Copyright © 2024 Gelb & Gelb, P.C. All rights reserved.
Our Maryland restaurant injury lawyers at Gelb & Gelb excel at recovering compensation for injuries sustained in dining establishments throughout Maryland. Restaurants can be hectic. They often find themselves under a lot of pressure to expertly prepare food for patrons in a timely manner. Consequently, they sometimes rush through certain safety protocols. When you are injured due to this carelessness, we help you recover just compensation for your injuries. Countless restaurants in Maryland deserve credit. Some have immaculate health and safety records. Many have stringent managers who would not dare to let an employee act negligently, knowing how devastating negligence can be to a customer and their family. However, as our Maryland restaurant injury lawyers have repeatedly seen, not all restaurants are managed as well as others. When there is carelessness in a restaurant, injury frequently is the result.
Restaurant injuries can impose significant physical, emotional, and financial burdens on victims. As your dedicated Maryland restaurant injury lawyers, our goal is to alleviate these burdens by holding the wrongdoer accountable. In a case against a restaurant, it may be for the negligence of an employee acting within the course and scope of his employment. Or, it may be negligence by the owner who has failed to properly maintain equipment in the restaurant that led to your physical injury. We can assist you in determining whether you have a case against the restaurant for conduct within the restaurant. In some circumstances, the restaurant may even be liable for the actions of another guest. While this is less likely, if they fail to act reasonably, we may be successful in recovering compensation so you do not have to pay your medical expenses and handle your physical pain alone.
Call our Maryland restaurant injury attorneys today for a free consultation.
While the list below is not exhaustive, Maryland has four common types of restaurant injury claims.
Slip-and-fall accidents occur all the time. They can happen in any venue. Whether it is a concert venue, a restaurant, a bar, a store, or anything else open to the public, there is the potential for a slip-and-fall. In a restaurant, countless hazards may result in a slip and fall injury. For example, a customer or server may spill a liquid that causes you to slip and fall. Whether it is spilled by a waiter or another customer has different implications on your ability to make a claim. In either case, our Maryland restaurant injury lawyers may be successful in holding the restaurant legally responsible for your injury. However, the law grants the restaurant staff more leeway if another customer spills the liquid instead of a restaurant employee. There are complex nuances you should be aware of.
If another customer creates a hazardous condition and the restaurant knows about it, they have a duty to clean it up almost immediately. However, if no one puts the restaurant on notice of the spill, they still technically have a duty to inspect for hazardous conditions on a reasonable basis. On a busy Friday night at a restaurant, our Maryland restaurant injury lawyers would argue that their obligation to inspect for spills requires that they inspect around the clock. Thus, if a spill has been outside the kitchen for five minutes and they are unaware of the spill and a customer slips and falls, the restaurant should be liable. Ultimately, this is a jury question.
Customers or staff might sustain burns from hot beverages, food, cooking equipment, or steam, which can occur due to negligence in food handling or kitchen management. Ultimately, these injuries can range tremendously. On the lower end, a burn may occur when a younger customer eats something hot and burns their mouth. In this scenario, while an argument can be made that a child cannot be contributorily negligent, even if that argument is successful, the damages may not warrant pursuing the case. On the other hand, if a server spills food or drinks from their tray onto you, you may suffer severe burns. If you suffer a third-degree burn on your face, this can result in permanent scarring. A scar from a burn injury can warrant pursuing compensation at trial with the help of a Maryland restaurant injury lawyer.
A cut or a laceration is another common injury in a Maryland restaurant. As you might imagine, some cuts and lacerations are compensable, while others are not. The critical distinguisher that our Maryland restaurant injury lawyers look for is whether a victim of restaurant negligence is contributorily negligent in causing their injury. For example, if you dropped your glass and that glass shatters and cuts you, you may be barred from recovery because it is your fault. On the other hand, broken glassware, malfunctioning equipment, or improperly maintained utensils often lead to severe cuts and are due to no fault of your own. These injuries can be significant. Some cuts can cut deep, require stitches, and can even leave permanent scarring. This is why speaking to a restaurant attorney in Maryland is vital to discuss your options.
A food poisoning case is worth discussing solely because we receive several calls for it every year. However, food poisoning cases are notoriously difficult to win on their face. As Maryland restaurant injury lawyers, we must be able to prove at trial a causal link between your injury and negligence by the restaurant. If you become seriously ill after eating at a restaurant, a jury might wonder whether it is genuinely due to the fault of the restaurant or whether you cooked something at home that made you sick.
The obvious time when it is worth pursuing this is if everyone at the restaurant that night gets ill. That should include those who were not at your table. If that is the case, then we may be successful in determining liability at trial. But even then, these can be expensive cases to litigate because of the cost of expert witnesses. Thus, your damages should be sufficient to warrant pursuit at trial. As always, you are welcome to call our office for a free consultation to decide whether pursuing the case is right for you.
Our Maryland restaurant injury lawyers have helped thousands of personal injury victims recover the compensation they deserve for injuries occurring in Maryland. If you are injured at a restaurant in Maryland, call the law offices of Gelb & Gelb, P.C. today to discuss making a claim.
Copyright © 2024 Gelb & Gelb, P.C. All rights reserved.