How Much for a Broken Chair Injury Settlement? Sample Payouts for Chair Injuries

Get the compensation you deserve for injuries caused by a broken or defective chair. Here’s what you can do to build a strong chair injury claim.

Broken chairs send thousands of adults to emergency rooms with serious injuries. People fall when chairs collapse, fingers are severed by chairs with jagged edges, and hands get crushed between seats and their bases.

Chair-related injury compensation can range from a nominal amount to many thousands of dollars.

Here’s what you need to know to build a strong chair injury claim and maximize your total compensation.

Calculating Compensation for Chair Accidents

Payouts for chair injury claims against negligent business or property owners can range from a few hundred dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on the type of injury you suffered and the circumstances surrounding the accident.

If you’ve fully recovered from relatively minor injuries like scratches, bruises, small cuts, or sprained muscles, you may decide to handle your own claim. You can probably negotiate a fair settlement directly with the insurance company, without hiring an attorney.

You can calculate a fair settlement amount by totaling the cost of your medical bills, out-of-pocket expenses, and any lost wages. Add one or two times that amount for pain and suffering.

You’ll send a personal injury demand letter with copies of your medical bills and records, receipts, and other evidence.

Case Example: Chair Accident Injury Compensation

Kevin stopped for a sandwich at a local coffee shop. After getting his order, he headed to a small table with two chairs off to the side of the dining area. Setting down his food, Kevin pulled out one of the chairs and sat down.

Crack! One of the chair legs broke off, dumping Kevin to the floor. His glasses went flying as Kevin came down hard on his left arm, which he had extended trying to break his fall.

Kevin was treated for a sprained wrist and bruised elbow at an Urgent Care Center. He missed a day and a half of work, as the accident happened at lunch on Thursday. Over the weekend he was unable to participate in his community baseball game or go bike riding with his kids. He filed his claim directly with the coffee shop’s insurance company.

Medical Expenses: $850

Lost Wages: $216 (12 hours x $18.00 per hour)

Broken Glasses: $100

Total Economic Costs: $1,166 ($850 + $216 + $100)

Pain and Suffering: $1,749 ($1,166 x 1.5)

Estimated claim value: $2,915 ($1,166 + $1,749)

Kevin demanded $3,000 to settle his injury claim. After a couple of rounds of negotiations with the insurance adjuster, he settled his broken chair accident claim for $2,500.

Serious Broken Chair Injury Claims

If you’ve suffered a serious back injury, head injury, or spinal cord injury because of a faulty chair, you’ll need expert legal advice from an experienced personal injury attorney.

Severe injuries are high-dollar liability claims that will likely be challenged by the business owner or their insurance company. Insurance companies are notorious for offering lower settlements to claimants who are not represented by an attorney. They may even try to blame you for contributing to the accident, especially if alcohol was being served.

Most injury claims settle out of court for an undisclosed amount of money. However, your attorney may need to file a broken chair lawsuit to induce the insurance company to offer an acceptable settlement.

Most personal injury lawyers offer a free consultation to injured victims. If you move forward with an attorney, they will work on a contingency fee basis, meaning their legal fees are only paid if they settle your claim or win in court.

Case Example: Serious Neck Injuries from Broken Chair  

In March 2012, Karen Metalonis was dining in a Ruby Tuesday restaurant when another patron picked up a dining room chair that began to fall apart. The seat cushion detached from the broken chair, striking Metalonis in the head. Metalonis suffered a neck injury that required surgical and medical treatment.

The attorney for Metalonis filed a lawsuit alleging the restaurant and the server were negligent because “they knew the chair was broken and yet still allowed it to remain in use on the dining room floor of the premises.”

Despite the efforts of the Ruby Tuesday defense team, who were successful in keeping the restaurant’s incident report out of evidence, the jury found in favor of Melatonis. She was awarded a total of $340,000 which included an award of $40,000 for pain and suffering.

Compensation for Workplace Chair Injuries

Eligible employees will be covered by their employer’s workers’ compensation insurance. Under worker’s comp, you can expect to have your medical treatment expenses covered, including the cost of medications and transportation to and from medical appointments. Workers’ comp does not pay for pain and suffering.

Workers’ compensation typically covers about 80 percent of the worker’s pre-injury wages, although there may be a three to seven-day wait before wage replacement benefits kick in.

If an entity other than your employer is responsible for the chair injury, like the chair manufacturer, you have the right to pursue a third-party claim for all your damages (including pain and suffering) in addition to your workers’ comp claim.

The worker’s comp insurance company will likely seek reimbursement of your workers’ comp benefits from your third-party product liability settlement.

Proving Liability for Chair Injuries

Restaurants, casinos, clubs, and other commercial establishments are not automatically to blame if a patron is injured in a chair accident. When it comes to injuries that happen at a business, you must be able to prove the elements of negligence.

