5 Important Things To Remember After A Slip-And-Fall Accident

Slip-and-fall accidents can happen just about anywhere. You could lose your footing on a department floor store that's been waxed too heavily. You could catch the heel of your shoe in a snag in the carpet at your doctor's office. You could take a misstep in a badly-maintained parking lot outside of your grocery store. Any fall has the potential to leave you with serious injuries -- ranging from broken bones and fractured hips to spinal cord damage and traumatic brain injuries.

If you're one of the 8 million or so people that end up in an emergency room after a slip-and-fall accident, it's important to remember these tips if you hope to claim compensation for your injuries later:

1. If at all possible, get photos of the accident scene as quickly as possible. If you're in no shape to manage it yourself, ask a friend or relative to take photos. They may prove invaluable, for example, if the owner of the parking lot you fell in does a quick repair job on all the potholes or the worn-out carpet on the stairs you fell on suddenly gets replaced. Property owners are not above such tricks in order to try to get out from under their liability for someone's fall.

2. Make an incident report to the manager or owner of the property on which you fell. Don't give out many details except when you fell, what you believe caused the fall (a wet floor, broken pavement, etc.), and the fact that you are injured. If you delay making a report, the insurance company involved may try to say you were actually injured somewhere else. 

3. Do not give a recorded statement or written statement to the insurance company or property owner if you are contacted. You are under no obligation to do so, and it's not in your best interest to give anyone a formal statement that can later be used in court against you when you are in pain, possibly medicated with narcotics, and still mentally processing what happened to you.

4. Do not sign any release of information forms for your medical information until after you have spoken to a slip-and-fall attorney. Many insurance companies will try to sneak an overly-broad release form into an accident victim's hands in order to go digging through their past medical history. That's a fishing expedition for some reason to deny your claim based on your prior medical history.

5. Preserve any evidence you may have. The shoes you were wearing should be put aside -- their condition is bound to become part of any slip-and-fall case. You'll need to show that your footwear didn't cause the accident by being in a state of disrepair. Also, consider preserving the clothes you were wearing when you fell -- unwashed. They may contain evidence of something that was on the ground that caused your fall, like an oily substance or something that had spilled.

Finally, contact slip-and-fall attorney services as soon as practicable after your accident for additional advice and as protection against an aggressive insurance company that's probably eager to close your claim.