Did you suffer a slip and fall injury in San Francisco? If so, you may be able to seek compensation to help cover your medical expenses. Some slip and fall injuries are serious enough that victims are unable to fully return to work or return to work at all. In those cases, an experienced San Francisco personal injury attorney from OnderLaw may be able to pursue compensation on your behalf for lost wages, as well.
Slip and fall injuries in San Francisco can occur inside a business or residence or outdoors on sidewalks, streets, and parking lots. Conditions contributing to slip and fall injuries include wet and slippery surfaces, potholes, badly maintained surfaces indoors and outdoors, uneven sidewalks, or poor lighting that impairs visibility.
Slip and fall injuries are common in San Francisco, but many could be prevented. Employees, customers, and visitors have a right to expect that homeowners, businesses, and local governments pay ample attention to safety measures and to provide adequate and visible warnings of any conditions that could lead to slip and fall injuries.
At OnderLaw, we don’t believe that slip and fall injury victims should be further victimized by shouldering the costs of medical treatment and lost wages because someone else was negligent. We offer San Francisco slip and fall injury victims a free consultation to go over the facts of your case to see how we can help. Give us a call and let us go to work for you.
At OnderLaw, we combine our legal team’s nationally recognized expertise with a passion for seeking justice for our clients. This winning combination has helped us negotiate successful settlements and win verdicts for our clients to help them through some of the most difficult periods of their lives as they battle to overcome their slip and fall injuries.
A San Francisco business or personal residence owner, or their insurance company, may try to convince you that your slip and fall injury was “just an accident.” Property or employer insurance investigators may try to blame your injuries on something you were carrying or claim that you were distracted and not paying attention. They may claim that you knew or had plenty of warning about the hazard that caused your slip and fall injury.
In truth, most slip and fall accidents could be prevented, and you should not be suffering because someone created conditions that led to you slipping and falling. They may be liable for your injuries and any losses you are suffering and should be held accountable.
At OnderLaw, we have the experience and resources to conduct an investigation to determine whether there was negligence that caused your slip and fall injury. We can obtain accident and medical records, any available witness statements or photographs, and security footage.
This evidence can help us determine such things as whether the lighting was adequate, if the cleaning crew was washing the floor at a busy time, if you had proper notice of a wet floor or spilled substance, or whether there was a structural issue such as unrepaired cracks, an uneven walking surface, and loose floorboards or handrails. The more evidence we can gather in your favor, the more leverage we have to negotiate a favorable settlement for you or to take the case to trial.
For almost two decades, OnderLaw founder James G. Onder has been helping slip and fall victims seek and find justice so they can get on with their lives. He and his partners have earned high ratings in ethics and client results. They count being recognized as a Super Lawyer and in the Million Dollar Advocates Forum for their success in winning million dollar settlements among their many other professional awards and recognitions.
The legal team at OnderLaw doesn’t show up to work each day for the awards, however. They show up because their clients are their priority, and seeking justice is what drives them to get the best possible outcome for the people of San Francisco who need it.
Don’t let your slip and fall injury cause you even greater strain and hardship in your life. The longer you wait, the more difficult it can be to locate the evidence we need to help you with your San Francisco slip and fall injury case.
Many workers suffer slip and fall injuries on the job and, in fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics ranked work-related “falls, slips, and trips” as the number two reason for missing work in the U.S. in 2017-18, behind over-exertion. However, non-workers like customers and pedestrians can also suffer serious injuries due to poorly maintained or dangerous surfaces.
California has a premises liability law that governs the responsibilities of those who own or occupy properties in San Francisco to keep them safe from hazards. This responsibility can also apply to public places, like sidewalks. If your slip and fall injury occurred on a sidewalk in San Francisco, that does not necessarily mean the city is responsible for your slip and fall injury. That liability could fall to the county or even to the private property owner next to the sidewalk, as set out by California law.
Other causes of slip and fall accidents include:
Since many of these issues are temporary or can be repaired or replaced, it’s important that you contact an experienced San Francisco slip and fall injury attorney as soon after your injury as possible so that we can collect the evidence before it disappears.
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), one out of every five falls in this country results in either a broken bone or serious head injury. The National Floor Safety Institute puts the number of people who experience broken bones from falls at 5% of all those injured in falls.
Many people who suffer broken bones cannot work until they heal, or they incur greater expenses due to some mobility loss. The negative impact of a head injury is often greater and can even result in a permanent disability and inability to work. The older you are, the more serious the impact of a slip and fall injury can be.
In addition to broken bones, other common injuries from slip and fall accidents include:
Even a minor slip and fall injury can create a financial burden because of medical bills and lost wages. Speak to an experienced San Francisco slip and fall injury attorney today about getting compensation to cover your losses.
Proving negligence against a property owner or occupant in San Francisco can be difficult, which is why we recommend you seek a consultation with experienced slip and fall injury attorneys as soon after your accident as possible. You also run into statute of limitations issues. In most San Francisco slip and fall injury cases, you have two years from the date of your fall to file a lawsuit, unless the property is owned by the city of San Francisco or other public entity, in which case you only have six months.
You and your attorney will have to prove that the property owner or occupant knew about the dangerous condition leading to your slip and fall injury and did not take adequate steps to prevent or correct it or to warn others.
In public places like sidewalks and parking lots, you need to determine who the responsible party may be, whether it’s the city of San Francisco or a nearby private business. Even these types of cases can get complicated. For example, the city may be responsible for the sidewalk but may not own the tree whose roots created the walking hazard.
The property owner’s insurance company may try to assign partial blame to you, the injured victim, by pointing to the shoes you were wearing, claiming that you weren’t following pedestrian laws, or pointing to a distraction, such as your phone. In California, if you are found to be partially at fault, your compensation award can be reduced by your percentage of fault under the state’s pure comparative negligence law.
Slip and fall injuries are common, but successfully proving liability, with both ownership and negligence issues, is rarely cut and dried. As soon as the experienced San Francisco slip and fall injury attorneys at OnderLaw can evaluate your case, we will fight hard to gather the evidence we need to get you the most desirable outcome. You deserve a fighting chance to get your life back, and we want to give it to you. Give us a call today.
