Retail Establishments and Premise Liability

27 Mar Retail Establishments and Premise Liability

Retail establishments typically carry a great deal of insurance to protect them from lawsuits. This is because they are responsible for incidents where their negligence results in someone being hurt on the premises of their establishment. If you've been injured, you may want to contact a personal injury attorney in Dallas about the matter. A personal injury attorney can also serve as a wrongful death attorney if one of your family members died because of suffering an injury at a retail establishment.

What Is Negligence?

Negligence means causing someone to come to harm because of unreasonable actions or because of not taking reasonable actions that could have prevented the injury. In some cases, store owners end up being negligent in ways that are truly shocking. They may, for instance, allow wet floors to go without the proper warnings, resulting in someone falling and hurting themselves. They may not provide stairways with adequate traction, causing someone to take a potentially fatal plunge down them. Entryways are oftentimes poorly maintained and can be particularly dangerous.

If you end up being injured in an accident that was the result of negligence, contacting an attorney is something you should consider seriously. The attorney may be able to prepare a lawsuit for you that could result in you receiving a settlement or a jury award. Remember that the attorney cannot guarantee that you'll win. If the attorney works on contingency, however, they won't take your case unless they're sure that it will win and, because of that, you can have some confidence. They don’t get paid on contingency if you don't win.

Going to Court

Your attorney will have to argue before a jury that negligence was a factor in how you got injured or in how you lost your loved one. These cases can be complex. Good attorneys bring their knowledge of past cases, their creativity and their overall knowledge of the law to bear when working with their clients. If your attorney argues your case successfully, you could win potentially large awards. There is also a chance that the defendant will want to settle to avoid having to pay court costs. The settlement offered will generally be less than the amount you're seeking in an award, but you don’t have to pay court costs, either, so the amounts generally end up balancing one another out. Your attorney will help you to negotiate a good settlement.