Slip and Fall Incidents Can Cause Many Different Injuries, including Traumatic Brain Injuries
Slip and fall accidents can occur almost anywhere and at any time. They can occur while at work, during a trip to the grocery store, or while visiting a friend’s house. Wherever they occur, slip and falls are no laughing matter and can cause serious repercussions, especially when the incident causes a traumatic brain injury (TBI).
While some slips and falls are purely accidental, the majority of them are caused by negligence. Negligence can be defined as someone failing to take proper steps or care to prevent reasonable danger. That means that if someone failed to wipe up a spill, and you slipped on it, they were being negligent.
Slip and fall incidents can range from mild to fatal, depending on the circumstances. A slip on some ice might be no problem for a young person, but could be fatal for an elderly person. Falls from high up or in dangerous locations can also have higher fatality rates, or lead to more severe injuries, such as a traumatic brain injury.
How common are TBIs and Slip and Falls?
Traumatic brain injury is usually caused by a violent strike or jolt to the head or body, penetration to the head and brain tissue, and other trauma to the head.
Traumatic brain injuries account for 235,000 hospitalizations each year, more than 20 times the amount of hospitalizations for spinal cord injuries. Additionally, 80,000-90,000 people each year experience long term or life-long disabilities because of a TBI.
In 2014, the leading cause of TBIs was falls, accounting for almost half (48%) of all TBI related emergency room visits, while the other 52% included things like self-harm, motor vehicle crashes, and homicide.
Symptoms of Brain Trauma from a Slip and Fall
It is important to get checked out by a medical professional any time you are in a major accident, like a car accident or a slip and fall. If you experience a minor fall, you may not expect that anything is wrong. But it’s important to get checked out after these falls too since even small falls can cause major repercussions that may not be noticeable right away.
Symptoms for TBI include loss of consciousness for a few seconds to a few minutes, no loss of consciousness, but instead feeling dazed, disoriented, or confused, headache, nausea or vomiting, fatigue or drowsiness, problems speaking, difficulty sleeping, sleeping too much, or dizziness or loss of balance.
In some cases, people also experience sensory problems, such as blurred vision, ringing ears, or a bad taste in their mouth, as well as a sensitivity to light or sound.
TBIs are also known to cause mental symptoms as well, like concentration problems, mood swings, or depression and anxiety.
Whatever the severity of your injury is after a slip and fall, it is important to seek help from a medical professional after a slip and fall to prevent any further complications. Traumatic brain injuries are notorious for delayed symptoms in which a person thinks they are fine, but finds out later that their injuries could have been much less severe is they had seeked treatment right away.
Common Causes of Slip and Falls
Common causes for slips and falls include things like:
- tripping over a sidewalk crack and hitting your head,
- slipping on a spill in a store,
- falling on a broken stair in someone’s home,
- or slipping in the lobby of the bank because of a ceiling leak.
All of these incidents are made much worse when your head makes contact with the ground or another object. For example, if you were to fall while at work and hit your head on a desk, this could easily cause a TBI. It’s easy to think of slip and falls as minor accidents, but in many cases, especially when your head strikes another object, they can be severe and even deadly.
Treating a TBI after a Slip and Fall
Treatment for TBI is different depending on the severity of your injury. If your TBI is diagnosed as minor, your doctor may recommend that you to get some rest and take over the counter pain medication like Tylenol or Advil.
More serious TBIs will likely have a much longer recovery time, require many different imaging scans, therapy, and prescription medications.
The most severe brain injuries will likely require extensive testing, a lengthy hospital stay, surgeries, and most likely, extensive therapy. As parts of the brain control different parts of the body, like motor skills, or speech, you may multiple types of therapy depending on how your brain injury has affected you and how severe the trauma is. This could include occupational therapy, speech or language therapy, psychiatric therapy, physical therapy, or any combination of therapies.
No matter the extent of your brain injury, all treatments can quickly become expensive and leave you with mounting medical bills and lost wages. Seeking a personal injury claim may be your best course of action to help prevent a TBI from becoming a financially crippling situation.
Can I Sue for a Slip and Fall Injury?
In the simplest of terms, yes. You can definitely pursue compensation in the form of a lawsuit for a slip and fall injury if it occurred as a result of negligence. Depending on how exactly your slip and fall occurred and what injuries resulted, there are a few different options.
For example, you may be able to seek compensation through your employer’s workers comp insurance if your fall occurred while you were at work. Or you may be able to sue a store for negligence if they knew about a constant ceiling leak that caused water to build up on the floor. If you were at someone’s house for a dinner party and you trip over some loose floorboards, you may be able to pursue compensation through the person’s homeowners insurance. You may even be able to sue your landlord if you slip or fall in a rental home, especially in a situation in which you put in a maintenance request many times and they never fixed it.
How you will go about seeking compensation depends on the unique facts of your case which is why personal injury attorneys almost always offer free consultations.
It is also important to note that, like in any other legal situation, evidence in a slip and fall case is important. Because of this, be sure to keep all your receipts, medical records, and any other documentation. Likewise, make sure to file a report, document any calls or conversations, and never admit fault in any accident or injury situation.
[Read: Minnesota Slip and Fall Cases: What Insurance Companies Don’t Want You to Know]
Receiving Compensation for Traumatic Brain Injuries
Depending on the severity of your brain injury, your damages may be quickly mounting. Hospital bills, surgery costs, therapy fees, along with lost wages from work, can all cost your big because of another person’s or company’s negligence. Luckily, you may be able to receive compensation for your injuries.
If you choose to seek compensation for your slip and fall, you can recover damages for past and future medical expenses, rehabilitation service costs, therapy costs, pain and suffering, past and future lost wages, loss of companionship, loss of wage earning capacity, and any other reasonable damages that were caused by your slip and fall and the resulting injuries.
Contact a Minnesota Personal Injury Attorney
If you’ve been injured in a slip and fall accident and suffered a TBI or some other injury, please contact the personal injury lawyers at Sand Law LLC in Minnesota today. Our lawyers are extremely qualified and experienced with slip and fall cases and have the resources and expertise to handle severe TBI claims. We are ready to help you get the compensation you deserve for your injury today. For more information or to schedule a free no obligation consultation, please contact us online or at 651-291-7263.