Missouri Slip & Fall Laws

You’ve been hurt and you’re angry. You’re not the kind of person who sues, but you want to know what the stages of a lawsuit are. Let’s talk about it.   Injury Law News, brought to you by The S.E. Farris Law Firm.   I’m Spencer Farris, a personal injury lawyer in St. Louis, Missouri, and partner at The S.E Farris Law Firm. People get hurt and call my office every day, thinking that we can get their case resolved in a matter of hours like they do on TV. But there are a lot of stages to a personal injury case, and I want to go through those with you. Before you think about a lawsuit, you need to think about taking care of yourself. If you’re hurt, get medical treatment. Follow your doctor’s instructions, go to your doctor visits, and take your medication. That’s important for two reasons. First of all, you won’t get better if you don’t do those things, and feeling better’s the most important part of recovering from an injury. From a legal perspective, you can’t recover your damages if you don’t document that you have been injured, and the way that you do that is taking the time to follow your doctor’s directions. Get the medical care that you need.  Almost as important as hiring good doctors is to hire a qualified attorney, someone who’s experienced in handling injury cases and someone that you want to work with. Remember that an injury case can take months or even a couple of years to get resolved, and you want to find someone that you don’t mind having a partnership with that will last throughout that time period. Stay in touch with your lawyer. Make sure that if you move or change phone numbers or change doctors your lawyer knows about it. When your doctor’s done treating you, it’s time for your lawyer to get to work gathering the medical records and the facts necessary to present your case. Most lawyers will then put together what’s called a claim packet or a negotiation packet. By this time your lawyer should have contacted the person at fault for your injury and their insurance company. Now, your lawyer presents the case to the insurance company and starts negotiations. Remember that most cases settle at this stage – better than half, at least. If the insurance company is reasonable and your lawyer does his job to present your case, you should be able to get the case settled. It doesn’t always work that way however, and if it doesn’t, you move to the next stage which is an actual lawsuit. We’re going to talk about that in the next video. In the meantime, if you have questions about handling a personal injury case or the stages, please feel free to call or contact my office at the website and the phone number at the bottom of the screen. We’re happy to visit with you at no cost or obligation and talk with you about your case, whether we represent you or not. The S.E. Farris Law Firm is dedicated to the needs of injury victims and their families.

By: Spencer Farris

We carry insurance on our homes because the folks that come visit us are friends and relatives. And if they get hurt, you want them to be taken care off. In Missouri though if you get hurt at the house of a friend or relative, they are the ones who named in lawsuit, and it scares a lot of folks. Am I going to take grandma’s car? Am I going to cause aunt Betsy lose her house? No, you’re not. The short answer is, A Missouri slip and fall lawyer is going to pursue the insurance that covered the home. And we’re never going to take away the property of the person whose house you were at. Insurance companies want you to feel guilty and want you to feel that way, but it simply not true. When you’ve been hurt and the bills are racking up, you don’t have to pay a lawyer out of pocket to represent you in your injury case. Call my office. And if we can help you, we won’t charge you anything until the end of your case if we’re successful for you. Call 314-A-LAWYER today for free consultation.

By: Spencer Farris

Summary judgement is when the other side tries to win your case without going to trial based on the papers that have been filed.

By: Spencer Farris

In our modern mobile society, freight and passengers move by rail car every day, just at the same time you and your family are in your car, travelling the highways. And it’s inevitable that at the intersection there’s a potential for devastating collisions. We try to avoid that with crossing equipment and crossbars, but sometimes it doesn’t function properly. Sometimes it hasn’t been properly maintained, sometimes it simply doesn’t exist. If you’ve been injured, or a loved one has been killed at a train crossing, you owe it to yourself and to your family to hire a personal injury attorney who can investigate the causes of the collision and determine whether or not your rights should be protected.  Call 314-A-LAWYER today for your free consultation.

By: Spencer Farris

You’ve been injured and you’re thinking of dealing with the insurance company without an attorney. That’s probably a mistake, but here are some things to watch out for if you decide to go down that road.

Injury Law News, brought to you by the S.E. Farris Law Firm.

I’m Spencer Farris and I represent injury victims throughout Saint Louis and the state of Missouri. I’ve helped hundreds of folks handle their case for personal injury, but every now and then I meet someone who thinks that they don’t need an attorney. Let me tell you a few things to look out for if you decide that you don’t want to hire an attorney.

Get pictures. Whether it’s the car you’ve been crashed in or the place that you fell, a picture is worth a thousand words. And if you’re relying on the insurance company to take pictures for you, you’re making a big mistake. If those pictures would have been helpful to you and they disappear, you’ll never be able to recreate that important evidence for your case.

The insurance company will want to take a statement from you and that’s a mistake. Remember that the person asking the questions controls and frames how your answers come out, and the insurance company is not there to help you. You never want to give a statement without someone on your side to help you through that step, and typically that’s where you have an attorney.

Finally, the insurance company’s going to want you to sign medical authorizations. And in Missouri, you don’t give up your right to all privacy just because you’ve had an injury case. You don’t have to sign the authorization that gives the insurance company the right to get all of your medical records from the time that you’re born, but the form that they give you will do just that. Don’t sign that form.

