Slip and Fall Injuries

Injured in a Slip and Fall Accident?

If a business is going to open its doors to the public, it has a duty to make sure that it keeps its facility reasonably safe. This means that owners and employees must implement and follow procedures to regularly inspect the premises and address any risks that may result in injuries to customers. This can mean quickly cleaning up spills, putting out warning signs if floors are wet, or promptly addressing any other hazardous conditions. Unfortunately, many businesses DO NOT always take reasonable care—and YOU may have experienced a slip and fall accident as a result!

If you or a loved one suffered serious injuries in a slip and fall accident, you may have questions about what to do next, and you may not even know where to start. Please know that the Rucker Law Firm, offers a completely FREE consultation so you can learn about your rights as a slip and fall victims. Someone is available to take your call for free, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so call us right now at 713-589-2960

There is NO cost to get a free consultation and there is NO reason not to act right now to protect your rights. If you decide to hire us to represent you, you pay us nothing up front, and you will pay absolutely nothing at all unless and until we’ve won your case. Our Houston slip and fall attorneys regularly help people just like you find justice and compensation after an unexpected accident and injury on a regular basis. We’re ready to help!

Why Choose Our Team?

These types of cases can be complex and businesses often employ expensive legal teams to wriggle out of paying victims. But Hamilton Rucker and his team know their tricks, and they have decades of combined experience winning these types of cases and ensuring slip and fall accident victims get what they deserve.

Hamilton Rucker and his team believe in respect, integrity and family values.
Our legal team will always be there for you!
With decades of combined experience representing victims of slip and fall accidents, we will work tirelessly to recover as much as possible on your claim.
You don’t pay us anything unless we win your case!

These are only a few of the many things that set us apart from other law firms. We receive recognition throughout Texas and across the United States for the quality of representation we provide to each and every client! Call us to learn more about our firm’s values and dedication to our clients.

Choose a Law Firm With Strength and Experience

Slip and fall cases are notoriously difficult to pursue. To win a slip and fall case in Texas, you must prove three basic things:

That the party responsible for the premises knew or should have known about the dangerous condition
That the responsible party failed to fix or warn about the dangerous condition
That the dangerous condition caused the injury

Unfortunately, the law in Texas tends to lean on the side of the business rather than the side of the injured party. Companies and their insurance companies know this, and they make it difficult for victims to get compensation at every turn. You want a law firm that not only has experience proving slip and fall claims but who also has the strength and determination to stand up to corporations and their insurers on your behalf!

Furthermore, slip and fall accidents typically result in specific physical injuries that may differ from your typical personal injury case. Insurance companies are ready to challenge how your injuries occurred and the severity of your condition. Our legal team understands the pain and suffering you’ve experienced due to your injuries, on top of your medical bills, lost income, and other financial losses. We’re ready to prove the FULL value of your claim to unwilling insurance companies!

Slip and fall accidents can be significantly more complicated than you might EVER imagine, and not every personal injury lawyer knows how to successfully handle this type of case. For this reason, you need an aggressive and experienced slip and fall legal team from the office Hamilton Rucker, Attorney at Law, to help you navigate the obstacles of your claim and stand up for your legal rights.

Slip and Fall Injuries and Losses Can Be Serious

Slips and falls are often assumed to be minor accidents—after all, almost everyone has taken a spill at some point. Many times, slip and falls will simply startle people. Physically, they may suffer little more than small bruises (or bruised egos) and may simply get up and move on with their lives. Unfortunately, this is not the case in all slip and fall accidents, because this type of accident can cause surprisingly severe injuries to some victims.

A person who slips can fall directly forward, backward, or to one side or the other. No matter which way you fall, you rarely have much time to react and catch yourself, and trying to catch yourself can actually result in additional injuries—such as a broken hand or wrist—from the impact with the floor. Because most slip and fall victims have very little control over how—or where—they land, they can suffer a serious traumatic blow when they hit the floor or another nearby object.

