Santa Fe Premises Liability Attorney

Have you suffered an injury while visiting someone else’s property here in Santa Fe?

If you did and you were left with severe injuries or a close relative lost their life in such an incident, New Mexico law may allow you to recover compensation for your losses like medical bills, lost wages, and even pain and suffering and emotional anguish.

Getting in touch with a Santa Fe premises liability lawyer as soon as possible to discuss your case is critical. You could jeopardize your right to take legal action if you don’t.

So, if you’re hurt, contact us now.

Types of Premises Liability Cases That Occur in Santa Fe

Any event that results in an injury on another person’s property may entitle you to file a premises liability lawsuit. Cases we file on behalf of our clients often stem from incidents such as:

• Dog bites
• Slips and falls
• Swimming pool drownings
• Playground injuries
• Residential or commercial building fires
• Inadequate lighting or inadequate security concerns leading to physical assaults
• Struck-by incidents, such as tools falling on a nearby sidewalk from a construction site

As you might imagine, almost any of the above situations can result in quite serious injuries. The sad part is that most of these situations are completely preventable.

Why Do People Get Hurt When on Others’ Properties

Various situations may result in a person sustaining injuries on someone else’s premises, such as:

• Cracked sidewalks, potholes, and uneven pavement
• Spilled liquids
• Loose or missing handrails
• Ice or snow-covered sidewalks
• Ineffective maintenance
• Poor security measures
• They get caught in apartment or office building fires
• Unrestrained, aggressive pets
• Improperly stowed away tools or merchandise

Who Can You Hold Liable for the Harm You Suffered

The answer to who you can hold accountable for your injuries doesn’t yield a straightforward answer. The response instead comes down to a few factors, including:

• Where you sustained your injuries: Was it at a mall, hotel, an entertainment venue, a friend’s house, a government building, or somewhere else? While the location where you sustained your injuries may not generally impact whether you can take legal action, it may impact what notification requirements you must make, filing timelines, and how much you can recover.
• What you were doing when your injuries occurred: Were you acting recklessly, such as engaging in horseplay, or were you acting much like anyone else would have in the situation? Here in New Mexico, for example, there’s a pure comparative negligence rule in place. If a determination is made that you were at least somewhat at fault for the incident that caused your injuries, then any damages you might be eligible to recover would be reduced by your percentage of fault for it.

In addition to the factors above, it also matters whether there’s a reasonable expectation that the property or business owner knew that the dangerous situation existed. If it can be shown that they should have been aware of it, that may aid in proving liability for the injuries that resulted.

Since fault and liability are complex concepts to understand, it can be helpful to have a Santa Fe premises liability lawyer to support you in analyzing what occurred leading up to your injury accident and how that impacts your rights in the context of New Mexico law.

Here at Barrera Law Group LLC, we can help you make sense of all that.

Damages Available to Victims Hurt on Someone Else’s Property

Whether filing an insurance claim or premises liability lawsuit, if successful, you may be able to recover compensation for the following losses:

• Medical care and other health care costs, like physical therapy, prescription medication, assistive devices
• Current and future lost wages as well as vocational training (if you need to switch careers)
• Emotional distress, pain and suffering, loss of companionship, and other related noneconomic damages you’ve suffered

While prospective clients often ask us what cases like theirs go for during an initial phone call, giving such estimates is virtually impossible. Before making such assessments, we must review the unique circumstances surrounding your injuries, how much pay you lost, and gain a better understanding of your future health prognosis and employment outlook.

Thus, with a more thorough review of your records, we should be able to give you an approximate amount.

How a Santa Fe Premises Liability Attorney Helps with Your Case

It may seem easy enough to file an incident report with a place of business, call a homeowners’ insurance carrier, or report what happened to the police yourself.

However, that course of action is unlikely to get you the results you’re seeking in terms of helping you recover enough compensation to cover all your accident costs, as described above. Getting a lawyer to help you build a strong case and advocate on your behalf can make a big difference when it comes to a monetary recovery.

Here’s what your attorney does to strengthen your case:

• Carefully analyze any evidence already procured
• Requests any other evidence that may help prove one’s account of events, like eyewitness reports, photographs, and surveillance video (if available)
• Serves as the gatekeeper between you and property owners or their insurers, which ensures you don’t make the mistake of saying something to them that could affect your case
• Compiles evidence, reviews records, and researches how much compensation is needed to compensate for your damages, then drafts a narrative of how the injury incident occurred and submits that demand packet to the insurance requesting a set fair settlement
• Negotiates with homeowners and business owners personally or their insurers in an effort to strike a settlement
• Helps you navigate whether to take a settlement offer or to take the case to trial

While no Santa Fe premises liability lawyer can guarantee a certain outcome in your injury case, we can make one promise to you. When you work with our legal team at Barrera Law Group, we only take on cases that we have a chance of winning. So, we’ll fight for you until the bitter end, which hopefully ends with you signing a release of all claims and having a check placed in your hands.

We’re ready to roll up our sleeves and delve deeper into investigating what happened to you and what your legal options are accordingly.

Contact us and discuss what happened to you, so if we agree to move forward in working together, we can get started doing so right away.

Your initial consultation with an attorney in our office is free.