Studies have shown over and over that folks with attorneys get four to five times more money for their injury case than those without. If you’ve been injured and you have questions – whether you want to hire an attorney or not – please call me at the number on your screen or visit us at our internet website that you see on the screen as well. We’re happy to help, and if we can help you resolve your case without hiring us, great. And if you need an attorney, we’d be proud to represent you.

The S.E. Farris Law Firm is dedicated to the needs of injury victims and their families.

By: Spencer Farris

When you’ve been hurt whether it’s in a car or because you’ve gotten injured on someone’s property at that moment a Missouri personal injury lawyer is important to you and the Missouri law is important to you. But up until that time you weren’t even aware it existed and you’re always in the cross hairs in our state legislature. There hasn’t been a year gone by since the 22 years that I’ve been practicing that the Missouri legislature hasn’t had injury victims in it’s cross hairs. They want to get at the lawyers, but they do it by walking over folks like you, that have been hurt.

Unfortunately you don’t know your rights have been infringed upon, you don’t that you’ve been within the cross hairs of the legislature until you get hurt. But because of that you don’t know all the things you need to do to handle your case once you’ve been hurt and how the law has developed over the last several hundred years. And you need a Missouri personal injury lawyer to help guide you down the path and make sure that you don’t get taken advantage of by the insurance company for the folks that hurt you.  When you’ve been hurt and the bills are racking up, you don’t have to pay a lawyer out of pocket to represent you in your injury case. Call my office and if we can help you, we won’t charge you anything until the end of your case if we’re successful for you. Call 314-A-LAWYER today for a free consultation.

By: Spencer Farris

Taxes are on everybody’s mind at this time of year and you maybe wondering, “Do I have to pay taxes on my personal injury case?” Injury law news brought to you by the S.E. Farris Law Firm. I’m Spencer Farris, a partner at the S.E. Farris Law Firm. I’ve represented hundreds of injury victims throughout Missouri. And at the end of the case the question my clients always want to know is how much money do I get from my settlement and will I have to pay taxes. Current Internal Revenue Service and Missouri state regulations do not tax personal injury cases. They treat a personal injury case settlement as a return on investment, which means that you’re really just getting back money that you’ve invested or in the case of an injury, your body and your future work life, which has been taken away from you. So, you don’t currently pay taxes on a personal injury case. However, whenever you file your taxes you always want to meet with a professional tax adviser because there are a couple of exceptions to that rule. If you’re verdict of settlement included punitive damages it is taxable.

Punitive or exemplary damages are damages to punish a defendant which you don’t typically see in a civil trial setting. The State of Missouri will take up to half of punitive damages that are awarded and puts them in a special fund to benefit injury victims. If you’re verdict or settlement includes a confidentiality clause – meaning that you can’t talk about your settlement – there are taxes are on confidential portion or the portion that was paid for confidentiality. Finally, lost wages are taxed just like your wages would be. It’s rare in Missouri for a verdict to specifically set out wages so this doesn’t come up very often, but it can and you and your lawyer and your tax attorney should talk about those things. If you have questions about the tax consequences of a personal injury settlement, call my office at the number on the screen or visit us on the internet. We’ll be happy to try to help you without any cost or obligation. The S.E. Farris Law Firm is dedicated to the needs of injury victims and their families.

By: Spencer Farris

Traumatic brain injuries, or brain injuries of any kind, are some of the most devastating injuries. And when you have a big injury, there’s not enough money for what you’re going through. You need to hire a Missouri brain injury attorney to help get as much as possible for your family, because you only have one opportunity to go back and get your damages. Insurance companies track everything. They track what juries pay, they track what medical bills cost, and they track what lawyers are willing to try cases. Over my career, I’ve tried over a hundred lawsuits to juries. Insurance companies know that and they track that. The lawyers that you see on television may have never entered the courtroom, may have never tried a case, and the insurance companies know it and they pay more to lawyers that will force them to pay more. When you hire my law firm, my name is on the door and I’m on the bottom line. I’m responsible to every client. Whether I am writing the letters or whatever’s going out the door, I’m responsible. The insurance company knows that as a small shop and as a small law firm, they have to treat me just like they have to treat the big law firms; we’re going to bring the big guns. When you’ve been hurt and the bills are racking up, you don’t have to pay a lawyer out of pocket to represent you in your injury case. Call my office and if we can help you, we won’t charge you anything until the end of your case if we’re successful for you. Call 314-A-LAWYER today for a free consultation.

By: Spencer Farris

Between school buses, public transportation and charter buses, we see buses on the road every day. And because there are more and more buses, there are more and more bus accidents. Although buses cost many times what an average passenger car does, they don’t often have the simple safety devices that we take for granted, when we buckle up to go to the grocery store. If you’re in a bus accident, whether it’s because a negligent driver struck your bus, or because your bus driver wasn’t paying attention and hurt you, it’s important to contact an attorney immediately. There are limits to insurance in all bus cases, and making sure that your claim is made is important. Call my office at the number on your screen, or visit us on the internet if you’ve been injured due to a bus accident. I am happy to visit with you, without any cost or obligation. Call 314-A-LAWYER today, for your free consultation.

By: Spencer Farris