Damages in a Tampa Slip and Fall Case 

Slipping and falling can have a myriad of consequences. Besides the physical pain that comes with injuries sustained, you have to deal with the cost of medical treatment, and in cases of extreme injury, loss of income. These unanticipated costs can take a toll, but you should not have to deal with all of this as the result of someone else’s negligence. If you have slipped and fallen because of negligence, then you have the right to pursue damages.

An adept injury attorney can help you pursue damages in a Tampa slip and fall case. Contact a lawyer and get started on your case.

Maximizing Recoverable Damages

It is important for people who are pursuing damages in a Tampa slip and fall case to keep track of all of their medical bills or any prescription that they have to pay for, out of pocket, their mileage of all of the medical appointments that they have to drive to, their lost wages, their missed vacation time that they have to use for missed work, their missed opportunities on promotion, and anything that they had to pay people to do that they used to do on their own, whether it is yard work, cleaning their house, or handyman work around on their house.

They have to keep track of everything they cannot do that they used to be able to do prior to this slip and fall incident. A lot of people do not think about the things they do around their own house as a value that can be added to their slip and fall case. Additionally, they have to keep track of how this pain and suffering is affecting their personality and their relationships with the people in their life and do their best to put that into words to maximize their damages in a slip and fall case.

Types of Damages Someone Can Recover

Economic damages in a Tampa slip and fall case are medical bills in the past, medical bills in the future, lost wages in the past, lost wages into the future, and then future lost earning capacity can include lost promotions.

Non-economic damages are pain and suffering, loss of consortium, and loss of enjoyment of life. Pain and suffering refers to how bad it hurt and what a person had to go through because of these injuries. Loss of consortium refers to relational problems that the injured person may have with their spouse or their children or people in their life, as a result of their injury. Loss of enjoyment of life is pretty self-explanatory. Essentially it refers to the loss of the ability to do things that made their life fun, loss of the ability to work out,  to golf, or to do whatever it is that they liked to do. When a person loses that ability, it is more of an art than a science but it is considered a recoverable damage that is non-economic.

How Do Catastrophic Injuries Impact Damages?

The recoverable damages do not change necessarily—they just get bigger. The worse the injury is, then the larger the damages are, but it is the same category. If it is a fatal slip and fall incident and the person actually passes away then there may be some different survivorship action that family members will have because they have lost the breadwinner of the family.

Caps on Damages

There is no cap on damages in a Tampa slip and fall case. There is a sovereign immunity cap depending on what it is, it can be $250,000 per governmental entity, but there is no private cap on damages. Some employment cases have punitive caps, but there is no cap on slip and fall punitive damages. Cities and jurisdictions in Florida generally do not have a cap on damages.

Punitive Damages

Punitive damage is its own category. Punitive damages were put into place to punish wrongdoing. If the store owner is negligent and it was a mistake that they should have cleaned up a spill and they did not, then punitive damages do not apply.

Punitive damages apply when the owner or controller of a property is either intentionally or grossly negligent. For example, if a store owner were to set up a fireworks display in the middle of their store and set all of the fireworks off, that would be grossly negligent behavior. Punitive damages would apply because the court wants to punish that wrongdoing and wants to send the message to other stores to not indulge in similarly reckless and negligent behavior.

Another instance in which someone could secure punitive damages would be if they set up traps at night because they do not want anybody to come in the store, and they were to drop an axe on the head of somebody that walks in the store. That is intentional misconduct so punitive damages would also apply to that but punitive damages only apply to a specific and small amount of cases where the wrongdoing is so grossly negligent or intentional that the court wants to actually punish the wrongdoing and set a precedent so others do not continue the same wrongdoing that those owners or controllers displayed.

Value of a Lawyer

If you have fallen due to someone else’s negligence, contact a lawyer who can start the process of pursuing damages in a Tampa slip and fall case. A skilled attorney will be able to examine the facts of your case and establish liability, in order to secure you the compensation you deserve. Contact a determined personal injury lawyer who will advocate for you.