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Were you a victim of a slip and fall accident in Portland, OR? Our Portland slip and fall attorneys can help you know your rights. Contact an attorney at Tillmann Law Personal Injury Lawyers for legal help by calling (503) 272-8986.
Slip and fall accidents are common in Portland. Many premises contain hazards and defects that interfere with the safe usage of the property. Slips, trips, and falls can arise due to slippery floors or surface defects at work, in a store, in a public park, or on private property. At Tillmann Law, we help all victims of slip and fall accidents in Portland fight for fair recoveries for their damages.
It is not uncommon for a slip-and-fall accident victim in Oregon to try to represent him or herself. Unfortunately, this generally leads to clients settling for lowball insurance settlement offers from claims adjusters.
Insurance companies will do their best to convince clients to settle for less than their injuries demand. The most effective way to safeguard your rights and demand fair and full compensation is by hiring a lawyer.
A slip and fall lawyer can explain your rights in a way that makes sense, as well as represent you during a slip and fall accident claim to increase your odds of obtaining a fair settlement. Your lawyer can take care of legal issues while you focus on recovery.
No matter where your fall occurred – it could be at a grocery store, the workplace, or a Portland pedestrian accident – you are entitled to compensation for your suffering.
If you slip on something and fall on a property in Portland, stay calm and find someone with whom to report your injury. This might be a store supervisor, your employer, or the police. Describe your accident and request a copy of the official report.
After, take pictures of the hazardous element that caused your slip and fall accident. Take photos of your injury as well. Get medical care right away.
Then, contact a Portland slip and fall lawyer before attempting to negotiate an insurance settlement on your own. Our team can walk you through the correct steps toward fair financial recovery.
Slip and fall accidents and injuries fall under the umbrella of Oregon’s premises liability laws. The general rule of premises liability is that all property and landowners are legally responsible for injuries that occur on their properties due to preventable defects or hazards.
At Tillmann Law Personal Injury Lawyers, we can investigate properties in Portland for what caused your slip and fall accident, as well as who might be liable for your damages.
In Oregon, you only have rights as a property visitor if you are an invitee or licensee. These are guests that are allowed on the property with the owner’s permission.
If you were trespassing, the property owner did not owe you any duties of care (unless you were a minor). Otherwise, the owner had a responsibility to reasonably try to prevent your slip, trip, and fall accident.
A negligent failure to do so could place liability with the property owner for your damages.
In Oregon, property owners have a duty to maintain safe premises. If the owner becomes aware of a hazard, he or she should take steps to resolve it within a reasonable time.
When an owner cannot respond to a hazard immediately, he or she should warn visitors, tenants, and patrons of the potential danger.
If a property owner does not uphold these duties, he or she could be liable for any slip and fall accidents that occur due to a hazard. At Tillmann Law Personal Injury Lawyers, we represent Portland residents in slip-and-fall claims against many types of liable parties, such as the following.
If you were an invitee or licensee on someone else’s property and were injured in a slip and fall accident, you may be eligible for financial compensation. Through an Oregon slip and fall accident lawsuit or insurance claim, you could recover monetary damages for medical expenses, lost wages, and more.
To secure compensation in your claim, you will need to provide sufficient evidence to establish the property owner’s liability.
You and your lawyer will need to prove four key elements of negligence: duty of care, breach of duty, causation, and damages.
Before you can file your lawsuit, you will first need to establish that the property owner owed you a duty of care at the time of the accident.
In general, Portland property owners have a duty to maintain safe premises and respond to hazards within a reasonable timeframe. These owners also have a duty to warn and protect invitees of dangers that he or she knew or should have reasonably known about.
However, they do not owe these duties to all people who enter or remain on the property. If the plaintiff visits the property without permission, he or she is classified as a trespasser.
Property owners do not owe trespassers a duty of care, but do owe a duty of care to licensees and invitees.
