As you stroll through the aisles of your local grocery store, you trust that spills will be cleaned up, or at the very least, that you are warned of their existence. However, that trust is not always deserved. Landowners, particularly businesses, are often more interested in selling you their products than keeping you safe.
Property owners have a duty of care toward their visitors. They must maintain reasonably safe premises and can be held liable if their negligence or inaction leads to accidents and injuries. If you’ve experienced such a loss, hiring a premises liability attorney is a must if you hope to get fair compensation for your injuries.
All invited visitors to public or private spaces have a reasonable expectation of safety. Property managers and owners have to prevent harmful conditions whenever possible and to warn those on their property of dangerous conditions that may exist but have not been removed. If they don’t keep their property safe for guests, they are responsible for the injuries and damages caused by their failure to act.
Some of the most common situations that lead to premises liability lawsuits include:
Pennsylvania allows you to file premises liability claims based on negligence if you meet certain criteria. The first thing you have to establish is that you had a right to be where the accident happened and therefore the property owner had a duty to protect you from dangerous conditions. Next, you must demonstrate that the landowners’ actions, or lack thereof, led to the accident which caused you to sustain injuries.
Imagine, for example, that you are in a grocery store, looking through the aisles for your favorite cereal. As you are scanning the shelves and rounding the corner, you step onto spilled milk from a container that had been knocked off the shelf. You slip, fall and break your arm, which requires surgery. If you can establish that the grocery store owner or employees were aware or should have been aware of the spilled milk but failed to clean it up, they might be held liable for the injuries you sustained.
A common defense in most premises cases is the concept of comparative negligence, which is the degree of fault attributable to the accident victim for causing their own injury. In almost every one of these types of cases, the Defendants and their insurance carriers will try to place the blame for the accident on the victim. Some of the common arguments that defendants use in slip and fall accident cases include:
Even though they might seem simple and straightforward, premises liability cases are some of the most difficult personal injury cases for which to receive fair compensation. For this reason, it is crucial to get an experienced premises liability attorney involved in your case.
At DelVecchio & Miller, LLC, we have over 60 years of combined experience in handling these types of cases.
Contact us to schedule a free consultation with one of our lawyers.