To win a commercial chair injury claim, you need to show:

  1. The business knew or should have known the chair was in disrepair or otherwise defective.
  2. The business negligently failed to repair or remove the chair, breaching their duty of care to keep customers safe.
  3. That negligence was the direct and proximate cause of the patron’s injury.
  4. The resulting injuries were real and verifiable, requiring medical treatment, missed work, and other losses.

When You Share the Blame

Although you have every right to seek compensation for a traumatic chair injury, your compensation may be reduced or denied if you share some of the blame for the circumstances that caused your injuries.

The insurance company will try to blame you in accordance with state injury laws:

  • Contributory Negligence rules are used in Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. If the insurance company can put as little as one percent of the blame on you, they will use a pure contributory negligence argument to deny your claim.
  • Modified Comparative Negligence is the rule in most states. Under comparative fault rules, you have the right to pursue an injury claim even if you are partly to blame. The amount of compensation you can get is reduced according to your share of the blame. In modified comparative fault states, your claim may be denied if you are equally to blame or more to blame for the circumstances leading to your injuries.

The insurance adjuster doesn’t get the final say about the allocation of fault. If you feel they are being unfair, contact an attorney as soon as possible to discuss your liability case.

6 Important Steps After a Chair Accident

To win a personal injury claim based on a chair accident, you must collect as much evidence as possible. Building a strong injury claim begins at the scene of the accident:

1. Notify Management

When you’ve been injured, even if you landed on the floor, don’t drag yourself up and leave from embarrassment. If you are unable to call for a manager, ask a friend or another customer to do it. It’s important for management to know immediately of your injury and its cause.

2. Seek Prompt Medical Attention

If your injury is serious, ask someone to call 911. Never refuse or delay medical care after an injury. If an ambulance is called, let the paramedics treat you. If you aren’t taken directly to the hospital, get a medical evaluation as soon as possible.

Your injury claim can be sunk by a delay in medical treatment. The insurance company will argue your injuries happened later and aren’t related to the chair accident.

3. Take Pictures and Video

Photographs are crucial to most personal injury cases. Use your cell phone to capture the scene and your injuries. Take multiple photographs of the chair itself, the part of the chair which caused your injuries, and the surrounding area. Take photographs of chairs next to yours for comparison purposes.

4. Ask for Witness Statements

Independent witnesses are ideal because they have no personal interest in the outcome of your claim. Try to get the contact information of witnesses at the scene. If they are willing to write down what they saw, have them sign and date their statement.

Use your phone to record statements made by the manager and staff. Hopefully, you’ll get an “admission against interest” which is a statement made by an employee admitting the chair was faulty, or that it had previously caused an injury.

5. Gather Medical Records and Bills

Simply falling off a broken chair is not enough to win a personal injury claim. You must have a verifiable injury resulting in medical bills. If you don’t have proof of medical treatment, winning a claim will be difficult.

Get copies of your medical records and bills, receipts, copies of invoices, and other proof of payment for medical treatment related to your injury.

6. Verify Lost Wages

If you lost time from work because of the chair injury, you’ll need a lost income verification letter from your employer. Be sure the statement includes lost opportunities for overtime, and any vacation or sick leave you had to use.

Where and How Chair Injuries Happen

Chair accidents can happen at home, but you may not be eligible for compensation unless the chair is proven to be defective. Outside of the home, compensable chair accidents can happen anywhere seating is provided for workers, visitors,  or patrons, giving rise to a legitimate premises liability claim.

Broken chair accidents and other injuries happen in restaurants every day, both at nationwide chain restaurants and small “mom and pop” eateries. Accidents are somewhat less likely in national chain restaurants due to strict quality control policies.

Chair accidents also occur in beauty salons, arcades, casinos, movie theaters, public libraries, bars and nightclubs, and many more businesses. Any of these businesses can be held responsible for a patron’s injuries when a chair breaks. If the chair is defective from the start, you may have a product liability lawsuit against the manufacturer.

No matter how much attention is paid to make sure chairs are safe, there are occasions when chairs will break or otherwise malfunction. A screw may loosen, or a chair leg may develop a hairline fracture. A nail may begin to protrude, or a seat may break away from its base.

Common Injuries from Broken Chairs

Defective or broken chairs injure customers of all ages. Chair injuries may be mild and temporary, or severe and permanent, such as:

  • Pinched fingers and hands
  • Amputated fingers or hands
  • Head, face, and scalp injuries
  • Broken bones in the arms, wrist, and shoulders
  • Neck injuries, including whiplash-like injuries
  • Spinal injuries, including herniated discs and fractured tailbones

Broken Chair Injury Claim Questions