What To Do After Getting Injured At A Hotel

Hotel properties are modern destinations not only for accommodation, but also for upscale dining, shopping, and leisure. But, most people don’t include accidents and injuries in their plans. And unfortunately, accidents do happen and people do get hurt.

Hotel customers and patrons have suffered injuries on hotel premises ranging from a slip & fall to assault and -in rare cases- death. As is the case with other businesses, hotel owners have a duty of care for their visitors and must ensure a safe environment for their customers. But, what happens when they fail to do so and someone gets hurt on their property?

How Can I Become Injured At A Hotel?

There are a myriad of ways one could become injured at a hotel for different reasons and circumstances. These can include:

• Slip and Fall accidents
• Drowning and Near-drowning accidents
• Accidents caused by damaged furniture
• Injuries caused by bed bugs
• Food-borne injuries
• Burn injuries from overheated water

These accidents more often than not happen due to negligence on the owner’s part and may call for filing a personal injury claim to recover damages. Additionally, the injury lawyers at Hendy Johnson Vaughn Emery of Louisville argue that it's not uncommon for injury victims to sustain extended periods of anxiety, fear, and depression due to these incidents.

How to Prove Negligence in a Hotel Injury?

Every owner of a property has the duty to maintain a safe environment for their patrons to prevent injuries on their premises. This is a serious responsibility that includes keeping the premises in working order at all times, making necessary maintenance repairs, and complying with local safety standards and building regulations.

To ensure you receive compensation for your damages, you must be able to prove without a doubt that your injuries were directly caused by negligence on the property owner’s part. The harm done to you needs to be ‘reasonably foreseeable harm’ which means that the property owner must have known ahead of time of a potentially dangerous matter affecting their property. They also should have had enough time to work on correcting the problem or posting a notice for their patrons.

What Should I Do If I Am Injured?

Suffering an injury in hotel premises could be a traumatic experience. Here’s some tips on what to do if you’ve been injured at a hotel:

Immediately notify hotel management of your accident or injury. Explain to them in detail what happened, how it happened, and where it happened. Ask the hotel management to file a detailed report of the accident to keep as a reference. Additionally, ask the management for the contact information of their insurance company.

Seek medical treatment as soon as you can. Known hotels often have a medical team on stand by that could examine you and treat any immediate injuries. The medical team could aid in calling an ambulance and transferring you to a hospital if the injuries were serious. Remember to keep all of your medical records at hand including expenses, paramedic reports, and any additional information related to your injury.

Try to document the accident by taking photos, videos, and notes of your surroundings. Speak to any eyewitnesses around to see if they can write down their perception of the events that took place. Save their contact information for the future.

Contact an experienced personal injury lawyer. The hotel property where you were injured might attempt to offer you a quick settlement to get away with it. This often leads to receiving less compensation than what’s needed to tend to all the damages caused. Avoid signing any agreements before you have a professional attorney on your side giving you legal advice.