Many slip and fall injuries require immediate medical attention and may need extensive and costly treatments. Furthermore, the National Safety Council (NSC) indicates that falls—including slips, trips, and falls—are the third-leading cause of accidental fatal injuries in the United States. Serious injuries that may result from slips and falls include:

Traumatic brain injuries – A traumatic brain injury—commonly referred to as a TBI—can occur any time a person hits or suddenly jolted the head. The damage to the brain tissue can range from mild to severe, though any category of a TBI can have serious effects on a victim. Concussions are a form of a mild TBI, and even a concussion requires medical treatment to prevent any complications or lasting effects. More severe brain injuries can cause ongoing cognitive, physical, and behavioral impairments that can last for months or years and require extensive rehabilitation.
Fractured and broken bones – Many people have broken a bone, and often bones are resilient and completely given time. However, certain types of fractures can cause substantially more serious problems. For example, compound or open fractures often require emergency surgery—and victims may need several surgeries, may not be able to use the damaged body parts for months, and may never fully regain normal use of those body parts. In addition, older adults who slip and fall are at a particularly high risk of breaking a hip, which is a dangerous injury for seniors that often requires surgery.
Soft tissue injuries – Bones are far from the only body parts that a fall can injure. Falls can seriously damage soft tissue—including muscles, ligaments, and tendons. Awkward falls can often twist or stretch certain body parts in abnormal and forceful ways. This can result in serious soft tissue sprains, strains, or tears. These painful injuries often require periods of physical therapy and limit a person’s ability to move as usual and complete regular activities at home or work.
Neck and back injuries – Your neck and back work hard to support the upper half of your body every time you move. An injury to part of your neck or back can cause serious pain with almost any movement and can, therefore, restrict your movements. Neck and back injuries can also have unexpected effects, including headaches, sleep problems, numb or tingling extremities, and more. In addition, these injuries can keep you from working, holding your kids, carrying or lifting items, or even from caring for yourself.
Spinal cord injuries – While an injury to any part of your neck or back can hurt, the most serious type of injury in this part of the body is often to the spinal cord. Your spinal cord is vital to the functioning of most of your body, and any injury to the spinal cord can damage functioning below the injured point. Spinal cord injuries can vary in severity, though doctors should immediately evaluate, stabilize, and monitor any damage to the spine. These injuries often require long periods of hospitalization and extensive rehabilitative therapies. Some spinal cord injury victims are left permanently paralyzed.

The above are just some of the many injuries that slip and fall victims can sustain—and that can immediately change their lives forever. Any of these injuries can result in overwhelming losses, including:

Medical bills for treatments already received
The estimated costs for future or ongoing treatments—perhaps for the rest of someone’s life
Lost wages if the injuries kept someone from working
Lost future earnings power if the injury prevented someone from returning to a previous job, forcing someone to take a lower-paying position, or completely destroyed someone’s ability to work
Physical pain and suffering caused by the injury
Emotional trauma from the injury or from the accident itself
Permanent effects of an injury, including impairments, disfigurement, or disabilities

Of course, losses can differ significantly from one case to another depending on the nature and severity of the injuries. You need a law firm on your side that will carefully account for your many unique losses, both past and future. Texas slip and fall accident lawyer Hamilton Rucker and his team understand how to calculate your claim and fight for maximum compensation for every single one of his clients. Our firm will stand up for your rights as a slip and fall victim!

Remember, we offer a FREE consultation for slip and fall claims, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so call us RIGHT NOW at 713-589-2960.

Slip and Falls for Seniors

Slip and fall accidents can be dangerous for anyone, but the population of seniors is at a particularly high risk of suffering serious fall-related injuries. The Texas Department of Health and Human Services reports the following:

In one year, Texas hospitals admitted 36,337 seniors for fall-related injuries
1,495 seniors did not survive their fall-related injuries that year
16 percent of hospitalizations were for traumatic brain injury (TBI)
About one-third of senior adults in Texas have fallen
The risk of falling continues to increase steadily with age

In addition to TBIs, many seniors also fracture a hip when they slip and fall. This can be a serious injury with many complications and restrictions for older adults. Many fall victims with fractured hips require surgery, which can be inherently risky for patients of advanced age. The recovery process from a TBI or broken hip can also be significantly harder and longer for older patients. Many people move to an assisted living facility during their rehabilitation, and some people are never able to make it back to their own homes. It is safe to say that a slip and fall accident can COMPLETELY and PERMANENTLY change a senior adult’s life.

