Premises Liability Lawyer

Some of the most common areas of premises liability include:

1. Slip and Trip and Fall Claims. There can be any number of causes for someone to slip or trip and fall on commercial or residential property. It only takes one misstep to take a tumble and fall flat on your face or back, which can cause serious trauma. Common causes of slipping incidents include slick floor conditions from moisture or oily substances like grease or soap. When the coefficient of friction is such that your foot loses traction upon normal strides, you can go down and strike your head, neck, or back. Common tripping hazards can include merchandise that is misplaced and jutting out into aisles within a store, defective sidewalks and other walkways, stairs that are poorly constructed or maintained where steps are uneven or rails are missing or in disrepair.
2. Assaults and Battery. Assaults and batteries, unfortunately, occur on and within commercial and residential properties. They can happen during a heated exchange in a night club or in a parking garage when a person is leaving work to go home. Serious beatings and even rapes occur in and around businesses where people expect to be safe and secure from such heinous activity. Whether a landlord, manager, property owner or lessee may be found either partially or fully liable for such events depends upon a myriad of factors including prior assaults or criminal activity in and around the area or structure, whether the battery was committed by an employee of the business (e.g. bouncers) , and any number of other facts that would provide prior notice of the potential for offensive touching to occur.
3. Falling Objects. Objects falling down upon people and striking them in the head or knocking them to the ground happen frequently in all types of commercial and residential environments. Inventory can be stacked improperly (either too high or unevenly causing shifting) in retail stores, including big box stores like hardware, home and office supply retailers. Likewise, outdoor environments including homes can have trees that have not been properly trimmed causing branches to fall and crush people and property. Any time a heavy object falls prey to the forces of gravity due to negligence in the maintenance of the property, a claim may lie for resulting personal injury or death.
4. Malfunctioning Equipment. We all expect to be safely transported between floors on elevators and escalators, but, unfortunately, glitches do occur causing drops, jerks and other jolts that may injure passengers. Likewise, areas under construction often have heavy equipment like cranes, bulldozers, road graders, and earthmovers. Sometimes these are negligently operated or simply go on the fritz and do not function properly and people are injured or killed.
5. Parking Lot or Parking Structure Incidents. Parking lots and high rise parking structures should be areas where people are able to safely park a vehicle and enter a structure unharmed. Unfortunately, many people are maimed or die every year in and around these areas.
6. Construction Sites. Areas under construction are notorious for causing bodily injury or death to persons attempting to travel through or near them. People fall in holes, get gouged by re-bar sticking out into a walkway, fall from high points with inadequate railing, are electrocuted by exposed wiring, or get hit by a person negligently operating heavy equipment