If you can establish that you qualify as an invitee or licensee, you can establish that the property owner owed you a duty of care at the time of your slip and fall accident. Next, you will need to prove that the owner breached his or her duty of care through a negligent act or failure to act.
For example, say that you visit a grocery store and slip on a drink that a customer spilled in an aisle. When a spill occurs, the store has a duty to clean the spill as soon as possible and place signage around the area to warn invitees of the potential danger.
However, security footage reveals that the spill occurred two hours before the accident. The footage also shows several employees walking by the spill and ignoring it. Because these employees failed to act and uphold the store’s duty to customers, you can establish the breach of duty.
In another example, say that you visit an old friend and slip on his or her cracked driveway. The friend had failed to repair the driveway for months and admitted that other visitors had fallen and injured themselves on previous occasions. Because your friend knew about the danger and failed to order repairs, he or she breached the duty of care.
After you establish breach of duty, you will then need to prove that the property owner’s actions caused your slip and fall accident. If the property owner had upheld the duty of care, the accident would not have occurred, and you would not have suffered your injuries.
For example, if the employees at the grocery store cleaned up the spill or placed signs around the area, you would not have slipped and fell. If your friend had repaired his or her driveway after multiple people were injured by the uneven pavement, your accident would not have occurred.
This element can be highly complex and difficult to prove, depending on the circumstances surrounding your case. The owner may even claim that your actions caused the accident, such as wearing inappropriate footwear or looking at a cell phone.
The Portland slip and fall lawyer from Tillmann Law Personal Injury Lawyers can conduct a full investigation into your accident, gather the evidence you need to establish causation, and defend you from accusations of fault.
Your attorney will review reports and surveillance footage, evaluate your medical records, and consult with expert witnesses who can testify on your behalf.
Finally, you will need to prove that you sustained damages in the accident that you can recover in your lawsuit. In Oregon slip and fall claims, you can recover compensation for economic losses like medical expenses and property damage.
You can also hold the property owner accountable for your non-economic pain and suffering.
You can use multiple pieces of evidence to establish your damages, including the following.
Although you may gather enough evidence to prove liability, the property owner may try to defend himself or herself in an effort to reduce your award.
There are several common arguments that defendants in slip and fall cases use, which an attorney from Tillmann Law Personal Injury Lawyers can defend you against.
One of the most common defenses in slip and fall claims is distraction. The owner may state that you were distracted by something prior to the accident or that you were not paying attention to where you were walking.
He or she may claim that the hazard was clearly marked, and you would not have been injured if you were not distracted.
However, distraction is not an excuse for a property owner to disregard his or her duty of care. If an owner fails to fix uneven pavement and you trip and fall over this pavement while texting, the owner would still be liable for your injuries.
However, your award could be reduced if the court finds that a distraction played a role in the accident.
Another common defense is that you were wearing the wrong footwear or inappropriate clothing at the time of the accident. The owner may claim that if you wore more appropriate footwear, the accident would not have occurred.
However, property owners still have a duty to maintain safe premises, regardless of what a victim was wearing at the time of the fall. If an owner’s negligence caused the conditions that led to the accident, he or she is still liable.
As long as you can prove that your footwear was not the primary cause of your slip and fall, you can recover compensation for your losses.
The owner may claim that the hazard happened without his or her knowledge and that he or she did not have reasonable time to respond or warn visitors. For example, say that a bottle of oil breaks in a grocery store. If you slip and fall on the puddle a few minutes later, the owner could reasonably make this claim.
If the spill happened an hour prior to the accident and the store failed to clean it up or place warning signs in the area, the owner could not make this defense. You could use evidence like surveillance footage and incident reports to prove your sequence of events.
At Tillmann Law Personal Injury Lawyers, we have helped enough personal injury claimants to understand the most common injuries suffered in accidents such as slips and trips.
We can help clients with all types of injuries, as well as clients with deceased loved ones from fatal slip/trip and fall accidents. Our attorneys will start your damage claim with an overview of your serious injury.
