If you suffer a slip and fall injury due to the negligence of a property owner, lessee, employer, or another liable party in Topeka, you may be entitled to compensation.

Every year, countless people suffer slip and fall injuries in Kansas and don’t realize that they are due compensation.

Sometimes, injuries are only minor and temporary, but slips and falls can also result in life-changing injuries.

Failure to be compensated is generally because victims do not seek legal advice after their accident.

The slip and fall injury lawyers at Irigonegaray & Revenaugh have a strong track record in premises liability cases and can assist you in confidently seeking redress for the losses suffered.

Who is responsible for your slip and fall accident?

This is the key question when it comes to claiming compensation.

Determining fault in your slip and fall accident will be the basis of whether you file a personal injury claim or not.

When is a property owner responsible?

To successfully sue a property owner, you will need to prove negligence. A property owner has a legal obligation to keep guests/visitors safe on their premises.

You will need to show that reasonable steps were not taken to keep the property safe and prevent your accident (steps that any reasonable or prudent person would take under the same or similar circumstances).

Negligence results from many situations, including creating a hazard and failing to address or warn about a known danger – or a danger that any reasonable person would have been aware of.

Some of the most common examples in Topeka include:

• A wet floor
• Slippery flooring materials
• Failing to remove a hazard from entry/exit areas
• Faulty or damaged railings on steps
• Poor lighting in stairways or halls
• Defective design of raised flooring
• Unrepaired damage to floors

Sometimes, slip and fall accidents occur outside the building, e.g., in a parking lot. Providing you are on the property legally and in an area that is open to guests/visitors, the owner or lessee may still be held liable.

The details are always important in these cases. It is very important to speak to a slip and fall injury lawyer as soon as possible after your accident while the details are still relatively fresh in your mind.

A seasoned lawyer will know all the tell-tale signs of premises liability and can ask you the right questions to elicit information regarding your accident and injury.

Comparative negligence impact on a slip and fall in Kansas

If you file a claim for a slip and fall injury, the defendant will commonly attempt to prove that you contributed to your injury.

It may be claimed that you were in an unauthorized area, should have seen the hazard, or that you were distracted by something that caused you to slip and fall, like a text message or phone call.

The courts may decide that both parties were at fault for the accident. However, that does not prevent you from claiming damages.

Kansas is a “comparative fault” state. This means that each party’s level of financial responsibility correlates with their percentage of the fault.

According to Kansas Statutes section 60-258a:

“The contributory negligence of a party in a civil action does not bar that party or its legal representative from recovering damages for negligence resulting in death, personal injury, property damage or economic loss, if that party’s negligence was less than the causal negligence of the party or parties against whom a claim is made, but the award of damages to that party must be reduced in proportion to the amount of negligence attributed to that party.”

So, let’s say the court decides that you were 25 percent at fault for an accident that caused $50,000 of damages and the premises owner was 75 percent at fault. You would receive 75 percent of the total payout, or $37,500.

Even if the case does not go to trial and is settled out of court with the insurance company of the property owner, the shared fault laws in Kansas may play a role in the final settlement.

The bottom line is that if your level of shared fault for a slip and fall accident does not exceed 50 percent, you can attempt to recover damages.

Kansas Slip and fall injuries at work

If you suffer a slip and fall injury in a workplace accident, you may be able to submit a worker’s compensation claim – regardless of who was at fault.

Your employer should have a workers’ compensation policy that covers your medical bills, therapy, over-the-counter necessities, and two-thirds of your standard wages.

You must report your injury to your employer to initiate a worker’s compensation claim. Do not downplay it as many seemingly innocuous injuries turn into something more serious.

If your injury ends up causing ongoing pain, disability, or other chronic problems, workers’ compensation may provide a bulk sum to cover ongoing medical costs.

Workers’ compensation coverage applies unless you were intoxicated or doing something illegal at the time of the injury.

Claiming workers’ compensation may be more challenging if you hadn’t yet clocked in for your shift or had already clocked out. If your slip and fall happened on the sidewalk in front of your employer’s premises or in the parking lot, this adds complexity to the case.

How long do you have to file a slip and fall injury claim in Topeka, Kansas?

According to the statute of limitations in Kansas, there is a time limit in which you can legally file a slip and fall injury claim in the state’s civil court system.

The same limit applies to most personal injury cases: two years from the date of the accident and injury.

This limit also applies in the case of a property damage lawsuit filed against a property owner – for instance, if you slipped and fell avoiding a hazard on the stairs and broke an expensive watch.

Contact our Topeka slip and fall injury lawyers for help with you claim today

With slip and fall accidents, we will first take the time to investigate the circumstances of your injury.

If you have a strong case for compensation, we will work with the necessary medical and financial specialists to demonstrate your losses to the insurance company.

With all personal injury cases, the lawyers at Irigonegaray & Revenaugh work on a contingency basis: that means we only get paid if we win your case.