No matter what your age, you deserve full compensation if you fall because of a hazard at a store or business. Too many older adults assume that insurance companies will challenge their claims due to their age and, unfortunately, they are probably right. This is because insurance companies will find ANY way possible to challenge ANY claim. With the right law firm on your side, you can fight for your rightful recovery, no matter what your age may be. If a negligent business changed your life for the worse, you deserve compensation, and your age should never matter!

Our law office works with clients of all ages, from young children to seniors. We won’t let the insurance company take advantage of you, as we will be handling every step of your claim. Call today to learn more and discuss your options.

Common Causes of Slip and Falls

To seek compensation for your slip and fall injuries and losses, you must show that another party’s negligence caused your accident and injury. Negligence happens when a party breaches a duty of care, and that breach causes an injury. In slip and fall cases, negligence often involves:

A property owner or business occupying a certain property that has a duty of care to keep the premises safe for visitors and customers
A property owner or business that fails to keep the property in a safe condition, thereby breaching its duty of care
A hazard on the property or in the business that leads to your slip and fall injuries
The damages you incurred as a result of your accident and injuries, including your medical bills, lost income, and noneconomic losses such as pain and suffering

A property owner or business can breach the duty of care in many different ways, which can then result in a slip and fall. Most often, this involves allowing a hazard to exist on the premises that the owner or occupant should have discovered through prudent inspection or discovered and did not rectify. Some conditions that lead to slips and falls:

Wet or slippery floors due to spills or cleaning
Obstacles jutting out into walkways or in the middle of the floor
Wires or cords not properly secured to the walls
Carpet or flooring that is overly worn out and slippery
Slick ramps or stairs
Failure to warn customers or visitors of known hazards that owners or occupants cannot immediately fix

In a slip and fall case, a property or business owner or manager must have known about the hazard or at least SHOULD have known about the hazard if they had properly inspected the premises. If something had fallen 10 seconds before you fell and the owner had no time to remove the hazard or warn you about the hazard, you generally cannot hold the owner liable for the accident.

Too often, owners try to claim they could not have known about the hazard when, in reality, they should have known about and fixed it. For example, imagine you were walking through Walmart and you suddenly slip on a piece of clothing that fell off the hanger onto the ground. Of course, the store manager claims that the clothing had JUST fallen, so there was no way the store could have known to clean it up. However, the video surveillance footage in the store shows the clothing fell 30 minutes prior to your slip and fall, and an employee should have inspected the area within those 30 minutes to eliminate the hazard.

Hamilton Rucker and his legal team know how to prove liability in even the most contested cases. Often, this requires investigating what happened prior to the fall, store policies, and more. When our legal team knows a business is to blame for your injuries, we WON’T give up fighting to prove it.

If you’ve been seriously injured in a slip and fall accident, we’re available to answer your call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Call us right now at 713-589-2960.

What to Do After Your Slip and Fall Accident

If you are visiting a business or a property and you slip and fall, you can help protect your rights to compensation by taking certain steps whenever possible.

First, if you need emergency treatment, that should be your number one priority. Always address your injuries first and if this means an ambulance ride, you should take one.
If you can stay at the scene for a few minutes before heading to the emergency room, take pictures of the hazard that caused your fall with your phone if possible. Take pictures of the entire area, as you never know what may be relevant to proving negligence on the part of the business.
Report what happened to management so they can file an incident report regarding what happened. This can also serve as evidence that the fall occurred if the store tries to dispute the incident.
Head to the emergency room as SOON as you can after reporting the fall. Getting a timely diagnosis of all your injuries, as well as treatment recommendations, in official emergency medical records can help you prove your injuries at a later date.

Finally, you should always call an experienced personal injury law firm as soon as possible after your fall. It is never too early to begin discussing your legal rights and options, and your law firm can get to work investigating your fall and identifying liable parties. We know that your full attention might be on your injuries, medical treatment, and physical recovery, and it is all too easy to put off finding the right law firm.

The good news is that you don’t have to look ANY further than the Rucker Law Firm and his team of experienced lawyers and legal professionals. 713-589-2960.

Call for Help With Your Slip and Fall Insurance Claim!

Most people don’t realize they can file an insurance claim after a slip and fall accident. Just like other drivers should have auto insurance to cover crashes, stores and businesses should have adequate insurance policies to cover accidents that happen on the premises. While these policies may be substantial, these insurance companies are notorious for making life difficult for claimants and denying them the payment they fully deserve.

