What Are My Legal Options If I’m Injured in a Negligently Maintained Store?

If you’ve been injured in a store, you may have options to bring a personal injury claim. However, these claims can be complicated, and it’s always best to talk to a personal injury attorney in Augusta, GA to find out if you have a good claim and how to bring it.

What Are My Legal Options If I’m Injured in a Negligently Maintained Augusta, GA Store?

Talking With a Personal Injury Attorney in Augusta

Regardless of the circumstances, you have the right to talk to an attorney, and you should exercise this right even if you’re unsure whose fault it was ultimately or if the store was really negligent. An attorney can evaluate the facts of what happened, interview witnesses, look at evidence, and then give you a good idea of whether you have a claim and what its value might be. An Augusta personal injury lawyer will also negotiate for you and can even take your claim to court, if that becomes necessary.

Bringing a Personal Injury Claim

Stores in Georgia are required to keep their premises in reasonably good shape, and if a store has not done that and you were injured as a consequence, the store would be responsible for your injuries and losses. The key is showing that the store was negligent. To prove that someone is negligent in personal injury, you have to prove that they owed you a duty of care, that they failed to uphold this duty of care, that their failure was the direct cause of your accident, and that this accident caused you verifiable losses and damages.

You can still bring a claim against the store for negligence even if you are partially at fault under George’s comparative negligence rules. However, if you are more than 50% at fault for the accident, you cannot recover any damages, and if you are less than 50% at fault, you will have your total damages reduced by the same percentage as your fault. Thus, if the insurance company or a jury determines that you’re 25% at fault for the accident, you could only recover 75% of your total damages.

Things to Know

It’s important to get a lawyer on your side as quickly as possible. It’s not unheard of for store managers or owners to clean things up as quickly as possible after an accident, not just for safety but also to hide evidence of their negligence. Store security camera footage is usually overwritten regularly in order to make space for new recordings, so you want your lawyer to request that footage as quickly as possible to make sure that the evidence is clear. In some cases, your lawyer may even have to subpoena the footage to protect it.

You’ll also want to help of a lawyer to protect you from any unfair accusations of blame. These are also common as insurance companies seek to minimize the payout they have to make.

If you’ve been injured at a store, contact us right away at Davis, Chapman, & Wilder in Augusta, GA for help with your premises liability claim.

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