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Slip and Fall Attorneys in Clark, NJ Fighting for Injury Victims’ Rights in Essex County, Hudson County, Middlesex County, Union County, and Throughout NJ
Every day, slip and fall accidents in New Jersey leave victims with serious injuries. These accidents occur unexpectedly right in the middle of your ordinary routine, often while completing everyday tasks like shopping or even walking through a parking lot to work. When a slip and fall injury has disrupted your life, your next steps matter. With Team Law’s New Jersey slip and fall accident lawyers on your side, you can recover financial compensation to pay for medical treatments and help you regain control of your life.
Getting help for slip and fall injuries begins with a free, no-obligation consultation. To get your questions answered and take your first step toward being made financially whole, contact us today.
Slip and Fall Claims and Premises Liability Law in New Jersey
Many slip and fall accidents could have been prevented if only the property owner or lessee, or another negligent party, had responsibly maintained the property in a safe condition. State law in New Jersey imposes a legal duty on people and companies to keep their property reasonably safe for invited visitors and guests.
Who Is Responsible for a Slip and Fall Accident?
Under a theory of law known as premises liability, a person or party may be held liable when people get injured on their property due to negligence. NJ law extends this potential for liability to defendants such as the following:
- Private property owners
- Commercial property owners
- Managers
- Tenants or lessees
- Municipalities and government entities
There are nuances in New Jersey premises liability law. For example, business owners are generally held to a higher standard than private property owners. They may even have a duty to conduct reasonable inspections to proactively locate any dangers.
Additionally, not all visitors to a property are owed the same level of care. Trespassers, for instance, receive less protection than invited guests. Rather than having a duty to ensure the premises are safe for trespassers, the property owner generally only has to refrain from intentionally causing harm to a trespassing party.
Elements of Slip and Fall Liability Claims in New Jersey
In general, New Jersey property owners are considered negligent if they are aware of an unsafe condition and fail to correct it. Commercial property owners and lessees may even be held liable, under some circumstances, when they should have been aware of the safety hazard that led to a slip and fall and failed to take reasonable steps to discover it.
However, legally establishing the property owner’s negligence is more complicated. Your slip and fall attorneys in Clark, NJ, must provide evidence that proves the following elements of liability:
- A hazard or some dangerous condition existed on the property.
- The owner, lessee, or party responsible for maintaining the property either knew about this danger or reasonably should have known about it.
- The defendant failed to warn you of this danger, whether by placing warning signs or through other means.
- The property owner had sufficient time to either address the hazard or place sufficient warnings.
- You suffered an injury because of the hazard.
In slip and fall lawsuits, the burden of proving negligence is on the injured plaintiff. Only by establishing these elements through evidence can you hold the negligent property owner accountable for your slip and fall accident and recover compensation for your injuries. To meet these obligations successfully, you need the help of experienced slip and fall attorneys in Clark, NJ.
Common Causes of Slip and Fall Accidents
Any hazard that affects walking surfaces or visibility could potentially pose the risk of slipping and falling. Examples of common causes of slip and fall injuries include:
- Wet or slippery floors and stairs
- Construction site defects
- Damaged staircases, escalators, and elevators
- Uneven or non-standard stairs
- Missing or broken railings
- Broken or uneven sidewalks
- Hazards related to snow and ice
- Potholes in parking lots, parking garages and walkways
- Debris and tripping hazards
- Insufficient lighting
What makes slip and fall accidents so dangerous is that the hazards that cause them are often unexpected. You can’t avoid a hazard you’re not aware of, and you can’t brace yourself for a fall that you never saw coming.
Where Do Slip and Fall Accidents Happen?
Given the numerous and varied hazards that can lead to slips, trips, and falls, these accidents can occur in many different environments. They happen indoors and outdoors, on private properties and commercial properties.
Still, slip and fall incidents that give rise to legal claims for compensation have some elements in common. Generally, to have the grounds to pursue a slip and fall lawsuit, the accident would need to have occurred on someone else’s property and been caused by their negligence. Slip and fall claims are usually paid out by insurance companies, so there would need to be some form of coverage or another source from which you could seek compensation.
The New Jersey slip and fall accident lawyers at Team Law can assist with injuries that occur in numerous environments, including:
- Grocery stores
- Shopping malls
- Parking lots
- Parking garages
- Amusement parks
- Train or bus stations
- Public parks
We’re familiar with the challenges of holding both private and commercial property owners legally and financially responsible for their negligence in allowing safety hazards to injure invited guests.
What to Do After a Slip and Fall Accident
Your priorities following a slip and fall should revolve around preserving your health, your safety, and your legal rights. This means you’re going to need professional assistance in the form of both a doctor to diagnose and treat your injuries and a slip and fall accident lawyer to safeguard your legal rights. Seeing a doctor and contacting an attorney should be among your first steps once you leave the scene of the accident.
Even before you leave the scene, however, there’s an important task you should undertake if at all possible. Given the nature of slip and fall safety hazards, it’s especially important to document the scene immediately after the accident. To the extent that you’re able to do so, you should:
- Take pictures or videos of the accident scene
- Identify any video cameras that might have captured the accident
- Ask any witnesses to provide their contact information and statements of what they saw
Once the property owner learns of the hazard, the usual response is to fix the problem. Without documentation and quick action, valuable evidence that supports your claim can be lost. In addition to documenting the scene as extensively as possible at the moment, you should contact seasoned slip and fall attorneys in Clark, NJ, promptly so we can immediately begin investigating the accident and working to preserve evidence in your favor.
