Attorneys Dell & Schaefer Settle Case despite Defendant Claims

When you slip and fall and injure a body part in a store or other public place, the insurance company for the store or other establishment will want to know if you’ve ever injured that body part before. After all, they will want to figure out if the injury is due entirely to the accident or if it is at least partially preexisting.

In attempting to do so, the insurance company will go back and retrieve medical records from throughout your life. Most likely, the insurance company will get its hands on the records for every visit you have ever made to a doctor or the hospital. If you had ever injured the body part before, the insurance company will surely find out about it.

The insurance company will also ask you about any prior injuries in your deposition. The important thing is to be upfront when answering this question. Even if the question or answer is ambiguous, you should volunteer information regarding any prior injuries to the insurance company. Doing so is the best way of ensuring that your case remains strong.

Sebastian Slip and Fall Results in Back Injury

Our client was a 50-year-old mother of five. At the time of her accident, she was shopping in a Walmart store located in Sebastian, Florida. After retrieving the items she wanted to purchase, our client approached the checkout area of the store. As she was going to pay for her items, our client’s foot made contact with a puddle of liquid on the floor. It was later concluded that the liquid was soda that had leaked from a soda machine in the store.

Our client slipped on the soda and fell violently to the floor, injuring her lower back. Despite the pain, she went home hoping that her injury would improve.

Unfortunately, the back pain did not get better. Therefore, within a few weeks of the accident, our client visited the office of a chiropractor in the area. The chiropractor prescribed our client some pain killing medications and ordered MRI’s of her lower back. The MRI results revealed that our client had herniated several discs in her lower back. The chiropractor prescribed our client some physical therapy. Our client was forced to go to physical therapy several times a week for many months.

Based on the results of the MRI, the chiropractor referred our client to an orthopedic surgeon in the area after several months of physical therapy. The orthopedic surgery viewed the MRI’s and determined that she needed to undergo surgery. Within weeks, the surgery was performed. The surgeon performed a fusion on our client’s back. In that procedure, the surgeon “fused” two of the vertebrae in our client’s spine, a very series procedure. This was clearly not easy for our client.

Sebastian Slip and Fall Lawyers Dell and Schaefer Settle Case for $120,000

After we filed a lawsuit for our client, the defense attorneys asked to take our client’s deposition. During the deposition, the defense attorneys asked our client if she had ever injured her lower back before. Our client answered that she had not.

After the deposition, the defense attorneys went back and retrieved most of the medical records from our client’s entire life. In one of those medical records, the defense attorneys saw that she had previously received treatment for her mid-back. The argument was subsequently made by the defense attorneys that our client had misled the defense attorneys in her deposition.

In response, we argued that our client had not intended to mislead anybody. After all, in the slip and fall in the department store, our client had injured her lower back. The records the defense attorneys retrieved reflected that our client had previously received treatment to her mid-back. When our client was asked in her deposition if she had ever injured the same body part before, our client answered no honestly. It was her mid-back (not her lower back) that our client had injured previous to the slip and fall in the department store. She really had not attempted to deceive anybody in the deposition.

We also argued that our client was the mother of five children and multiple grandchildren. Raising this number of children and helping with multiple grandchildren was not a physically easy job for our client! After her accident, this job became much harder for our client. She could no longer attend all of her children’s activities and handling her grandchildren became much tougher.

These arguments allowed us to settle our client’s case for $120,000. Our client was satisfied. In spite of the fact that the defense attorneys on the case had implied deception on our client’s part, our client now had a large settlement. Nevertheless, if you injure a body part in an accident that you had previously injured before (or even if the two body parts could be construed as the same, as in this case), do not fail to disclose this information as part of your lawsuit. Doing so could jeopardize your case.

If you are injured in a slip & fall accident occurring anywhere in Florida, contact the Slip and Fall Attorneys at Dell and Schaefer. We will maximize your recovery.