You are at a BBQ at a friend's of a friend's house and they are remodeling some of the house they moved into a few months ago. During the gathering, they want to show everyone what they are doing to the house in restoring it to its early 1900's construction. While touring the second floor, you suddenly fall through the floor and fall 16 feet to the ground floor, breaking both legs, dislocating a shoulder, suffering a concussion and many cuts and bruises. The owners quickly call 911 and you are quickly rushed via an ambulance at great urgency to the nearest hospital emergency room because of the extent of your injuries. Once stabilized there, you are transferred to another medical center that has the best doctors for your types of injuries. However, who is going to pay for all this pain, suffering, work missed and possibly lifetime problems from the unexpected fall? This is when you should be speaking to a Personal Injury attorney.

While the above scenario seems rather extreme, it happens frequently on someone else's property. It could be at a swimming pool, a construction site, a horse ranch, being hit in the grocery store parking lot. If it is one someone's property, they may have Personal injury insurance that will take care of your medical expenses and if they don't, they are still liable because it happened on their property. A simple fall can result in life-changing injuries that may affect losing or altering your livelihood, your mobility or even paralyzing you for the rest of your life. While some of this cannot be changed, a good Personal Injury attorney can help in ensuring the bills will be taken care of and you will still be able to take care of your family.

An accident such as this points out how an enjoyable time can suddenly turn into a life-threatening disaster in a matter of moments. But, who was at fault in this scenario and what should the outcome be once you have healed and discovered anything permanent or that may take years, or even a lifetime of therapy, loss of income and other results of the accident? A Personal Injury attorney specializing in this type of occurrence is necessary to help ensure you receive everything possible to pay the bills and for future expenses to include loss of pay. While not guaranteeing you will suddenly become a millionaire, a Personal Injury attorney has been trained in negotiating with the insurance company and if necessary, filing and litigating a civil Personal Injury lawsuit to have a judge or judge and jury to award you for your losses and future suffering.

In this case, the homeowner is at fault, whether they knew about the unsafe flooring or not. It happened on their property and their homeowner's insurance should cover the expenses incurred in this accident. Nevertheless, as we all soon discover, the homeowner's insurance company is only going to pay what is detailed in the policy and nothing more and try to pay even less, which is most often far short of the actual costs and losses. In this and many similar cases, a Personal Injury attorney can find all the case history and other information necessary to determine who is at fault and who should be liable for your injuries.

In this case, there could be implications that involve the previous owners;

• Did they know about the weak flooring, but did not disclose it to the new homeowners?
• Did the home assessor not discover the weak flooring and put this information in their estimate of the home's value and inspection results?
• Had the flooring been replaced by someone who did not ensure the repair was up to current building standards at the time of a repair?

These are questions a Personal Injury attorney is trained to ask, find the necessary support information and be able to substantiate the claims in a trial in a civil law action.

Another point that a Personal Injury attorney is necessary is that they are skilled in negotiating with the homeowner's insurance company and the homeowners. Through negotiation, the attorney may be able to settle the case out of court, which saves time, money on fees and service of the necessary papers, getting witnesses to appear and a laundry list of things the attorney must charge fees for time and expenses in relation to the case.

So if you are injured in an accident or on someone else's property that they did not take care to prevent something from happening, contact a Personal Injury attorney as soon as possible. Most good attorneys will provide a free consultation to see if your case merits retaining an attorney and most do not charge any fees until the case has been settled through negotiation or through a trial proceeding that establishes fault and sets settlement for you, the accident victim.