Insurance companies often try to downplay slip and fall injuries. However, if you have experienced a slip and fall, you know how devastating it can be. You may suddenly face major medical expenses, lost time at work and significant pain and suffering. Fortunately, you can turn to Cain Law to give your slip and fall case the serious attention that it demands.
About Our Slip and Fall Lawyers
For more than 30 years, our law firm has protected the rights of personal injury victims and their families throughout Oklahoma and Oklahoma City. You can count on us to make sure that you will get the treatment you need so you can get better, aggressively investigate your injuries and pursue the maximum amount of compensation for you. Your future is important to us.
To learn more, contact us through our offices in Oklahoma City and Edmond and receive a timely and free consultation about your case.
Why Get Help from an Oklahoma City Slip and Fall Attorney?
If you suffer a slip and fall injury, you typically will file a claim with the property owner’s insurance company. Unfortunately, if you do not have a lawyer at your side, the insurer may try to take advantage of you. For instance, the insurer may ask you to give a statement that it eventually tries to use against you, or the insurer may try to get you to accept a settlement offer that fails to compensate you for all of your losses.
This is why you should get help from an experienced personal injury lawyer from Cain Law. Our founding attorney, Monty Cain, is a member of the National Association of Top 100 Trial Lawyers and Million Dollar Advocates Forum. He understands how insurance companies work and knows how to protect our clients’ rights. You can count on Monty and the rest of our legal team to fight for full and fair compensation for you.
Proving Slip and Fall Liability in Oklahoma
Our slip and fall liability lawyers will work hard to establish each of the necessary elements to prove your case. Those basic elements include:
Duty
Oklahoma law requires you to prove that the property owner actually owed you a particular duty of care. The level of duty owed depends on your status as a visitor to the property. Visitors generally fall within four classes:
- Invitee – An invitee is someone a property owner invites onto the property. A customer at a store or restaurant is an example. Owners owe a duty to keep the property “reasonably safe” for invitees. For example, a grocery store has a duty to keep its floor reasonably safe for its customers. A grocery store has a duty to either remove or warn its customers of any dangerous objects on the floor, such as banana peels, that store employees actually knew about or should have known about in the exercise of reasonable care.
- Licensee – A licensee is someone who enters property for a personal purpose and with the owner’s permission. Owners owe these visitors a duty to notify them of dangerous conditions that may not be easy to spot or identify.
- Trespasser – A trespasser is someone who enters property without the owner’s permission. Owners must refrain from willfully or wantonly injuring these visitors.
- Child trespasser – It gets tricky when trespassers are children. Owners generally owe no higher duty to protect trespassing children. However, when the property has an “attractive nuisance,” the property owner may be liable for a child’s injuries under certain circumstances. An attractive nuisance is an artificial condition on the premises that is reasonably likely to attract a child and poses an unreasonable risk of injury or death. Pools, trampolines and tree houses are examples.
Landowners and businesses have an affirmative duty to discover and remove unreasonably dangerous conditions from the premises. They must first show they met their duty to render the property safe, or they will be liable.
Breach
Once you prove that the owner owed you a duty, you must prove that the property owner failed to fulfill that duty. For instance, you may show that a property owner failed to fix a loose stairway railing or to provide proper lighting along a walkway.
Causation
You must also establish that the property owner’s negligence caused or contributed to your injury. For example, but for a property owner’s failure to fix an uneven stretch of pavement or warn you about it, would you have suffered your injuries?
Damages
Finally, you must establish that you suffered actual physical injuries due to the property owner’s negligence. You can establish this element through medical records that demonstrate the nature and extent of your injuries.
You should expect an insurance company to look for ways to avoid paying your claim. For instance, an insurer may argue that you suffered harm from an “open and obvious hazard” on the property. Cain Law knows the common strategies and tactics that insurance companies use in premises liability cases. We will be prepared to fight any attempt to shift blame to you.
[1] Oklahoma Uniform Jury Instructions, Instruction No. 11.10.
[2] McKinney v. Harrington, 1993 OK 88, 855 P.2d 602, 605 (Okla. 1993) see also Phelps v Hotel Mgmt., Inc., 1996 OK 114, 925 P.2d 891, 893 n.1 (Okla. 1996).
[3] In Miller v. David Grace, Inc., 2009 OK 49, 212 P.4d 1223,
Your well-being is our top priority.
When we take on your slip and fall case, we will focus on your health. We will help you get the medical care you need as you recover from your injuries, and we will also relieve you of the stress that comes from dealing with the insurance company.
Our team will immediately investigate your slip and fall accident and gather all evidence that sheds light on how your fall happened. We will also carefully review your medical records and work with experts to assess the nature and severity of your slip and fall injuries and their impact on your life. Armed with this information, we will aggressively negotiate with the insurance company and pursue a timely settlement of your case. If the insurance company refuses to treat you fairly, we will be ready to fight for you at trial.
We never charge upfront fees. Instead, we represent personal injury clients on a contingency fee basis. This means that you will pay us only if we recover compensation for you.
What Are Common Causes of Slip and Falls in Oklahoma?
In most cases, negligent property owners in Oklahoma City cause slip and fall accidents. They may fail to properly maintain their premises and allow dangerous conditions to exist without adequately warning visitors. Some of the most common hazards that contribute to slip and falls are:
- Broken stairs
- Broke or loose handrails
- Torn or frayed carpeting
- Loose flooring tiles
- Slick surfaces
- Dim lighting
- Uneven pavement
- Cluttered walkways.
Proving Negligence in a Slip and Fall Case
Cain Law will put our investigators on your case right away and preserve, gather and review all evidence that tells the story of what happened to you. This evidence may include:
- Photos of the accident scene
- Witness statements
- Surveillance video footage
- Past reports of falls on the property
- Violations of local building codes
- Violations of the property owner’s own policies.
Our office will also identify all responsible parties and available sources of compensation. For instance, if your slip and fall occurs on the freshly mopped floor in an office building, the building owner, a tenant who leased office space or a vendor that provided cleaning services may all share responsibility for your injuries.
What Compensation Can You Recover in an Oklahoma Slip and Fall Claim?
Slip and fall victims can suffer a wide range of injuries, including head and brain injuries, back and spine injuries, fractures and soft tissue damage. Our law firm will carefully evaluate the injuries in your case and their impact on your life, and we will aggressively pursue damages that may include:
- Past and future medical expenses
- Lost income and diminished earning ability
- Pain and suffering
- Emotional distress
- Punitive damages (if appropriate)
- Wrongful death damages (if your loved one died due to a slip and fall).
The experienced slip and fall attorneys of Cain Law realize that no amount of money can undo the harm that you have suffered in a slip and fall. However, the funds you recover in a premises liability or wrongful death claim can allow you to get the medical care you need and help you to move forward with your life. We will work tirelessly for you and pursue the compensation you deserve.