Every time an Amazon delivery driver steps out of their vehicle to drop off a package, they’re trusting the property owners with their safety. Unfortunately, some property owners—residential, commercial, and governmental—don’t maintain their properties in a safe way. If you suffered slip, trip, or fall injuries while working as an Amazon delivery driver claim, you might have the grounds to seek compensation. The experienced New Jersey slip and fall attorneys at Console & Associates can help.
Ready to find out more about your rights in a New Jersey Amazon delivery driver slip and fall claim? Call (866) 778-5500 today to discuss your rights and options during a free, confidential legal consultation.
Slip and fall is a general term that encompasses any sort of injury involving a slip, trip, or fall.
To have a slip and fall personal injury claim, you must have sustained a physical injury that is serious enough to affect your life and to require medical treatment. In some situations, slip and fall accidents can be catastrophic or even fatal.
Other slip and fall accidents affect victims’ lives in more subtle (but still significant) ways, like limiting their mobility, causing them pain, or keeping them from working or from doing their favorite hobbies.
Many Amazon delivery drivers who suffer slip and fall accidents do so outdoors, especially in suburban and rural areas. Since they’re walking from their parked truck or car to the front door of a house or a business, they may not ever set foot inside a building during the course of their shift. For these Amazon delivery drivers, slip and fall accidents are likely to involve safety hazards like the following:
Not all of these outdoor slip and fall hazards will necessarily make you eligible for compensation. Different states and municipalities may have different requirements for property owners, especially in outdoor spaces. Factors like whether a hazard was obvious and predictable—like an ice buildup during a snowstorm that a property owner couldn’t be expected to have dealt with already—may impact your ability to seek compensation.
If your Amazon package delivery route tends to include more large commercial buildings and apartment complexes, you may encounter indoor slip and fall hazards, too. These safety hazards may include:
Whether a fall occurs indoors or outdoors, it can lead to serious injuries.
For a property owner to be deemed negligent in an Amazon delivery driver slip and fall claim situation, the following things have to happen:
Proving negligence is necessary for holding a property owner legally and financially accountable for your losses.
Amazon delivery drivers should know that, generally, homeowners and tenants themselves aren’t the ones who pay a personal injury settlement.
In some cases, the homeowner who witnesses the fall may be apologetic and even helpful afterward, leaving the victim unsure of how to proceed and reluctant to sue—even though they really do need the money. Rest assured that you don’t have to seek compensation from a homeowner directly. In most cases, the property owner’s homeowner’s insurance policy covers a settlement that arises out of a personal injury that occurs there due to the policyholder’s negligence.
Whether Amazon delivery drivers injured in a slip and fall have the potential for other kinds of claims may depend on their employment status. Since you were hurt in the course of your work, you may be eligible for worker’s compensation benefits—but only if you are officially classified as an employee. Generally, Amazon delivery drivers are either employees of one of Amazon’s independent Delivery Service Partners (DSPs) or gig workers who sign up for contract work through the Amazon Flex program, The Detroit News reported in 2021.
If you’re an employee of an Amazon DSP, you may be able to access workers’ comp benefits through your employer, even though you might not be eligible for benefits through Amazon directly. Gig workers usually don’t get worker’s comp benefits since these policies typically don’t cover independent contractors, so a worker’s comp claim may not be an option for Amazon Flex drivers.
The benefit of a workers’ compensation claim, if you’re eligible for one, is that you don’t have to prove negligence on the part of your employer to collect benefits through their insurance coverage. You could still get benefits even if your own mistake is what led to the accident.
There are some downsides to worker’s compensation claims, though. Generally, worker’s comp claims only allow for coverage of your medical expenses and compensation for your lost wages, not for pain and suffering or decreases in your quality of life. Often, injured workers get only a percentage of the income they lose while out of work, not the full amount, as they could receive under a personal injury claim against the property owner.
In a worker’s compensation claim, your employer may have a say in who you see for medical treatment, as well, depending on your state’s laws.
In cases in which the Amazon delivery worker is someone’s employee and the property owner was negligent, you may have the grounds for two distinct types of claims:
Whenever an accident occurs in the course of your work, the situation is likely to be more complex than an accident that happens when you’re not working. An attorney for Amazon delivery driver slip and fall matters can help untangle the complicated threads of who may have some legal or financial responsibility to pay for your damages.
Slip and fall accidents can bring about many types of injuries, some of them very serious. Below are some examples of the types of injuries our past slip and fall clients have sustained:
For any slip and fall injury that’s significant enough to impact your life, you may have the grounds to pursue a claim for compensation. However, for that claim to be successful, you have to take the right steps after the accident occurs.
If you have sustained a slip and fall injury while delivering packages for Amazon, here’s what you should do next.
To be able to potentially pursue a claim of any kind, either with your employer’s worker’s comp insurance or against a negligent property owner, you must document that the accident happened. This is particularly important when no one directly witnessed the accident, as is often the case with Amazon delivery drivers.
If an accident occurred inside an office building or apartment complex, you might be able to document it by reporting it to the building manager. For Amazon delivery drivers injured outside, there may not be any party to whom you can directly report the slip and fall, especially if no homeowner was present at the time of the delivery.
