Real estate owners have a duty by law to ensure that visitors and guests are safe while on their property. Property owners are negligent when they breach this commitment, including the following.
- Failing to keep the property up-to-date
- Delaying necessary maintenance
- Ignoring periodic property inspections to spot hazards
- Failing to alert visitors and guests to acknowledged dangers that cannot be quickly handled
If you are injured in someone else’s property, you must protect your rights by hiring a personal injury lawyer.
Things to do when you are injured on someone else’s property
Determining if a property owner was negligent is more complicated than it sounds. If you have been hurt, the details of your case will decide whether the property owner took responsibility in significant part. The facts of your case may be examined by an experienced personal injury attorney, who may further clarify the options available to you.
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Retail Businesses
Slip and fall incidents often occur in stores, shops, shopping centers, and strip malls. Here are some accidents which frequently happen in these places:
- Falling on stairs due to missing or loose handrails
- Slipping on wet flooring
- Tripping due to poor lighting
- Getting injured by falling merchandise
- Slipping on ice on the sidewalks or parking lot
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Nightclubs, bars and other entertainment venues
The same risk of damage can occur in bars and other similar environments, with a few additional worries. Here are a few examples:
- Clients who have been overserved may get drunk and disruptive, resulting in disputes and harm to innocent bystanders.
- It is possible that there is not sufficient security at the institution to keep customers safe or prevent fights from breaking out.
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Sport venues
Stadiums, fields, and other sporting facilities pose spectators with unique hazards in addition to the usual slip, trip, and fall risks. For example:
- Inadequate safety precautions, such as guard rails and other actions, to protect spectators from falling from high seating locations
- Inadequate clear glass, nets, or other safety precautions to protect spectators from projectiles like balls
Who is liable?
It is not always simple to figure out the property owner. If you were on private property, you might have been familiar with the owner; if not, it can often be easy to find out. Unfortunately, locating the owner may be far more challenging if you have been hurt on a business property. A company besides the one that owns the property could be in charge of maintaining it. If a different company owns the property, you can mistakenly think that its owner is the company that uses it. Businesses intentionally act in this manner to defend themselves against lawsuits.
