To learn more about who is liable for a slip and fall injury, continue reading and give our skilled Tom Green County, Texas personal injury lawyer a call today.
Could the property owner have prevented the injury?
If you or a loved one has been hurt in a slip-and-fall injured, it may be in your best interest to seek out justice in the form of a lawsuit right away. It is important to stop and ask: If the property owner was more careful, could the injury have been avoided?
For instance, even if a leaking roof results in a slippery condition that you slip and fall on, the property owner may not be liable for your injuries if there was a drainage grate in the floor designed to limit slippery conditions. Furthermore, property owners won’t always be responsible for things that a reasonable person would have avoided, such as tripping over something that would usually be found in that location (like a leaf rake on a lawn in the fall). Keep in mind that a person has a responsibility to be mindful of their surroundings and make efforts to avoid dangerous conditions.
Additionally, property owners have a duty to ensure that swimming pools, trampolines, and other so-called “attractive nuisances” are secure. For instance, swimming pools must be securely covered and/or protected by a fence to prevent children from using them when unattended.
What is a property owner’s duty to maintain reasonably safe conditions?
Keep in mind that this does not mean that property owners are never held accountable for the injuries of others that slipped and fell on their property. Although this is not a cut-and-dried rule, property owners still must take reasonable steps to make sure that their property is free from dangerous conditions that would cause a person to slip and fall. However, this reasonableness is often balanced against the care that the person that slipped and fell should have used.
In the event that you have been injured in a slip and fall injury on someone else’s property because of a dangerous condition, you will likely need to be able to offer one of the following in order to win a case for your injuries:
- Either the property owner or his employee should have known of the dangerous condition because another, “reasonable” person in his or her position would have known about the dangerous condition and fixed it.
- Either the property owner or his employee actually did know about the dangerous condition but did not repair or fix it.
- Either the property owner or his employee caused the dangerous condition (spill, broken flooring, etc.).
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Injured due to the negligence of another? Contact the Mathis Law Firm for free today.
