There are a few things more exciting than the birth of a child, and in this case, grandma was happy to be taking her daughter and her new granddaughter out for lunch. This was going to be the first of what she’d hope to be many girl dates or ladies’ days out. So the ladies make a decision that they’re going to head out to lunch, and they drive to this particular lunch spot that is part of a parking lot that is designed to hold as many cars as possible, but we’ve all seen these parking lots. They don’t fit any actual vehicles, so they’re struggling to find a spot because they’re in a large SUV, this is going to be the perfect kid carrier for this new family, and they park, and grandma was excited. She gets out of the front passenger seat, goes around to the rear door, and goes to get her grandchild out of the vehicle, and as she opens the rear door, she takes a step back to allow the door to open, and she catches her heel on a curb, now instead of falling into a planter area or just stepping back and moving over the curb and into the next parking stall, she falls over five feet. There’s no guard rail there, and she lands in a concrete drainage ditch below the parking lot.
She suffers severe orthopedic injuries as a result of this fall. Well, we were able to represent this lady, and we made a claim against the ownership group for this shopping center, and the insurance company for this ownership group denied liability, they took the position that no handrail was needed there and that this was just a parking lot, and the accident was all our client’s fault. Fortunately, however, we were able to obtain the appropriate expert opinions, do our research, do our homework, and take this insurance company to task. Our homework revealed that construction codes required handrails in just this sort of place, guardrails needed in just this sort of place because the fall risk was significant. The risk of injury from such a high fall was so great, so not only were we able to convince the insurance company that they had liability here, we were able to obtain compensation for our client to deal with what was close to $100,000 worth of medical bills, given the severity of her injuries. We were also able to obtain compensation for her for having to go through what she went through and re-learn to use one of her upper extremities. This was a devastating case, but given enough time, she was able to make a full recovery, she was able to get out again on those daughter and granddaughter dates, and we were able to help her along the way of that recovery.
One of the best things we get to do here is help our clients. It’s my favorite thing that we get to do here, so if you’ve been injured in an accident, give us a call, consultations are free, we’d love the chance to talk to you about your case. When you call, you’re going to be greeted by a friendly voice, who will take down some basic information that will be brought to my business partner Ken Arthofer or me. Every time you contact Arthofer & Tonkin, the actual attorneys are involved in deciding whether or not we can help you with your case, you’re not going to be run off to staff, and you’re not going to have your decision made by someone other than a partner in this law firm. So if we decide to meet with you, that means we think that we have an opportunity to help you with what is a challenging situation, and our consultations are free. The reason they’re free is that we want you to come in here without any pressure to make a decision, we want to know about your case, we want to know the facts of your case, we want to know what you’ve been through so that we can decide if this is a case that we can help you on, we want to walk side by side with you as you recover from these injuries, as you deal with insurance companies for the person who caused this accident, we’ll deal with them for you.
As you deal with medical bills, we’ll help you deal with those medical bills. As you deal with wage loss, changes in your life, your ability to function, we’ll be with you every step of the way until it’s time to resolve your case, and you can be assured that we will have done our homework and we will do our best to obtain appropriate compensation through either negotiation or vigorous litigation, if necessary, we take on the insurance companies, we know what you’re up against, give us a call. Let us work for you today.