We can help you prove an injury and related damages through methods such as speaking with your doctor, collecting medical records, reenacting the accident, showing photographs and video footage, interviewing witnesses, and hiring experts.
Our lawyers have years of experience representing injured clients in and out of courtrooms in Multnomah County. You can rest assured in our ability to help you obtain fair compensation as your attorneys.
If your lawyer from Tillmann Law Personal Injury Lawyers succeeds in identifying the cause of your slip and fall accident, he or she could file a claim to damages on your behalf.
In Oregon, you or an attorney must file a premises liability claim within at least two years of the date of the fall. Then, your lawyer must establish with evidence the defendant’s fault for causing your accident.
A successful injury suit could end in compensation for several damage types.
An award amount won could help you and your family pay off accident-related bills and move forward after a slip and fall on someone else’s property in Portland. A slip-and-fall attorney from Tillmann Law Personal Injury Lawyers can work hard to maximize your financial relief won as a client using proven legal strategies.
If you plan on filing a slip and fall claim, you may how much money you can expect to receive. However, there is no average or guaranteed settlement in slip and fall claims. The value of your award will depend on the financial losses that you experienced, as well as the extent of your pain and suffering.
Multiple factors can impact the overall value of your slip and fall accident claim, such as the following.
When you file a lawsuit or insurance claim for a slip and fall accident, the property owner will try and defend himself or herself.
The owner may claim that you are trespassing and therefore ineligible for compensation, or that you are fully or partially responsible for your accident. If the court accepts this claim, your award could be at risk.
Oregon follows a comparative negligence standard when it comes to shared liability. If you are partially responsible for the accident, the court will reduce your settlement by the percentage of fault you hold. If you share more than 51% of the liability, you will not be able to recover any compensation.
For example, say that you are injured on your friend’s property when you slip and fall into an unmarked ditch. However, you were texting on a cell phone at the time. The owner successfully claims that your accident would not have occurred if you were not on the phone, and the court assigns you 30% of the liability. If you request a $40,000 settlement, you will only receive $28.000.
In these situations, you need an attorney on your side. A slip-and-fall lawyer from Tillmann Law Personal Injury Lawyers can work closely with you to protect you against accusations of liability and support your right to full compensation.
A Portland accident claim may seem straightforward, but many complexities can arise during your case. You may need help proving how an accident happened.
The property owner may accuse you of causing the accident due to carelessness. You may struggle to calculate your damages, negotiate with insurance companies, or meet court deadlines and filing requirements.
In these situations, a Portland slip and fall accident lawyer can help. Your attorney can handle all aspects of your case on your behalf, enabling you to focus on treatment and recovery.
Your lawyer can also calculate your estimated settlement, identifying all potential avenues to compensation so that you can maximize your final award.
Additional benefits of hiring an attorney include the following.
In Oregon, civil lawsuits are subject to a law known as the statute of limitations. According to this rule, you must file your claim within a certain time frame, or the court will likely dismiss your case. For slip and fall lawsuits, you have two years from the date of your accident to file your claim.
There are certain exceptions to the statute of limitations. For example, if you are a minor the time of your accident, the court will pause your deadline until you turn 18. You will then be able to file your lawsuit within five years of the accident date or one year after your 18th birthday, whichever comes first.
To determine your appropriate deadline and protect your right to compensation, speak to a Portland slip and fall accident lawyer at Tillmann Law Personal Injury Lawyers. Our attorney can evaluate your case and initiate your first steps toward filing a claim.
It is important not to wait too long after a fall accident in Oregon to contact an attorney. An early call to a local law office could enable your lawyer to collect evidence and eyewitness statements while they are still available.
If you or a loved one has an injury from a recent slip or trip and fall accident in Portland, Oregon, please contact Tillmann Law Personal Injury Lawyers for a free legal consultation with an experienced Portland injury lawyer. You might be eligible for financial compensation.
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