Jason Helsel: So anytime you're injured on someone else's property, there may be a premises liability claim that you have against either the property owner or the property manager.
Premises liability is something that we handle often here at our firm at Fowler | Helsel | Vogt. And basically what that involves is it means that the owner of the property or the manager of the property allowed a dangerous condition to exist, and either they knew of it or they should have known of it, and then it caused injury to you. Trip and falls, slip and falls...those are examples of premises liability cases that we see very often. Those types of cases you want to get somebody out there very quickly to document the scene and to see what it was that was the condition that caused the injury. Because more often than not as you can imagine when somebody's hurt on a property, the very next day or maybe even later that day, they're out there remedying and fixing it and trying to cover that. So getting representation and getting our firm on those types of cases quickly helps improve the value of your case.
Mark Vogt: If you're hurt on someone else's property, the same rules apply generally for insurance companies. They generally follow the same beats, which means they're going to call you, try to record a statement over the phone, right when you're at your most vulnerable, and then they're going to throw some money at you, and sadly, some people view that money as fair compensation. In reality, it's what the industry calls "defense costs", which means, we'd rather not pay a lawyer. We'll pay you. But that doesn't mean they believe in your case, and it doesn't mean they think they're at fault. At Fowler | Helsel | Vogt, we kind of right that scenario and get them in the right frame of mind of where the money's coming from and why.
