Vacation Personal Injury Lawsuits
California sunny weather and Las Vegas casino action make these year-round tourist destinations popular among vacation goers. Thousands of tourists also visit Aspen during the winter, and every year, families head out to Orlando to relax in the city’s most attractive resorts.
Yet, increasing tourist traffic in these well-liked vacation areas and in other travel sites makes them prime locations for serious accidents.
Personal injuries suffered while on vacation can turn much needed holidays into miserable events, particularly when injuries wouldn’t have happened if someone else was just more careful or less reckless.
What Are Vacation Accidents?
Accidents and personal injuries sustained while on vacation may vary from slight to serious and can arise under a range of causes. A few of the more familiar types of occurrences that appear while taking a sabbatical in America include:
- Slip and fall accidents
- Rental car or taxi crashes
- Property hazard injuries
- Hotel and resort staff and service negligence
- Premise liability
- Boating accidents
- Swimming pool harms
- Defective walkways or parking lots
- Careless security
What to Do When Vacation Personal Injuries Arise
Personal injuries that happen during vacation time undo the furloughs people worked all year to earn.
Property owners and businesses must, therefore, offer compensation to accident victims not only to cover their loss to health or quality of life, but they should further pay claimants for the loss of their recreation time as well.
Taking the following steps after suffering a vacation accident will help victims prove their vacation claims, should they choose to pursue personal injury redress in court:
- Register a police report of the incident and call an ambulance if needed.
- Explain in detail pain and suffering injuries and make sure emergency workers, police officers, and property employees document it.
- After receiving emergency care, follow up at local hospitals, even if no further pain or injury is present.
- Obtain copies of police reports and emergency room medical records before leaving the city where the mishap occurred.
- Once home, follow emergency care orders and seek primary care physicians for continuing therapy and treatment.
- Complete recommended recovery care instructions, never miss medical consultations and only stop treatment after primary care physicians discharge the injuries.
- Attend physical therapy appointments if required.
- Ask employers for detailed vacation policy guidelines and have them provide a writing that documents vacation time earned before the accident occurred.
Elements of Vacation Personal Injury Lawsuits
Plaintiffs need to prove harm occurred because of someone else’s negligence to recover damages for injuries suffered while on vacation. This means that injured complainants must set up prima facie cases of negligence before filing their cause of action:
- Duty: Individuals, property owners or corporations must have owed a duty of reasonable care to vacation injury plaintiffs to not carelessly harm them while providing a service or during an invitation to visit a property.
- Breach: The defendant must have breached the duty of care owed to the complainant under a reasonable person standard.
- Causation: The defendant’s breach of the duty of care must have led to actual injuries and foreseeable damages.
- Damages: Vacation personal injury damages come in three forms. General compensatory harms arise naturally from the accident and cover non-economic injuries, such as pain and suffering, loss of holiday enjoyment, emotional distress and loss of life or limb.
Special compensatory injuries include itemized economic damages that plaintiffs can show through the production of medical bills, recovery expense receipts, and wages vouchers.
The courts almost never award punitive damages in vacation personal injury lawsuits. Yet, when plaintiffs prove the other party deliberately harm them or acted grossly negligent, the courts may punish defendants by forcing them to pay punitive redress.
Insurance Company and Vacation Claim FAQs
Vacation personal injuries can happen anytime and in anyplace. State statutes mandate resorts, hotels, taxis, amusement parks and the like to carry liability insurance for covering business invitee injuries while visiting premises or while using services.
Yet, folks need to remember insurance companies want to make profits too; this is why insurance adjusters often never redress all vacation accident harms in personal injury claims. Most insurance companies consequently will produce low offers when victims attempt to settle their vacation claims alone.
Insurance companies also present affirmative defenses when contesting vacation personal injury complaints in court. Some defendants will assert plaintiffs who delayed treatments contributed to their own negligence. Other parties may contend victims owned pre-existing medical conditions, which severed the chain of foreseeable causation.
Seeking immediate medical treatment is, therefore, the number one thing to do when vacation accidents occur; even when injuries are not so severe, never put off pursuing medical care because one never wants to lend insurance companies a claim, “the defendant’s negligence never caused serious injuries.”
Premises Liability FAQs
Premises liability statutes hold vacation property owners (hotels and resorts) responsible for damages arising out of harm taking place on their land.
The law obligates business owners to take reasonable efforts in maintaining safe visits for individuals entering their properties for monetary benefit to landowners. Premises liability attaches to both private and public business invitees.
Property owners further must exercise higher duties of care to vacationers by performing duties, such as correcting known land dangers; inspecting premises for property hazards; and posting clear warnings of known risks of harm; before visitations take place.
Vacation Personal Injury Specialist
Vacationers suffering unexpected accidents should consult with Marc Grossman or other personal injury authorities at Sanders Phillips Grossman for case assessment.
Marc Grossman is an expert at negotiating with large corporate insurance companies and can pursue litigation action when adjusters refuse to compensate victims fairly.
Our skilled attorneys win vacation claims at trial; yet, most insurance companies settle out of court, in which case, Marc Grossman procures favorable settlement offers for his vacation personal injury clients.
Out-of-state vacation claims are frequently troublesome to pursue, especially when plaintiffs live far from defendants. We are a nationwide law firm with deep pockets and have personal injury attorneys waiting across the country to help vacation accident victims get adequate compensation from the individuals who harm them.
