Tips and Resources for Dealing with and Preventing Injury Claims.
In this issue
- What are premises liability cases?
- Will your insurance rates go up if you are not at fault?
What are premises liability cases?
Lawyers and others who work in the legal system (insurance, safety officials, etc.) use the term “premises liability” to refer to a broad range of legal claims which seek to hold a Defendant responsible for harms which occur on the property owned, used, or occupied by the Defendant. You and I might typically refer to them as slip and fall or trip and fall claims. But the term “premises liability” is much broader than that. It also includes negligent security claims (i.e., robberies and rapes at apartment complexes, night clubs, etc.), construction defects (think deck failures for example), falls in nursing homes and other medical facilities, workplace injuries, harms arising from failure to warn of hazards, and drownings. This list is not exhaustive.
How common are these claims? How frequently do they occur? I have read that premises claims are the second leading cause of injuries in the United States. Over one million people suffer serious injuries every year from some type of premises incident and approximately 25,000 people seek medical care daily for some type of fall or premises liability claim. Every hour, an older adult dies from a fall. The National Safety Council once reported that there are 13 million slip and fall claims of injury every year, including 16,000 deaths. Construction defects are widespread. Apartment, hotel/motel and nightclub rapes, robberies and shootings take place daily … just watch the daily news or surf the net. In my next few newsletters, I’ll discuss some of the types of premises liability claims. In my discussion, I’ll include legal issues that come up in just about every case.
Case Law Update.
We just filed a new premises liability case, involving a broken wrist from a slip and fall at high rise condo tower. Defendants failed to take precautions to . . .
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