Sebastian Slip and Fall Attorneys at Dell & Schaefer Settle Case for $120,000 In Spite of Pre-existing Condition


If you aggravate a pre-existing condition in a fall, you may not initially think you can sue. After all, you may fear that the defense attorneys will discover your pre-existing condition and destroy your case.

Nevertheless, if you worsen a preexisting injury in a fall, you may still be able to recover compensation for the injury. That is because, in the State of Florida, plaintiffs are entitled to receive compensation for aggravations of pre-existing conditions. The following story illustrates the point.

Sebastian Slip and Fall Results in Back Injury

Our client was the 50-year-old mother of five children. At the time of her accident, she was shopping in a department store in Sebastian, Florida. At some point while shopping, our client approached the cash registers in the store in order to checkout. Unfortunately, at that time, our client’s foot encountered a puddle of water located on the floor in the store. Apparently, a cooler in the store had been leaking water, and the water gathered into a puddle on the floor in the store.

After our client’s foot encountered the puddle, our client slipped and crashed to the ground. Unfortunately, she badly injured her back.

This was a back that our client had previously injured. In fact, our client had been having back problems previous to the fall. She had been in a doctor’s office complaining of her back only four days before the fall.

In any case, when she fell in the store, the impact with the floor significantly worsened our client’s back injury. She was taken to the emergency room and immediately began complaining of back pain. The doctors in the emergency room took x-rays, prescribed pain medications and told our client to follow up with an orthopedic surgeon.

Within weeks, our client did just that. She visited the office of an orthopedic surgeon in the area. That doctor examined our client and ordered MRI’s of our client’s back. The MRI results revealed multiple herniations in our client’s back. The orthopedic surgeon determined that he would have to perform a “fusion” procedure wherein he would need to “fuse” together two vertebrae in our client’s back. The procedure was performed, and our client began to recover.

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

Following her surgery, our client initially feared that she might not be able to recover compensation for her injuries. After all, in the fall, she had actually aggravated an injury that already existed in her back. The fall had only made her back worse. Surely, our client thought, the defense attorneys would discover the pre-existing condition and make a big deal of it.

Nonetheless, thankfully our client contacted the Sebastian Slip and Fall Attorneys at Dell and Schaefer. We explained that the pre-existing condition would not necessarily preclude the client from pursuing a lawsuit. This was because the law allows injured people to recover compensation for aggravations of pre-existing conditions. That is, the law says that tortfeasors (or people who cause accidents) “take their victims as they are.” This means that a tortfeasor does not “get off” because an injury he or she caused was actually the aggravation of a pre-existing condition. The tortfeasor takes the victim as they are. Even though our client had a pre-existing condition, she should be able to recover compensation for an aggravation of that pre-existing condition because the store is responsible for that aggravation.

We also argued that our client has five children, and she is very active in all of their lives. After the fall, it became much harder for our client to do this. The pain in her back became so bad to the point that she could no longer participate in her children’s activities, and she ended up essentially being stuck at home. This clearly had a negative effect on our client’s relationships with her children.

These arguments allowed us to settle our client’s case for $120,000. Our client was very satisfied with the result. Even though her injury was actually an aggravation of a pre-existing condition, she now had a settlement for $120,000.

If you slip and fall and aggravate a pre-existing condition in a fall, don’t automatically assume you can’t receive compensation for your injury. Contact the Sebastian Slip and Fall Lawyers at Dell & Schaefer, and we will advise you as to your rights and win you the compensation you deserve.



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