Atlanta, GA Slip and Fall Lawyers

The Atlanta slip and fall lawyers at The Millar Law Firm have been representing clients injured in Georgia slip and fall accidents since before 1995. During that time, our lawyers have had the honor to recover millions of dollars in fair compensation for injured victims. After you or a loved one is injured in a trip and fall or a slip and fall accident, contact us today, we can help.

Where Do Atlanta Slip and Fall Accidents Occur?

Slip-and-fall accidents can and will happen nearly anywhere. However, in our over 29 years of experience, we have found that certain locations present a greater risk.

For example, slip-and-fall injuries more commonly occur:

  • When you are at a store or a restaurant – According to the Worldwide Cleaning Industry Association, one million restaurant customers and three million food service workers suffer a slip and fall in a restaurant each year in the U.S.
  • In a parking lot – Black ice, insufficient lighting or broken concrete or asphalt often contribute to the risk of a fall in a parking lot.
  • On stairs and decks – Broken railings or unsafe stair treads contribute to the risk of fall injuries on the stairs. A 2012 study published in the Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics reported that more than 93,000 emergency room visits per year are caused by injuries related to stairs.
  • On sidewalks – Sidewalks can become damaged over time, leading to uneven pavement or other fall risks.
  • Visiting homes – When a person invites you onto their property, a homeowner has the duty to make sure the area is safe from difficult to see hazards such as holes or uneven or broken walkways.
  • When you are on an escalator or elevator – A 2009 CBS News Report indicated that an estimated 10,000 people per year suffer an injury on an escalator. While elevator injuries are less common, WebMD indicates that kids and teens experience around 1,940 elevator injuries annually.
  • On the job – when you are working – Falls account for 16 percent of all workers’ compensation claims and 26 percent of all workers’ compensation costs, according to Insurance industry studies.
  • At nursing homes or in hospitals – The NFSI indicates that a high percentage of nursing home residents fall each year.
  • Office buildings – Many trip and slip and fall incidents happen in office buildings, to both visitors and employees working there alike.  Many slip and trip and falls take place in bathrooms with leaking fixtures or on lobby floors that are wet and slippery.  Such incidents must be properly and quickly investigated before valuable evidence such as entrance surveillance video can disappear.
locations of trip and fall accidents

Atlanta Trip and Slip and Fall Accidents We Handle

While slip and fall accidents can happen almost anywhere, they are most likely to occur when maintenance problems exist or when a building is not designed in a safe and effective way.  Trip and Fall and Slip-and-Fall accidents that our Lawyers handle include:

  • Cases involving wet and/or slippery substances on floors
  • Fallen merchandise, or improperly displayed items in stores creating a tripping hazard
  • Dips or uneven height of floors or pavement
  • Untreated ice on sidewalk or roadways, including “black ice” cases
  • Debris or other tripping hazards in a store aisle, hallway, sidewalk, walking path, etc.
  • Torn or ripped or uneven carpeting
  • Tripping hazards from uneven concrete, pavement, stairs or surfaces
  • Holes, loose cover plates, manholes or potholes on floors, pavement or ground
  • Negligently placed extension cords or cables making a trip hazard
  • Dim lights or failure to have working lighting
  • Broken hand-rails or railings

Injured From a Fall? Get Injury Financial Compensation

Any type of slip and fall, trip and fall, stumble and fall or misstep and fall can be potentially serious. These are all classified as falls on the same level, as opposed to falls that occur when you topple from a height or raised surface.

The majority of trip-and-fall and slip-and-fall cases involve falls on the same level, according to the National Floor Safety Institute.

Injuries Caused By Slip and Fall Injuries in Atlanta

When you experience a slip and fall, you can suffer a wide variety of different injuries depending on your age, how far you fell and how you landed. Some of the most common types of slip and fall injuries include:

  • Broken bones – Many people who experience a fall will break their wrist as a result of using their hands to stop their fall. However, we see many different injuries, depending on how a person lands.
  • Hip fractures – Hip fractures are especially common – and especially devastating – among the elderly. Many hip breaks result from falls, often from landing sideways and striking the hip, the CDC says.  And, unfortunately, about one of five elderly hip fracture victims dies within one year of being injured.  When this happens, the victim’s family may have a wrongful death from slip or trip and fall case.
  • Knee injuries – Torn tendons and ligaments are common injuries from slip-and-fall accidents which can be proven with the help and assistance of a medical expert, such as an orthopaedic surgeon.
  • Shoulder injuries – Torn rotator cuffs and bursitis and frozen shoulder are some of the common shoulder injuries we see in our law practice from trip and fall cases.
  • Brain injuries – Brain injuries can range from a concussion to a serious and long-lasting case of traumatic brain injury, or TBI. A TBI can cause memory lapses, mood changes, cognitive impairment, poor judgment and headaches and post-concussion syndrome.  Traumatic Brain Injury cases are generally proven with the help of a neurologist.
  • Neck injuries – Neck injuries can range from whiplash to a broken neck. Whiplash occurs when the neck is suddenly snapped forward and back causing injury to the soft tissues including the ligaments and muscles of the shoulder and neck.
  • Back injuries – Back injuries can include a slipped or herniated disc, vertebrae damage, soft tissue damage or other issues. Back injuries often cause significant pain and can be difficult to treat.
  • Spinal cord injuries – A complete spinal cord injury can cause total paralysis, while an incomplete spinal cord injury resulting from a trip or slip and fall can cause partial paralysis to the body  at and below the area of nerve injury.

