Fort Wayne Slip and Fall Lawyers

Fort Wayne boasts a number of exciting attractions for locals and visitors alike, such as the Fort Wayne Children’s Zoo, the Foellinger-Freimann Botanical Conservatory, and 86 separate public parks. Enjoying a day out is easy to do in the second biggest city in Indiana, but that day could be ruined in an instant by a serious fall.

Though compensation could be available when someone else is responsible for your fall, success is never guaranteed, which is why many turn to the Fort Wayne slip-and-fall lawyers at Hensley Legal Group, where we have been getting justice for injured Hoosiers for more than 25 years.

To learn if you are eligible to pursue a case for your slip-and-fall injuries, please call or text us at (317) 472-3333, chat with us online, or fill out our contact form for a free case review with a dedicated Fort Wayne slip-and-fall attorney now.

Common Causes of Slip-and-Falls

Falling is the leading source of preventable injuries, and it can be particularly devastating for seniors, who account for 71.8 percent of fall-related hospitalizations and 82.1 percent of fall-related deaths in Indiana.

While falls could occur for a variety of reasons, financial recovery may only be possible when they are caused by defective conditions on somebody else’s property, such as:

Slippery surfaces

Loose or uneven floorboards

Holes and ditches

Pathway obstructions

Bulging or unfastened rugs, carpets, or mats

Puddles or accumulations of water or liquids

Inadequate lighting

Unsalted ice

Whether they are found in a private home, a commercial establishment, or a municipal facility, perils such as these could be signs of negligence, which you will need to prove for your slip-and-fall claim to be viable. Our Fort Wayne slip-and-fall lawyers can analyze the circumstances of your personal injury and determine if they justify a slip-and-fall case.

What Is a Slip-and-Fall Case?

But exactly what is a slip-and-fall case? Essentially, it is a personal injury claim alleging that someone else’s behavior led to an injurious fall. Like any type of personal injury claim, a slip-and-fall case must contain two elements: negligence and damages.

Negligence is the failure to exercise care to avoid inflicting harm, otherwise known as damages. If a plaintiff incurs bodily damages because of a defendant’s negligence, that plaintiff could go after the defendant for financial damages.

For a slip-and-fall case to succeed, the plaintiff must show that he or she was injured in a fall that was brought about by a negligent property owner. Specifically, the plaintiff has to show that:

The owner owed the plaintiff a duty of care to maintain the property so that it was safe.

This duty was breached because the owner did not keep that property safe.

This breach made the plaintiff fall with resultant injury.

Proving that a breach of duty caused harm can be more challenging in a slip-and-fall case than in a case for an incident in which the link between a defendant’s conduct and a plaintiff’s injuries is more apparent, such as a car accident. This is why it could be worthwhile to team up with our Fort Wayne slip-and-fall attorneys, who are adept at exposing actionable breaches of duty on the part of property owners.

Were You Owed a Duty of Care by a Fort Wayne Property Owner?

Your slip-and-fall case needs to demonstrate that you fell because a Fort Wayne property owner breached a duty of care owed to you. But were you actually owed a duty of care, and what was the nature of that duty?

In Fort Wayne, the duty of care that you are owed will largely depend upon why you are on an owner’s property. The State of Indiana categorizes visitors to a property as invitees, licensees, or trespassers, and they are each owed different duties of care:

Invitees – An invitee is a visitor who is invited to a property for the economic benefit of the owner, such as a store customer, a restaurant patron, or a hotel guest.

Fort Wayne property owners owe the highest duty of care to invitees. As such, an owner needs to take active measures to ensure that a property is safe for that group, a duty that may entail inspecting the premises for dangers and either repairing or warning about them.

Licensees – A visitor who has permission to enter a property but does not provide a direct benefit to the owner is considered a licensee. Classic licensees might include family members paying a visit to an owner’s house or hunters who are authorized to be on an owner’s land.

Licensees are owed a lesser duty of care by Fort Wayne property owners, who must not willfully harm them or neglect to alert them about known hazards but do not need to search their properties for hazards solely for a licensee’s sake.

Trespassers – Anyone who is on a property without permission is technically a trespasser, a classification that could be ascribed to someone as innocuous as a neighbor taking a shortcut through a yard or as nefarious as a burglar jimmying open a window.

While Fort Wayne property owners owe the least duty of care to trespassers, some limited obligations may still apply. For example, owners cannot intentionally harm trespassers who are known to be present, but they have no duty to warn about or fix any hazards on site.

It is important to note that this relaxed standard of care may not pertain to trespassing children, who are not expected to comprehend the risks of being on someone else’s property. Moreover, property owners may even have a heightened duty to minor trespassers when it comes to “attractive nuisances,” which are threats that may appeal strongly to the very young, such as unfenced pools or discarded refrigerators. Owners who are aware of such nuisances on their properties and do not address them even though they expect children to trespass and hurt themselves because of them “may be subject to liability for physical injury or death to a child trespasser” under Title 34, Section 31, Chapter 11 of the Indiana Code.

Clearly, what you were doing when you fell will have a significant bearing on your case, so don’t delay in discussing the facts with Hensley’s knowledgeable Fort Wayne slip-and-fall lawyers.

What Our Fort Wayne Slip-and-Fall Attorneys Can Do for You

A major slip-and-fall can change everything, very quickly making it hard for you to make ends meet, to say nothing of meeting the new demands on your wallet.

When the worst happens, you need attorneys who have the compassion to support you through your struggles and the skill to overcome them, like the Fort Wayne slip-and-fall attorneys at Hensley Legal Group.

If you hire Hensley, we will launch a comprehensive investigation into your fall and everyone who contributed to it within the time allotted by law. We will also move swiftly to secure the evidence needed to construct your claim and stop property defects from being remedied before they can be documented if necessary.

After assembling a rock-solid case, our Fort Wayne slip-and-fall lawyers will work tirelessly to obtain a settlement for the entirety of your losses, such as your:

Medical expenses

Lost income

Pain and suffering

Mental and emotional trauma

Mobility restrictions

Diminished quality of living

Loss of consortium

Punitive and wrongful death damages (if relevant)

And if we do not receive an offer that reflects the true value of your case, we are not afraid to go to trial for a verdict that does, unlike some of our competitors, who rarely, if ever, see the inside of a courtroom.

Should you be reluctant to agree to more expenditures that you can barely afford, you should know that our firm works on a contingency basis. This means that you will not have to pay us anything until our Fort Wayne slip-and-fall attorneys win your case.

Maybe the world has felt unstable since your fall, but you can count on us to get you back on steady ground again.

Our Fort Wayne Slip-and-Fall Lawyers Are Ready to Help

Hensley Legal Group has been advocating for the innocent victims of negligence since 1998. If you have been injured through no fault of your own, our Fort Wayne slip-and-fall lawyers are ready to help.

You can schedule a no-cost consultation with an accomplished Fort Wayne personal injury attorney by calling or texting us at (317) 472-3333, chatting with us online, or filling out our contact form at your earliest convenience. 