Ryan Zavodnick | May 4, 2025 | Personal Injury
Personal injuries arising from slip and fall accidents can run the gamut from minor bumps and sprains to life-altering, even life-threatening, bodily harms. Slip and fall injuries can also result in devastating financial consequences. For all these reasons, Pennsylvania residents struggling with the physical and financial outcomes of slip and fall accidents may wish to review their options with an experienced attorney. Call Zavodnick & Lasky at (215) 774-6467 to schedule a consultation.
The Function of Personal Injury Law
“Personal injury” is the name for a subset of civil torts law. According to Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute (LII), personal injury is so called to distinguish this area of practice from civil torts cases that instead involve the adjudication of property rights. Although the personal injuries addressed in a slip and fall case very often will involve the bodily harms suffered by the victim of a slip and fall accident, LII explains that the legal ground covered by personal injury law is somewhat broader, encompassing injuries inflicted on a person’s emotions or their reputation, not just physical damage.
The legal procedures by which personal injury cases are carried out can sometimes be complex, but the principle behind them is simple: When one party’s actions or failures to act result in undue harm to someone else, the party responsible for causing harms may be held legally responsible for restoring the person they have injured as nearly as possible to the condition the injured party was in before they were wronged. Generally speaking, this restoration is accomplished by way of financial damages, paid by the tortfeasor (the party found legally responsible for causing harm) to the party injured by their conduct.
Types of Personal Injuries
While the personal injuries arising from a slip and fall accident are likely to involve bodily injuries in the ordinary, non-legal sense, it is important for individuals injured in slip and fall accidents to understand that their legal injuries may include not just those physical harms, but economic and non-economic losses stemming from the same cause. These losses become part of the computation of damages submitted with a request for compensation – and, if the personal injury case goes to court, they will also be part of the “remedy” the plaintiff seeks from the judge or jury. An experienced Pennsylvania personal injury lawyer with Zavodnick & Lasky may be able to explain more in a private consultation.
Physical Personal Injuries From Slip and Fall Accidents
Of course, many of the most immediate personal injuries in a slip and fall case involve physical damage to the accident victim’s body. The type and severity of slip and fall injuries can vary widely, but some common examples include:
- Sprains
- Skeletal fractures
- Concussions
- Joint dislocations
Sadly, in severe cases a slip and fall accident can even be life-threatening. While anyone can have a slip-and-fall moment, these accidents disproportionately affect older adults: Strength and flexibility both tend to decline as we age, a combination that leads to a slow-but-steady decrease in balance ability over time. The Administration for Community Living (ACL) notes that, for Americans over 65 years of age, falls are the most common cause of both fatal and non-fatal injuries, affecting roughly one in every four adults from this age group annually.
Financial Losses as Personal Injuries in Slip and Fall Cases
Resources for “Older Adult Fall Prevention” provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicate that roughly 88% of emergency department visits in 2019 resulted from falls. The share of the overall rate held by Americans 65 and over accounts for roughly 3 million such visits, and about one-third as many hospitalizations, annually.
Emergency department visits and hospitalizations are rarely inexpensive, even for individuals who have robust health insurance policies. The financial costs of medical treatment needed as the result of a fall can be substantial. Compounding the expense for many victims of slip and fall accidents is the loss of wages due to missing work during recovery – and while younger individuals may not suffer severe slip-and-fall injuries at the same rates as retirees, the National Safety Council (NSF) reports that in 2022 hundreds of thousands of people injured in work-related falls suffered physical injuries substantial enough to require time off from work. These economic losses may be computed in the total calculation of damages in a personal injury case.
Types of Damages in Personal Injury Cases
LII explains that the term “damages” refers to the legal remedy, usually in the form of financial compensation, sought by the plaintiff in a civil torts case. There are two main ways to categorize damages, and each classification structure divides damages into two groups:
- Compensatory vs. punitive damages
- Economic vs. non-economic damages
Punitive damages represent a special circumstance, so both economic and non-economic damages are considered to be forms of compensatory damages.
Compensatory vs. Punitive Damages
Compensatory damages are paid to plaintiffs who win personal injury cases to directly compensate, as the name suggests, for the personal injuries. Punitive damages, on the other hand, are payments ordered by the court precisely to punish the tortfeasor for actions considered particularly egregious. Only some jurisdictions allow for punitive damages; Pennsylvania is one of the states that allow plaintiffs to seek punitive damages in some instances, but the overwhelming majority of damages in personal injury cases are still compensatory, in keeping with the function of such actions in restoring wrongfully injured parties to their previous condition.
Economic vs. Non-economic Damages
By comparison to the lop-sided division between compensatory vs. punitive damages, often economic vs. non-economic damages in slip and fall cases show a more balanced distribution. The specifics can vary from case to case based on the factors involved. An individual who sustains a complicated fracture in a slip and fall accident might require expensive surgery to set and “pin” the affected bones, yet make a complete or nearly-complete physical recovery; in this instance, there might be far greater economic than non-economic damages. On the other hand, if the same accident results in life-long pain from the lingering damage, even after surgical repair, then the balance of non-economic damages due to pain and suffering might rise.
Generally speaking, economic damages are easier to calculate than non-economic damages because economic damages consist of estimates based on financial losses already sustained (for which there are typically receipts or pay stubs that can document a decrease in earnings), plus the projected costs of future expenses arising from the same incident (for instance, follow-up medical care). Non-economic damages can be critically important in ensuring that personal injuries are compensated appropriately, but they can also be difficult to calculate because reaching these estimates requires setting a monetary value on feelings, experiences, and choices that are often themselves highly personal in nature.
Speak With a Personal Injury Lawyer
Personal injuries due to slip and fall cases can result in long-term, painful consequences for accident victims and their families. Depending on the circumstances, however, if you were injured in a slip and fall accident that occurred due to someone else’s negligence you may be entitled to compensation. Consider discussing your situation with an experienced Pennsylvania personal injury lawyer. Call the Zavodnick & Lasky team at (215) 774-6467 today to get started.
