Worcester Broken Bone Slip and Fall Attorneys

A fracture from a fall can mean casts or surgical hardware, months of physical therapy, missed paychecks, and help with things you never needed before: showering, dressing, driving, carrying groceries up the stairs. For working people, it can mean a job in jeopardy; for older adults, it can mean a lasting loss of independence.

At Jeffrey Glassman Injury Lawyers, our slip and fall attorneys represent people whose falls on dangerous property caused fractures, from a wrist broken on an icy Worcester sidewalk to a hip broken on a supermarket floor. Insurers often value these claims from the initial bills alone, as though a fracture ends when the cast comes off. The medicine says otherwise, and we build our cases on the medicine. If you or a family member broke a bone in a fall, contact us for a free consultation. No attorney's fee is charged unless your claim recovers.

The mechanics of falling produce predictable injuries, and we see the same patterns in Worcester cases year after year.

Wrist fractures lead the list because instinct sends your arms out and the force travels through the wrist; distal radius fractures, sometimes called Colles fractures, are the classic fall injury. Depending on displacement and stability, treatment ranges from casting to plates and screws, and even well-healed wrists can lose grip strength and motion, a serious matter for anyone who works with their hands.

Hips carry the highest stakes, especially for older adults, where the femoral neck or the intertrochanteric region gives way on impact. The CDC reports about 319,000 hip fracture hospitalizations among older adults each year in the United States, with falls causing the overwhelming majority. Most hip fractures are treated surgically, sometimes with a partial or total hip replacement, and for many older patients they mark the start of a lasting decline in mobility and independence. More than one in eight Worcester residents is 65 or older, and about one in four adults in that age group falls each year, so these are not rare events in this city. They arrive at UMass Memorial Medical Center, the region's Level I adult trauma center, and at Saint Vincent Hospital every winter.

Ankles fail on uneven, slippery surfaces, where a twisting fall can cause bimalleolar and trimalleolar fractures that often need surgical fixation and leave lasting stiffness. Shoulders break and tear when a falling body reaches sideways, with proximal humerus fractures common in older adults. Compression fractures of the spine follow falls onto the tailbone, especially where bone density is reduced. Kneecaps, ribs, and facial bones can break when a fall gives no time to react, which is common on black ice.

A first offer usually totals the initial medical bills and adds a modest figure for a few months of inconvenience. What it tends to leave out are the losses that arrive later, and you must prove those, not assume them.

Hardware is not a cure. Plates, screws, and rods stabilize bone, but some patients need later surgery to remove hardware, and implanted joints have finite lifespans that can lead to revision surgery in a younger patient. Fractures into a joint surface, at the wrist, ankle, or knee, can produce post-traumatic arthritis years later. Nerves and soft tissue injured alongside the bone can leave chronic pain, cold sensitivity, and weakness. None of these future losses gets added to a claim by speculation; each belongs in the case only when a treating surgeon or retained expert can say it is more likely than not. That is exactly the evidence we develop, because a future surgery left out of the settlement becomes the client's own expense forever. A complication worth naming is complex regional pain syndrome, a chronic pain condition that sometimes follows wrist and ankle fractures; when symptoms suggest it, we make sure the diagnosis is investigated and, where present, fully documented.

So we build fracture cases on the complete arc: pre-injury imaging and records that establish your baseline, every procedure and the ones medically expected to come, permanency and work-restriction opinions from treating physicians, lost earnings and diminished earning capacity supported by employment records and vocational evidence, and, where a serious fracture has changed a marriage, a spouse's claim for loss of consortium. Because many fracture clients are on Medicare or MassHealth, we also handle the government liens that attach to these recoveries and must be resolved correctly before any settlement is final.

The medical case means little without liability, and Massachusetts law gives us the framework. Property owners owe lawful visitors reasonable care to keep premises reasonably safe. For snow and ice hazards, Papadopoulos v. Target Corp. abolished the natural accumulation defense. In self-service stores, where a hazard foreseeably flows from the store's own operation, Sheehan v. Roche Bros. relieves us of proving how long one spill existed, though we still must show the store failed to take reasonable precautions. For rental housing, the State Sanitary Code sets enforceable minimums for stairs, railings, lighting, and ice removal; violations are evidence of negligence, and injuries caused by State Building Code violations can trigger direct statutory liability for the party in control under M.G.L. c. 143, § 51.

One defense argument gets special attention in fracture cases. When the injured person is older or has osteoporosis, insurers suggest the bone broke because it was fragile, not because the fall was severe. On damages, Massachusetts law is clear: a defendant takes the person it injured as it finds them, so a property owner whose negligence breaks a vulnerable hip is responsible for the harm actually caused, including the aggravation of a pre-existing condition, though not for limitations the underlying condition would have imposed anyway. We are equally alert to the argument's other use, the suggestion that age or frailty caused the fall itself, which is really a comparative fault attack, and we answer it with the physical evidence of the hazard.

Deadlines run regardless of recovery timelines. Massachusetts allows three years to file suit under M.G.L. c. 260, § 2A; snow and ice falls require 30 days' written notice to the property owner, and claims involving public entities have their own presentment requirements. Since fracture treatment itself can stretch across a year or more, early legal work runs in parallel with your recovery, preserving video, photographing the scene, and locking down witnesses while you heal.

If a fall on someone else's property broke your bone, contact Jeffrey Glassman Injury Lawyers today. The consultation is free, and the evidence is freshest right now.

Reviewed by Jeffrey S. Glassman, founding attorney. Updated September 2026.

This page is attorney advertising and provides general information about Massachusetts law. It is not legal advice about your specific situation, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.