This has to be one of the worst days of our lives. We drove 175 miles to look at a house for sale. We met the realtor at the house. The homeowners were present. DW and I looked at the inside of the house while the homeowners stayed outside on their deck.
Then we went outside to look at the exterior of the house. After exiting the front door and porch and walking on the sidewalk towards the driveway, DW's foot stopped abruptly as it hit a section of the sidewalk that had separated and was about half an inch higher than the rest of the sidewalk. This tripped her. She fell full force on her face and began bleeding profusely from the nose as she sat up on the ground. She could not get up. I immediately applied slight pressure to her nose, and after about 15 seconds I determined this was very serious and yelled out to the homeowners to call 911.
Paramedics arrived and got the bleeding under control. In addition, her glasses cut a small gash in the bridge of her nose, her forehead was all scraped up, her wrist was bruised and sprained from trying to break her fall and she hit her knee and could not bend it.
I followed the ambulance to the hospital. In the ER, DW had 3 cat scans (one each of the spine, head, and face); and x-rays of her hand, wrist, and knee (4 views). Diagnosis: Open fracture of nasal bone (she broke her nose in 3 places, which may require surgery, it's too early to tell); injury of head; multiple abrasions; and a sprained wrist. Her glasses were also destroyed. I just pray we did not contract Covid because we were in the hospital ER for 4 hours!
At the time of DWs fall, I did not realize two sections of the sidewalk were mismatched and different heights and thought DW's foot caught the pavement because she did not lift it up far enough (she tripped at home once in this manner), so I said to the homeowners she has fallen like this before, as a reassurance for them to not worry about us sueing, but in retrospect, I think this might be serious negligence on their part, and I should not have said anything. DW at some point pointed to the sidewalk sections and said she fell because one part "was about an inch higher than the other", and I looked at it and judged the separation to be about half an inch vertically.
The homeowners are retired too (husband and wife, but older than us by a few years). The wife said her husband has fallen before. You would think that because of this, they would be aware of the danger their sidewalk presents and would have mentioned it to prospective buyers or had it fixed.
I have no idea what this is going to cost us. Some of the medical services may be out of network (DW is on Medicare and has United Healthcare supplemental insurance). Are the homeowners liable for damages through negligence? What about pain and suffering? How would you handle this situation if it happened to you? We live in Virginia and the property is in Virginia, if that matters in terms of the law. Thanks,
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