Transcript

Hi, this is Brother Rutter from Rutter Mills. I want to thank you for calling us to inquire about your premises liability situation.

We say premises liability, it’s a fancy legal term. What we really mean is slip and fall or trip and fall type cases that happen on some business premises.

So in your case, unfortunately we are not going to be able to help, but we always hope that people will get a second opinion if they still feel that they have a viable claim.

But let me tell you how we think these things through. In Virginia law, slip and fall type cases are very difficult, and this is because Virginia law is difficult. We are, as you may know, quite a conservative state when it comes to some of the insurance law, and I think a lot of the laws around business liability are designed to protect the business or the business insurance company and not necessarily intended to protect the victim.

We fight about those laws with the legislature in Richmond or with Congress in Washington all the time, but we have to live with the laws the way they are, and slip and fall is just difficult.

You have to prove that the business had a defect in the premises, that they knew or should have known and they had an opportunity to correct it. We have to be able to prove why you tripped and fell, and we have to tie that fault back to a person or persons that are related to the business or the business owners.

In other words, the law makes us jump through one heck of a lot of hoops in order to win an award.

Secondly, being able to jump through those hoops, even when we can, can be awfully expensive, which is fine, as long as the expense is not as big or bigger than what we may be able to get you at the end.

It’s important for us to give you advice, it’s not only smart legal advice, but smart economic advice. We don’t want you to go down a long, difficult road of litigation, where the award you may receive at the end is less than the cost of getting to that award.

And so for all of these reasons, we put them in and we work through them and we try every way we can to get to a, “Yes, we will represent you.” Because that’s what we’re in the business to do, and we love doing it, that’s why I went to law school. It’s why all the lawyers here went to law school. It’s what our 75 to 80 professionals here want to do. We want to help, and so if there’s any way we though we could get to a successful award for you legally and economically, I’d be saying, “Yes, let’s get together.”

So, I’m sorry we can’t help you this time, but if you have another legal situation in the future, please call us. We’d love to try to get a “Yes” on that one.

Thanks so much.