Hiring an Atlanta Slip and Fall Attorney – Recover Compensation for Injuries

The cost of an accident can be devastating for both you and your loved ones. The injuries sustained in these cases are often very serious, resulting in paralysis or brain damage which leaves someone forever changed physically as well emotionally; they’re no longer able to provide financial stability that was previously provided by employment earnings alone.

Proving Trip and Slip and Fall Cases in Georgia

The Atlanta slip/trip and fall attorneys at The Millar Law Firm can assist injured victims in recovering compensation after an injury has occurred.

Proving trip and fall and slip-and-fall cases takes special expertise.  The burden is on the injured victim (or family) to show the owner or other person was negligent and had superior knowledge of the hazard.

Georgia law holds property owners and managers accountable to their visitors or invitees to keep the “premises and approaches” reasonably safe.  Customers at a store or other place of business (hotel, doctor’s office, etc.) are generally considered “invitees.”  Merchants have an obligation to ensure their safety by regularly checking or inspecting their premises or store for any potential hazards and by correcting them or warning guests of the danger. Casual visitors to homes, which may be neighbors or other social guests are usually known as “licensees.” The duty owed to a licensee is much lower and it may be harder to prove your case if you are a licensee, as the only duty owed to a licensee by the owner is not to willfully or wantonly injure the licensee.  O.C.G.A. 51-3-2.

Quote about property owners

To win your slip or trip and fall case, first, you’ll need to establish what your status was – invitee or licensee. You’ll need to prove that the property owner or occupier was more careless than they should have been. For example, you’ll need to show the store or property owner knew or should have known about the danger (had notice), had a chance to warn you or correct the problem, and failed to do so.  If you are a licensee, you will need to prove that the owner willfully or wantonly injured you.

When an attorney from The Millar Firm represents you, we will ensure you have the proof you need to make your slip and fall case. We can help you find engineers and other expert witnesses, subpoena maintenance records and otherwise gather evidence that the property owner should be held liable. We will work to negotiate a settlement when a fair resolution is possible outside of court, and we are always ready to go to trial to represent you.

Atlanta Slip and Fall Accidents at Work

Falls are a top cause of workplace injuries. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 666 workers died in 2011 due to falling on the jobsite. These deaths represent 14 percent of all workplace deaths, and 108 of them occurred due to slips, trips or other falls on the same elevation.

The high number of workplace falls occurs due to the inherent dangers in many workplaces, especially in the mining and construction industries. However, employers may also contribute to the fall risk by not taking proper safety precautions. In 2011, for example, OSHA indicated that the most frequent cause of workplace citations was a violation of fall-protection rules. OSHA guidelines are established in order to keep workers safe. When employers fail to abide by the regulations, serious consequences can result.

Obtaining Compensation for Atlanta Slip and Fall Accidents

When you’ve experienced a slip and fall, whether at work or elsewhere, you may be entitled to compensation. A workplace slip and fall can result in a workers’ compensation claim, which does not require you to prove any type of negligence on the part of your employer. It is enough that the slip and fall happened at work.

For most slip-and-fall cases, however, you will need to prove:

  • Duty of care:  The property owner or person occupying the property owed you a duty of care. The duty owed varies, depending upon why you were on the property. If you were a customer, the store owner needs to regularly inspect the premises and make sure it is safe or warn you of dangers. If you were an invited guest to someone’s home, the homeowner needs to correct or warn you of any dangers in the home that they know of or should have known about.
  • Notice: The property owner had notice of the dangerous situation and time to correct it, but the owner failed to correct or warn you about it.
  • Negligence:  The injury happened due to the property owner’s failure to keep the premises safe.
  • You were being careful:  The dangerous situation wasn’t “open and obvious,” which means you didn’t walk into the dangerous situation on purpose.

Get Slip and Fall Legal Advice: Contact an Atlanta Slip and Fall Accident Lawyer

At The Millar Law Firm we offer a free evaluation of your case. If we are able to represent you, your case will be handled on contingent-fee.  That is, if we do not recover monetary compensation for you, there will be no legal fees.

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