Premises liability

PREMISES LIABILITY

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Another area of the law that produces many tort claims is that of premises liability. A person who is lawfully on someone else’s premises and who is injured as a result of some negligence of that property owner may have a basis for a claim against that property owner. The duty or standard of care to which the property owner is held may depend on the status of the injured person. The different statuses that may apply are that of invitee, licensee or trespasser.

An invitee typically is someone who is coming onto the property for some legitimate business purpose. A licensee may generally be thought of a social guest. A trespasser is someone who is not allowed on the premises and who is there without the knowledge or consent of the property owner.

Exactly what duty is owned by the property owner to each of these different classes of persons may vary dramatically from state to state. The general rule of law however is that a property owner has a duty to exercise ordinary care to keep his premises in reasonably safe condition. When an owner fails to exercise ordinary care and someone who is lawfully on the premises is injured as a result of that, then the property owner may be liable.

One thing that distinguishes premises liability claims from other types of tort claims is that the party who is injured (the plaintiff) must prove that the property owner had notice of the defective condition on the premises. For instance, if you slip and fall on a liquid that is on the floor in the local supermarket, do you necessarily have a basis for a claim against the owner of the supermarket? You may not unless you have some evidence of how long that liquid had been on the floor. If it turns out that the liquid had only been there a short period of time and is there because of the actions of some other customer in the store and therefore the property owner did not have a reasonable opportunity to see the liquid and clean it up then there may not be any negligence on the part of that property owner.

The logic of this rule is that a property owner is not necessarily a guarantor of the safety of all persons on his premises but issimply required to exercise ordinary care. Obviously he can only exercise ordinary care as to those defects or deficiencies that he has some knowledge of or that he should have known of. In that same example, if you were able to prove that the liquid had been on the floor for twenty minutes, then that may be sufficient to make out a claim against the property owner because within that period of time it could well be argued to a jury that the property owner should have known that the liquid was on the floor and therefore should have cleaned it up or placed signs out to warn customers of the presence of the wet floor.

Let me give another example of a premises liability claim that could potentially have some merit. Suppose you are a tenant in a large apartment building where there have been a series of crimes committed resulting in serious personal injuries to the occupants. The property owner is aware of those crimes yet takes no steps whatsoever to warn other tenants of the crime wave in that building and likewise takes no steps to improve security in the building. If you are subsequently assaulted and injured as a result of a person coming onto the premises for the purpose of committing a crime then you may have a claim against that property owner based upon a negligence theory. That is, the property owner knew or should have known that there was a danger to the tenants yet the property owner took no steps to either warn the tenants or to decrease the security risk to the tenants.

Let’s look at that claim from the point of view of how the four elements of a tort claim apply. The first element of a tort claim is the establishment of a duty owed by the defendant to the plaintiff. The duty in this case arises out of the relationship of the parties. That is, the property owner or the landlord owes a duty of reasonable care to persons who are lawfully on the premises. You may ask what is reasonable care?

Quite frankly, reasonable care is essentially whatever a jury says it is. A textbook definition of reasonable care is that degree of care that a prudent person would exercise in that circumstance. If the landlord in this instance failed to take some steps to warn the tenants or persons lawfully on the premises of the criminal incidents occurring, then that may beevidence of a breach of the duty to exercise reasonable care.

If in fact the assault in question was not perpetrated by some person who was not lawfully on the premises then the third element of a tort claim has been met in that that breach of duty has been shown to be a cause of injury. The final element of a tort claim is simply that of injury or damage. In this case, the injury or damage consists of the personal injury to the plaintiff.

Brien Roche handles premises liability claims involving structural design flaws, unsafe conditions, environmental hazards and a wide variety of other issues. In many cases, security related premises liability matters involve issues such as physical security standards and generally accepted security practices. In addition to any existing standards, crime statistics, event history, community standards, and specific risk considerations play a part in determining whether an adverse event was foreseeable.

In 2002, injury-causing slips and falls that required hospital visits numbered 506,172. Many slip and fall cases occur in public places such as stores, restaurants, schools and office buildings. Under many circumstances, owners of homes can be found negligent for failing to follow ordinary standards of care when their negligence results in an injury.

If you or someone you know has been injured on someone else’s property, contact us with questions to discuss how we can help.

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