Even though insurance companies promise to be there when someone files a claim, these insurers are FIRST and FOREMOST companies. This means their TOP priority is always to maximize profits. The fewer claims they pay out, the higher their profits! This means they approach the claims process ready to limit payments whenever they can.

Insurers for large companies and store chains are skilled at taking advantage of injured claimants. Walmart even has its own insurance company called Claims Management, Inc., which is solely dedicated to handling claims against the store and limiting liability for the corporation. This giant billion-dollar corporation is willing to go to great lengths creating its own company JUST to avoid paying customers injured in its stores. It’s an understatement to say that many businesses and corporate insurance companies and ruthless when it comes to covering up mistakes and preventing liability for accidents like slips and falls.

The following are only some of the many ways a company’s insurer may try to limit your payment:

Challenging liability for the accident – Liability is often hotly contested in many slip and fall accidents. Many people may lose their balance and fall on their own, and insurance companies will certainly claim this is what happened. They will deny a hazard existed or that the hazard caused your fall. They will try to put the blame on you, which eliminates the responsibility to pay a claim.

Our team of lawyers and legal professionals regularly work to present clear evidence of negligence in slip and fall cases, which can require a thorough investigation and consulting with experts. We know how to prove that the store should be responsible for your losses, which can be a legally-complicated task. This is only reason number one why you should call for help with your claim!

Doubting your injuries – Even if a business admits liability for a fall, the insurance company can still challenging the amount of damages you’re claiming. For example, if you claim medical bills for various treatments, the insurer may question whether all of those treatments were necessary for your type of injuries. They may claim that your injuries weren’t serious enough to cause pain and suffering or to justify your days or weeks of missed work. In some cases, the insurance adjuster may doubt whether the fall even caused your stated injuries or whether you had pre-existing conditions.

When you’re dealing with serious and painful injuries, as well as restrictions at work and home due to your injuries, it can be devastating when an insurance company claims your condition is not as serious as you say. Having them doubt you in an already difficult time can be heartbreaking. Remember that hope is never lost in this situation, as we know how to handle slip and fall insurance claims! We use your medical records, the testimony of your doctors and other medical experts, and any other necessary resource to prove the severity of your injuries and the extent of your losses.

Convincing you to accept much less than you deserve – An insurance adjuster will surely notice when a claimant does not have legal representation, and will likely tell you that you don’t need to call a lawyer. This is NOT true. The adjuster wants you to trust them because they know that can usually get unrepresented claimants to accept far less than claimants with a knowledgeable legal team.

There are many ways an adjuster can convince you to accept a low settlement. First, they can promise the claim will be processed quickly if you agree to accept the first offer. This is a TRICK! They know you want to get the process over with and they know the first offer will be low. They may also continually delay the processing of your claim until you become so fed up that you’ll feel ready to accept any offer they throw out there. Trust us, the insurance company does all of this on purpose to save itself money by keeping money out of YOUR pockets!

It is safe to say that you should never accept a slip and fall insurance settlement without first discussing the matter with an experienced lawyer. First, we will examine all of your losses and calculate the full value of your claim. Many people underestimate their losses when they file their own claim, as they fail to consider future losses or non-economic losses. Our team of lawyers and legal professionals knows how to account for ALL your past and future damages to ensure you aren’t left having to pay for anything out of pocket.

We also know how to handle insurance adjusters and how to combat their tricks and tactics. Often, simply having our firm on your side will show the insurance company that you mean business and that you won’t back down. They know they can’t play their usual games with us, so it can often result in a fair settlement offer in a shorter period of time. Even if they fail to make the right offer up front, we can identify that the offer is insufficient and insist on more. We have our own negotiating tactics when dealing with difficult insurance companies.

In some cases, an insurer will refuse to cooperate and make a fair offer. Some lawyers may push you to accept the final offer, even if it’s inadequate, so they can resolve the case. However, our legal team is never afraid to escalate the matter and file a personal injury claim in court. Sometimes, the filing of a lawsuit will convince the insurance company to come around. We know how to handle the litigation process so we can best fight for the full compensation for each of our clients!