Looking to Make a Premises Liability Claim?

If you or a loved one has been injured in a business, at a bar, at a restaurant, at a store, or at someone’s home or apartment there may be an underlying insurance policy or lawsuit against the business owner to recover damages from a fall or other accident. For further questions about a Premises Liability matter, slip and fall, or trip and fall injury case, contact The Rockford Personal Injury Lawyers: Marriett & Murati for your honest, reliable, and completely free consultation. 

The most common type of premise liability cases are “slip and fall” cases. There is a misconception among the general public about these types of claims; this belief is that if you walk onto somebody’s property, fall down, and get injured, that you automatically have a personal injury claim against the property owner. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Despite popular culture often times making light of “faked” injuries where people pretend to slip, or exaggerate the extent of their injuries, we have represented countless victims who have walked into areas not marked as having wet floor or have had other dangerous conditions on the property. Injuries from a slip and fall can vary from relatively minor aches and pains on the low end of severity, all the way to broken and fractured bones, head injuries, and other injuries leading to significant and extensive surgical operations to repair damage from the fall. Put simply, these cases are not a laughing matter, and people often can have life changing injuries from something as simple as an unexpected fall. 

Generally speaking, for liability against a business or property owner, the owner must have done something wrong, or something negligent which led to your injury. Typically, this means that that the property owner either did something to create a dangerous condition, failed to warn about the dangerous condition, or failed to take steps to get rid of the dangerous condition on the property. This applies to all Rockford, Machesney Park, Loves Park, and Illinois State premises liability cases.

In determining a property owner’s level of responsibility, the law concentrates on whether the owner makes an effort to keep the property safe and clean. Here are some initial questions you can ask to determine whether a property or business owner may be liable for your slip-and-fall or trip-and-fall injuries:

Liability is generally an issue with slip-and-fall or trip-and-fall cases, as the insurance company almost always try to find some nuance to try and dispute the case. Documentation is extremely important, and having photographs, video footage, witnesses at the scene, or documented correspondence that demonstrates prior knowledge of a dangerous condition by a business or property owner can greatly strengthen a claimant’s position. Not all injuries result in a viable personal injury claim.

An experienced attorney can give you an unbiased opinion on whether your claim is worth pursuing, and, if so, how to properly document and preserve crucial evidence.

When someone has suffered an injury on someone else’s property, they may be able to file a lawsuit in order to obtain compensation for lost earnings, medical bills, permanent physical disabilities, disfigurements, and pain and emotional distress caused by the accident. The following are examples of common types of premise liability cases in Illinois: 

Illinois sets a time limit of two years to file a personal injury lawsuit in the state’s civil court system. In most cases, this two-year time limit, known as a “statute of limitations,” begins to run on the date of the accident. Sometimes, however, a statute of limitations might run from the date that you discovered you were injured, rather than the date of the event that injured you. This later date is known as a “discovery date.”

For injury claims against a city or county, you have one year to file a lawsuit. The time limit to sue the state is generally two years, but you must file a formal claim within one year in order to sue.

A qualified personal injury attorney can help guide you through this difficult time and alleviate some of the stress you may be dealing with based on your premises liability case.

For a confidential, compassionate, in-depth, free, and, most importantly, thorough consultation with The Rockford Personal Injury Lawyers: Marriett & Murati about your premises liability case in Rockford, Belvidere, Freeport, Rochelle, Oregon, Loves Park, Byron, Machesney Park, Roscoe, Rockton, or elsewhere in the State of Illinois, call or text message us at (815) 315-4967. 24/7/365. We offer in-office consultations, and routinely make visits to clients’ homes, hospital rooms, nursing homes, and other off-site locations to make retaining our services as easy as possible.