From Hammond to Michigan City and from the lakefront to Lowell, we represent injured people across the Region. Our Merrillville office is at 8002 Utah Street, Merrillville, IN 46410, and you can reach it at (219) 472-8391. If you cannot come to us, we will come to you, including hospital and home visits for seriously injured clients.
Where Northwest Indiana cases are filed: Lake, Porter, or LaPorte Superior Court, depending on where the injury happened.
Hospitals we work with for Northwest Indiana clients: Methodist Hospitals (Gary and Merrillville), Franciscan Health Crown Point, Northwest Health Porter (Valparaiso), Community Hospital (Munster). We request records and bills directly so you are not chasing them.
The surfaces are familiar: liquid from a leaking cooler in a grocery store, produce dropped in the aisle, a freshly mopped floor with no cone in sight, rain and snow tracked across a tile entryway with no mat, ice in a parking lot or on a walkway that was never salted, and grease on a restaurant kitchen floor or the entryway where staff walk it out. Big-box retailers, grocery stores, gas stations, restaurants, apartment buildings, and hospitals all generate these cases. A slip is different from a trip, which involves a fixed hazard such as a raised sidewalk or an unmarked step; those cases are covered on our Trip and Fall page, and the law that applies to both is explained on our Premises Liability page.
Under Indiana law, following the Restatement (Second) of Torts § 343, we must show the owner knew or should have known about the hazard, should have expected you would not discover it, and failed to fix it or warn you. In a slip case the owner almost always claims it had no idea the spill was there. That is why the central question is constructive notice: how long the hazard existed before you fell. A puddle with cart tracks running through it, a spill that has dried at the edges, or ice that formed hours earlier all tell a story. Surveillance video, sweep logs, inspection schedules, and employee statements show whether the owner was checking the floor the way a reasonable business would, and much of that evidence is deleted on a schedule unless it is requested promptly.
The owner’s insurer will say you should have been watching where you were walking, that your footwear was the problem, or that a warning cone was out and you ignored it. We answer each one with evidence. A cone placed after the fall, or a cone so far from the hazard that nobody would connect the two, is not a warning. Footwear is examined and photographed. We test or retain experts to test the slip resistance of the flooring itself, because a surface that fails the applicable ASTM standard when wet is a hazard the owner chose to install. Indiana’s comparative fault rule still allows recovery unless you were more than 50 percent at fault, with the award reduced by your share.
Most injury claims must be filed within two years of the date of injury (Ind. Code § 34-11-2-4). If a city, county, or state agency is involved, a tort claim notice may be required within 180 days. The sooner you call, the more evidence we can preserve.
A Chicago-area native who worked in telecommunications and held two jobs to support his family before law school, Jason founded the firm in 2010 on a no-nonsense, plain-spoken approach to solving clients’ problems.
Admitted to the Indiana bar at 24, the youngest licensed attorney in the state at the time, Miguel pairs that early start with more than fifteen years helping Northwest Indiana families through injury claims and bankruptcy.
Valparaiso · Chesterton · Portage · Crown Point · Hammond · Gary · Lowell · St. John · Dyer · Cedar Lake
Most Northwest Indiana injury cases are filed in Lake, Porter, or LaPorte Superior Court, depending on where the injury happened. Our attorneys appear there regularly and know the local judges, the mediators, and the defense firms the insurers hire.
Possibly. Reporting helps, but it is not required. Contact us quickly so we can request video and incident records before they are purged.
That is the standard comparative fault defense. Indiana still allows recovery unless you were more than 50 percent at fault, and the owner’s failure to fix or warn about a hazard often outweighs that argument.
Five minutes on the phone and you will know where you stand. You will not owe us a fee unless we recover money for you, and the bills get handled before the check does.