Property Owners Have a Legal Duty to Care for Their Premises
When building owners and occupiers fail to keep their property safe and an individual legally on the property is injured, the victim may be able to obtain monetary damages.

February 01, 2012 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Property Owners Have a Legal Duty to Care for Their Premises

The public has an expectation that when out of the house and performing the usual daily tasks and errands that all of us must perform, commercial buildings, sidewalks and parking lots will be free from hazards.

When building owners and occupiers fail to keep their property safe and an individual legally on the property is injured, the victim may be able to obtain monetary damages so long as the injured person acted with an ordinary level of care while on the property.

Negligent Acts of the Property Owner and the Injured Person

Of course, people who have been injured on another's property may not be successful in every claim against a property owner. To obtain damages for injuries, the victim must prove that:
-The owner and the injured person had a relationship (such as a store owner to a shopper) that created a duty to care for the injured person on the property; and
-The owner breached this duty by failing to act with reasonable care, failing to fix an existing problem or failing to warn others of what he or she knows (or should have known).

In addition, the person who was injured must have been acting with ordinary care. For example, taking great leaps down a flight of stairs will factor into whether (or how much) the injured person could recover if he or she broke an ankle on the stair. New York is a pure comparative fault state. This legal theory allows for an injured person to recover for injuries, even if partially at fault for the accident, but reduces the amount according to the fault of the person injured. If the damages for a personal injury were $100,000, but the injured person was at fault for 25 percent of the accident, he or she would only recover $75,000.

Fault on the Part of the Property Owner

To prove that the property owner is at fault, the victim does not have to show that the property owner knew of the dangerous condition. It is enough if the owner should have known about the hazard. For example, in snowy and icy conditions, a property owner should know to remove the snow and ice from sidewalks to avoid falls.

Every premises liability claim will turn on how reasonably the property owner acted, or did not act, to remove or warn others of the hazardous condition. For example, the length of time the hazard was on the property will play a role. If the property owner only had a minute or two to correct the hazard, such as a spill in a grocery store fall, then the owner may not have had enough time to clean up -- the store owner would not be liable for a injury. If the spill was left for a week, however, the owner probably did not act reasonably to correct the dangerous condition.

Injured from a Fall?

If you have been injured from a dangerous condition on someone else's property, an experienced slip-and-fall attorney can discuss with you the possibility of a lawsuit.

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