligence may reduce the amount of money you could receive in a personal injury lawsuit by the percentage of your fault.
The property owner or manager may argue the same in settlement negotiations.
For example, if you were negligent while on the property and this caused you not to notice what was a reasonably foreseeable risk of harm, or you were engaged in negligent behavior at the time of your injury, you can expect the property owner’s insurance adjuster and defense lawyer to raise the argument of comparative negligence against you.
Comparative negligence is a legal concept that defendants often use to reduce a victim’s settlement amount depending on the plaintiff’s contribution to the accident. This means that if you partially contributed to your slip-and-fall accident, your total compensation is reduced by your percentage of contribution.
Your personal injury lawyer will take the lead in representing you in a slip-and-fall premises liability claim, including negotiating on your behalf. Here are some things you can do to help bolster your negotiating position.
If you are hurt after a slip-and-fall incident on someone else’s property, it is always a good idea to see a doctor soon afterward. Not only does this provide you with the treatment needed to begin your recovery from injury, but it also helps avoid the possibility that the property owner’s insurer and defense attorney can use delays in seeking treatment against you.
The longer you wait to get medical help, the more likely it becomes that the property owner will argue either of the following:
The strength of your settlement negotiating position after a slip-and-fall accident depends greatly on your ability to support your claims with evidence, just as you will need evidence to prevail in court in a personal injury lawsuit if settlement negotiations fail.
One benefit of getting medical treatment sooner rather than later is that you can begin documenting your injury and its severity with medical records and bills for treatment.
Another step to take after being hurt on the property of another is to get as much evidence as you can, as soon as you can, of the circumstances that led to the accident.
Your attorney will be able to help you gather additional supporting evidence that you will need not only to prepare a strong case for negotiations but also to make sure that, if you need to, you can create a persuasive case for trial. This is important because the more likely it seems that you would prevail in court, the more likely the property owner will be willing to settle.
Because most slip-and-fall cases never go to trial, your Phoenix personal injury lawyer must be a skilled negotiator. Remember, the property owner’s insurance company will be motivated to deny or minimize your settlement claim.
When you hire a Phoenix slip and fall injury lawyer from Stone Rose Law, your experienced attorney will help you negotiate with insurance companies and their attorneys from the strongest possible position. We will help you gather the evidence you need to support your claims, including your medical bills, costs for rehabilitation, lost wages, property loss values, and more.
Call us today at (480) 498-8998 to talk with one of our experienced Arizona slip-and-fall injury attorneys.
