People who are injured may be able to recover compensation for their injuries from owner or possessor of the property on which the injury occurred with the help of a personal liability attorney like Ted Morgan from Columbus, Ga.
Some common types of premises liability cases can include situations such as a slip and fall. A restaurant could fail to put up a caution sign next to a wet floor and a customer slips and falls.
Other situations can include inadequate maintenance: a homeowner fails to remove a fallen tree at it happens to injure a passerby.
Defective Conditions such as worn down staircase could cause someone to fall. Inadequate security, such as if a company fails to install adequate lighting and a patron gets robbed, could make the owner liable for the damages.
If a person is injured on the property of another, a court will impose liability on the property owner if the property owner owed the injured person a duty of care and if the property owner breached those expectations. The extent of the liability and the reimbursement depends on the relationship between the two parties.
An owner is especially liable if the person injured is an invitee. An invitee is a person who is invited upon the premises in order to conduct business with the possessor. A good example would be shoppers, as shoppers are invitees of department stores because the store welcomes shoppers to purchase merchandise on its premises.
Typically invitee is under the utmost protection. In many states, such as Georgia, property owners must regularly inspect their premises to detect unsafe conditions and to repair or warn invitees about the detected conditions.
A licensee is a person who is present for a non-commercial, non-business purpose at the consent of the possessor of the property, such as a guest at a party. Several states hold that an owner owes the same duty of care to licensees as invitees. Check with Ted Morgan in Columbus, Ga. to see what the rules are in your area.
Property owners owe the lowest duty of care to trespassers. Usually, owners have no duty to warn trespassers of dangers naturally occurring on a property, such as deep trenches. However, if the trespasser becomes aware of the violator, then usually a duty arises to warn the trespasser of dangerous, man-made conditions on the property, such as an electric fence that emits a lethal shock.