Savannah Slip And Fall Lawyer

As a close cousin to personal injury law, slip and fall law refers to any incident where an individual falls to the ground as a result of a preventable obstruction or other cause while on someone else’s property. As any experienced personal injury attorney could tell you, even a short-distance fall can lead to serious injuries if it ends with a hard landing on an unyielding surface, and falls from height can often cause permanently disabling or even life-threatening harm.

No matter how or where your fall happened, you should strongly consider seeking help from an experienced Savannah slip and fall lawyer as quickly as possible afterward. When you work with Joseph Steffen and his team, you will always be working directly with a community-focused human being who will put every bit of their legal experience and expertise toward getting you the best possible case result.

How Do I Know If I Have a Slip and Fall Claim?

Slip and fall accidents can occur for a variety of reasons, not all of which are viable for pursuing legal action. Some questions you can ask yourself to determine whether you might have a claim include:

• Was your incident caused by a preventable obstruction, occurrence, or state of the floor or building itself?
• Was your incident due to a temporary oversight by an employee or tenant, or even the result of long-term negligence by property owners and/or managers?
• What is the severity of your injury? To what extent does it impact your day-to-day life?

Answering these questions can determine the overall strength of your claims when it comes to making your case. Though people often trip and fall of their own accord, certain situations can be traced back to the systemic failure of the building owner or manager to keep the area safe. Our legal team believes that these cases are worth pursuing. Speaking with a trip and fall lawyer in Savannah is the best way to determine whether you have a viable claim for compensation.

What Makes a Landowner Legally Liable for a Fall?

Like most other personal injury claims, slip and fall cases are generally built around the theory of negligence. Under this theory, people who cause injuries to others by violating a duty of care can be made to pay financially for losses stemming from those injuries. Importantly, though, the duty of care that Georgia landowners owe to visitors on their property changes depending on each visitor’s purpose for being there.

Georgia landowners generally have no obligation to protect illegal trespassers from accidental harm, although they cannot do anything to intentionally harm trespassers, such as setting traps. On the other hand, landowners are expected to warn all lawful visitors about hazards they have direct knowledge of and fix those hazards reasonably quickly after discovering them.

As a Savannah slip and fall attorney can explain, landowners may also be liable for hazards they reasonably should have known about under certain circumstances. An expanded duty of care applies to people who are considered invitees because their presence on the landowner’s property is a financial benefit to the owner, with retail store customers being a textbook example.

Taking Action Within Filing Time Limits

Of course, even if there is overwhelming evidence proving that a landowner violated their duty of care toward a visitor and either caused or allowed that visitor to get hurt in a fall as a result, that evidence may not do the injured person any good if they wait too long to make use of it. This is because of the filing deadline set by the statute of limitations for personal injury claims, which is codified in the Official Code of Georgia §9-3-33.

Thanks to this section of state law, anyone who wants to sue over a slipping or tripping accident in Savannah, with or without a qualified lawyer’s help, must formally start the legal process within two years of when they were actually hurt. While there are some rare circumstances where this deadline may be tolled or extended a bit, courts will virtually never make exceptions and allow a claim to proceed if the plaintiff pursuing it tries to file after their applicable deadline has passed.

Contact a Savannah Slip and Fall Attorney Today

Losing your footing at just the wrong moment can cause life-altering harm in a matter of seconds—and often, that harm can be traced directly back to negligence by the owner or manager of the property where the accident occurred. However, knowing that a property owner is liable for your injury is one thing, and actually holding them accountable in civil court can be another entirely.

That is why it can be so essential to have help from a knowledgeable Savannah slip and fall lawyer when pursuing civil restitution for the effects of an incident like this. Call today to schedule a confidential consultation.