It’s reasonable to call 911 or a non-emergency police line after a slip and fall—especially when you are clearly injured—to report the accident to the police and get checked out by emergency medical personnel.
Generally, you should also notify the route dispatcher and/or your employer that you sustained an injury and will not be able to continue your route due to the need to seek medical treatment. Don’t try to guess at this time how serious your injuries are, what is wrong, or when you will be up to returning to work. Save any discussions of that nature for when you have an official diagnosis and an informed prognosis—and, ideally, professional legal representation on your side.
Your slip and fall case is only as strong as the evidence you have to support it. While you wait for the authorities or the property owner to arrive and fill out a report or for emergency medical personnel to get to you, collect whatever evidence you can. Use your phone to take photos of the location where you fell and any safety hazards that contributed to the accident.
If there were any witnesses, ask for their names and contact information. Make sure you promptly ask them for their statements. Over time, their memories of the event may fade—especially since, unlike you, they don’t have to live with its effects every day.
One of the biggest mistakes people make after a slip and fall accident is failing to get medical care. Perhaps because people often assume (incorrectly) that a slip and fall injury isn’t as serious as an injury sustained in a car accident, they’re likely to shrug off their pain as something minor that’s likely to go away on its own. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case.
Waiting to get medical care can hurt you in two ways: by allowing your injuries to go untreated and potentially get worse, and by making it look like your injuries aren’t as serious as they really are. To prevent your health from suffering even further and preserve your right to pursue a slip and fall claim, you need to get checked out by a healthcare professional as soon as possible.
If you called for emergency help for the slip and fall accident, let medical personnel on the scene examine you. They can provide first aid care and, if needed, transport you to the emergency room. Otherwise, once you have reported the accident, you should get medical care at an urgent care facility or a doctor’s office.
Not following up with their medical care is another major mistake victims of slip and fall accidents make. Doctor’s appointments, physical therapy, and medical and pharmaceutical interventions can be expensive. They can also take up a lot of your time, which makes things especially difficult if you’re still working (or trying to work).
However, going without treatment and suffering through the pain isn’t a sustainable long-term solution—not when your injuries are serious enough that they won’t go away on their own. Hiring a personal injury attorney can help you make sure you’re able to access the care you need and address the obstacles that stand in the way of your recovery.
Slip and fall claims can be more complicated than many people expect, even without the added complexities that come with a work-related injury. Your New Jersey injury attorney will handle everything, from identifying all possible defendants to negotiating a settlement with the defendant’s insurance company.
It’s important that you look for a law firm that is familiar with the special challenges that delivery drivers face after a slip and fall. Not every attorney who handles slip and fall matters or work injury cases fully understands the dangers involved in delivery work or the nuances of Amazon delivery drivers’ work arrangements. You’re counting on your attorney to calculate the full amount of damages you suffered, so you want to make sure you choose a lawyer who understands exactly how injuries of this nature impact delivery drivers.
At Console & Associates, P.C., our slip and fall attorneys have experience representing delivery drivers. Our founder, attorney Richard P. Console, was even quoted in a Material Handling and Logistics News article about the recent rise in delivery driver injury cases.
To get the money you deserve for your serious slip and fall injuries, you’re going to need a professional on your side. Our attorneys offer every one of the clients we represent our No Fee Promise. You’ll pay nothing to have your case evaluated and your questions answered by a member of our experienced legal team.
Throughout the course of your claim, we represent you in all legal proceedings, conduct an in-depth accident investigation, and handle all interactions and negotiations with defendants and their insurers. You will only pay for our legal services after we succeed in getting money for you (and if we can’t get you compensation, you’ll pay nothing).
Your time to pursue compensation for an Amazon delivery slip and fall is limited. Depending on your state, the statute of limitations—the legal deadline by which you must file a claim—may be as short as one to two years. In certain circumstances, such as if your case involved a safety hazard on a property maintained by a government entity, you could face special deadlines that reduce the time you have to act to just a few months.
Generally, the sooner you speak to an attorney about your Amazon delivery driver slip and fall claim, the better.
Marlton Nj Personal Injury Attorney
We’ve seen firsthand what a difference it makes to families affected by a slip and fall accident to have help, support, and a reason to believe that things will get better, even in the most challenging moments. Our New Jersey Amazon delivery slip and fall accident attorneys are here to help provide that support as we serve as your partners in your pursuit of the compensation you deserve.
Your case evaluation is free, no matter what. If you choose to move forward with a claim, there’s no cost until we get results. So there really is no risk.
Give us the chance to help you. All it takes is a phone call. Call 866-778-5500 for your free, private consultation.
Take a look at what some of our happy New Jersey clients have to say:
“I have been a client since 2018. I appreciate the professionalism, dignity and care that was shown regarding my case. Mike and Allison held my hand through everything I experienced. They used great detail to explain how things would go and what to expect at each stage of my case. This team was relentless in their negotiations, on my behalf. My case settled fairly. I highly recommend Console and Associates. Thank you for all that you have done for me.”
Catherine Cyphers, Rating: 5/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
We have a 4.7 average and 130 reviews on Google
1 Holtec Drive, #100
Marlton, NJ 08053
(856) 778-5500
494 Broad St #208b
Newark, NJ 07102
(862) 229-1137