How Team Law Can Help With a Slip and Fall Claim
Although common, slip and fall cases are challenging and legally complex. Property owners and their insurance companies can mount any number of defenses in an attempt to redirect fault for the accident. Without knowledgeable New Jersey slip and fall accident lawyers building a strong case on your behalf, the defendant may manage to evade liability for the incident, leaving you without compensation for your damages.
At Team Law, we address potential challenges in your claim proactively by conducting a complete investigation of your case from the get-go. This investigation includes:
- Locating any photo or video surveillance of the area
- Interviewing witnesses
- Consulting with experts
- Inspecting the scene
The property owner or their insurer may argue that the hazard hadn’t existed for a sufficient time to allow the property owner to take action or that the hazard was “open and obvious,” making the accident your fault due to a failure to act carefully. We use the evidence uncovered through our meticulous investigation of your accident to refute these arguments and painstakingly establish the property owner’s negligence.
Why Choose Team Law as Your New Jersey Slip and Fall Accident Lawyers
At Team Law, our attorneys are here to get justice for clients injured in slip and fall accidents across NJ.
Extensive Experience
Our slip and fall accident attorneys have more than 60 years of experience helping injured victims get the justice they deserve. With certified civil trial lawyers and a certified workers’ compensation attorney on our team, as well as our decades of experience handling all kinds of complex claims involving slip, trip, and fall injuries, we’re prepared for whatever challenges could arise in your case.
National Recognition
Team Law’s attorneys have been recognized for excellent legal services at many levels, including earning a spot on the Super Lawyers list of the top 100 trial lawyers in America.
A History of Proven Results
Most importantly, we’ve left a trail of thousands of satisfied clients who have received the compensation they needed to move forward because of our help. To date, Team Law has recovered more than $650 million for our injured clients. Our results include, among many others, a $650,000 verdict in favor of a slip and fall victim who sustained life-changing injuries.
Skilled Legal Representation at No Upfront Cost
To ensure your legal matter never adds to the financial burden posed by slip and fall injuries, our team handles personal injury matters on a contingency basis. If we don’t win your case, you don’t pay.
Contact the New Jersey Slip and Fall Accident Lawyers at Team Law Today for a Free Case Evaluation
If you sustained injuries in a slip and fall accident, your choice of a lawyer could make the difference between getting the compensation you need to recover and walking away empty-handed. For help from seasoned slip and fall attorneys in Clark, NJ, contact Team Law online or call us today.
Frequently Asked Questions About Slip and Fall Accident Claims in New Jersey
A slip and fall accident occurs when a safety hazard on a property causes someone to sustain injuries due to slipping, tripping, or falling. While some victims walk away from such an incident relatively unscathed, slip and fall accidents have the potential to cause serious injury or wrongful death.
A slip and fall injury claim allows victims of these accidents to seek compensation for their injuries and other damages, such as medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering.
If someone else’s negligence caused your slip and fall injuries, you may be able to file a claim or lawsuit to recover financial compensation. A successful slip and fall lawsuit requires you to prove that the property owner or another defendant owed you a duty of care and, through their negligence, failed to uphold that duty and caused your accident.
Generally, a person who is an invited guest of any kind to a property, whether private or commercial, may have a claim against a negligent property owner. Shoppers and patrons can sue negligent retailers, restaurants, and owners of parking lots and parking garages. Patients may be able to sue the owners of medical facilities. Passengers could potentially have claims against the companies owning cruise ships.
The specifics of your situation matter, particularly regarding whether you’re able to prove the elements of the property owner’s liability for a slip and fall. To find out whether you have a claim, you need to discuss your unique situation with an experienced slip and fall accident attorney.
A slip and fall at work can be a particularly complicated matter. Under New Jersey law and the state’s workers’ compensation system, employees generally cannot sue their own employers for injuries sustained on the job. Instead, they’re entitled to benefits such as medical expenses and partial wage loss compensation through the no-fault workers’ compensation insurance policy.
However, if you sustained a slip and fall while on the job or on your way to work, you should still speak to knowledgeable New Jersey slip and fall accident lawyers about your rights and options. Not only can having an attorney be valuable for getting the full benefits you’re entitled to under the workers’ compensation program, but you may have grounds for a slip and fall lawsuit against a third party.
Examples of scenarios in which you may be able to sue a third party for a slip and fall include:
-Slipping and falling in a parking lot or garage, which may be owned or maintained by another party other than your employer
-Suffering a fall injury in the workplace due to the negligence of an outside vendor
-Getting injured while visiting a customer’s, client’s, or patient’s home or business property in the course of your work
Team Law’s New Jersey slip and fall accident lawyers can help you identify all potential courses of action and move forward with complicated claims arising out of work-related falls.
In cases involving privately owned property, whether a business or private home, you generally have two years from the date of the accident to file an injury claim under NJ law.
There are exceptions to this law. If your injury occurred on property owned by a state or local government, you may have to submit formal notice of a claim in as little as 90 days. Slip and fall accidents that occur on property owned by the Port Authority are subject to different limitations and might give you just one year to file a claim.
Because of these complicated rules, as well as the potential for evidence to become lost or destroyed as time passes, it’s in your best interest to contact a lawyer as soon as possible to evaluate your case.
Your slip and fall settlement amount will depend on the damages you sustained, as well as the extent to which you can prove the defendant’s negligence. While a minor slip and fall might result in only a few thousand dollars of damages, more severe accidents could leave you with damages that warrant six-figure or even seven-figure payouts.
Once our attorneys understand the full details of your case, we can advise you on the slip and fall accident settlement amounts that you could realistically expect in your circumstances. Our goal is always to pursue the maximum compensation possible for our clients.
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