The Most Common Injuries From A Slip & Fall Cases In Florida
Whether it’s a residential, commercial, or industrial property throughout Florida, there is always a possibility that someone may slip and fall. In many cases, these are what are considered preventable accidents. That means that even though someone was injured, it was an injury that might not have happened at all if property owners had executed their basic responsibility to ensure a safe environment for everyone.
For example, a homeowner with an aggressive dog but keeps that dog unrestrained in the front yard where it can bite anyone passing by is responsible for all the injuries. If the dog had been properly restrained, which is the owner’s responsibility, none of those injuries would have happened.
The same is true for a slip and fall injury. Many instances of people slipping and falling could have been avoided if property owners had been more careful. But what can happen from a slip and fall injury? While they are almost always embarrassing, some can have serious consequences for the accident victim.
Pain & Suffering
A common result of every injury is the possibility of pain and suffering. This means that an accident victim experiences enough pain and discomfort to interfere with leading a normal life. Someone who receives a broken leg due to a slip and fall cannot, for example, participate in athletic activities, regardless of how personal or professionally important those activities may be. Pain and suffering, while they may be temporary, often form the basis of calculating costs for a slip and fall lawsuit.
Spinal Cord Injuries
The most unpredictable aspect of a slip and fall is just how serious an injury can be, depending on the height of the fall and the location of impact when the accident victim makes contact with the ground. The spinal cord is a “central junction” of nerves associated with every aspect of operating the human body. A spinal cord injury can mean the loss of the ability to walk or the inability to speak properly, depending on which nerves are affected.
This is why spinal cord injuries, when they do occur, can have a wide variety of different medical consequences. In some cases, the effects may even be permanent.
Soft Tissue Injury
Broken bones are easy to diagnose since bone breaks show up clearly on x-rays. However, soft tissue—or muscle—injuries are much more difficult to see clearly with medical instruments. Whether medical tools can easily detect them, soft tissue injuries are very real.
Muscle strain, torn ligaments and sprains, and many other injuries result from soft tissue injury. So a bone doesn’t have to be broken for someone to suffer from permanent back pain, for example, due to a soft tissue injury.
Brain Injuries
This is perhaps the most potentially serious injury of all, and the risk is always high if a slip and fall result in an accident victim impacting the head during the fall. The spinal cord carries signals throughout the body, carrying orders from the brain or information for the brain to process. The brain itself, however, issues orders and interprets data.
This means that, depending on the type of brain injury, the effects can be as wide-ranging as memory loss, losing fine motor control of the fingers, or even chronic depression, anxiety, and sexual impotence. There’s a huge variety of potential negative outcomes associated with a brain injury.
If you or someone you know has been the victim of a slip and fall on someone else’s property, get help. Talk to a slip and fall attorney to see if the property owner is responsible for your injury and, if so, what steps you should be taking to get the compensation you’re owed.
