In addition to car, trucking, defective product, and medical malpractice matters, the personal injury lawyers at Munro Byrd regularly handle premises liability cases. These cases typically arise when someone is an “invitee” to a property owned by another person or a business—such as a store, a parking lot, or a home—due to a dangerous condition on the property.
What Is Premises Liability?
When people think of “premises liability,” they often think of fall injuries at grocery stores or restaurants—and that’s many of these cases arise. At its core, a premises liability claim involves someone injured because of a dangerous condition on the “premises,” such as slipping on a slick substance, the failure of a railing or stair, or other hazard that the owner or business should have fixed or prevented.
The Injured Person’s Legal Status Matters
What “duty” the property owner had to prevent harm to the injured person depends upon the reason that person was on the owner’s premises. Virginia divides this legal status into an invitee, licensee, or trespasser. The duties of care increase from the lowest owed to a trespasser (someone with no permission to be where they are injured); to licensees (someone who enters a property for his own convenience or benefit with the knowledge and consent of the owner or occupier, such as a social guest); to the highest duty, owed to invitees. An invitee enters with the express or implied invitation of the owner or occupier of a property, typically for the landowner’s benefit. The most common examples are a prospective customer visiting a business property or someone there to provide the owner a requested service.
Duties Owed to Invitees
An invitee is entitled to assume the premises are reasonably safe for the intended visit. Thus, a business or property owner owes invitees a duty to use ordinary care to keep the premises in a reasonably safe condition, consistent with the invitation. The landowner must also warn an invitee of unsafe conditions the owner knows about or should know about through ordinary care, particularly if they are not so open and obvious that an invitee would be expected to see or anticipate them. The duty can also include a duty to make reasonable inspections to discover potential hazards.
How Slip-and-Fall Claims Work
In a typical slip-and-fall, the store’s obligations are straightforward: it must use ordinary care to prevent, discover and remove liquids from the floor. If the store’s personnel cause a spill, or become aware of any spill, they must promptly take action to remove it and warn customers away from the hazard in the meanwhile. A business can be liable if it had actual knowledge of the spill and a customer is injured before it is removed. Or, if there is evidence that the store failed to discover the spill, and the hazard was present long enough that the store should have discovered it before the injury, the store may still be liable for breaching its reasonable duties to inspect. This is known as “constructive knowledge.”
Liability Requires Proof of Negligence Causing an Injury
Premises liability is not “strict liability.” An injured person cannot recover simply because they were hurt. They must show the owner or possessor of the property was negligent. This requires the injured person to prove the owner failed to keep the premises reasonably safe, breached a duty of reasonable inspection, or unreasonably failed to warn them about a hazardous condition.
Property owners often defend these claims with arguments that excuse themselves or blame the injured person for contributory negligence. For instance, the owner may argue they had no notice or knowledge of a hazard, that the customer caused the fall by failing to be careful, or that the condition was so “open and obvious” that a reasonable person would have noticed it. Usually, these are issues of fact that a judge or jury resolves in a trial, but occasionally, a hazard is indeed so obvious that it can result in the dismissal of a case without a trial.
Why Injured People Must Quickly Contact an Attorney
If you have been injured in a fall incident, it is critical to contact a lawyer immediately after an injury so counsel can quickly preserve evidence, identify and contact witnesses, and make prompt contact with the business and its insurer. For instance, frequently there is video evidence, but it may be stored for a limited time.
How We Can Help
If you have fallen and been hurt at someone else’s property due to their negligence, we are here to help explain your options. Our personal injury lawyers regularly handle premises liability cases across Virginia. Our law firm has extensive experience in handling premises liability cases, and other types of personal injury cases throughout Virginia, including in Roanoke City and County, Montgomery County (Christiansburg, Blacksburg), Lynchburg, Abingdon, Martinsville, Rocky Mount, Wytheville, Bedford, Covington, Harrisonburg, Richmond, Charlottesville, Lexington, or Staunton. We also practice in areas such as Bath County, Campbell County, Giles County, Craig County, Smyth County, Alleghany County, Pulaski County, Franklin County, Campbell County, Carroll County, Patrick County, Floyd County, Stuart County, Pittsylvania County, Henry County, and Wythe County. We also litigate in Virginia federal courts, including those divisions in Roanoke, Abingdon, Danville, Harrisonburg, Charlottesville, Alexandria, and Richmond.
Call us for a free, confidential consultation to evaluate your case and explain your options.