Premises liability is an area of personal injury law in which property owners can be held accountable for injuries that occur on their land or in their buildings. Our readers in Louisiana will likely be most familiar with this area of law from the traditional “slip and fall” cases they may have read about or seen in the news.
A property owner has a legal duty to the people who come to their property, depending on the status of that visitor. For instance, a property owner has a higher level of legal duty to someone who is invited to the property as opposed to someone who is trespassing on the property without permission. A property owner could be held liable for injuries to one status of visitor over another.
But, there are other requirements that must be met as well for a property owner to be held liable for injuries. For example, how did the injury occur? Was it due to a dangerous condition on the property? Or was it the victim’s own clumsiness? Was the property being used as intended by the property owner? And could the property owner or the visitor foresee that an injury might occur due to a condition on the property?
Some of the most common sources of premises liability claims are: slipping and falling on ice at the entrance of a business; slipping and falling on a slick substance inside of a business, such as a grocery store; injuries that are caused by inadequate lighting at a business; and inadequate railing or other protections on stairways. When Louisiana residents are injured on someone else’s property, they may have a valid premises liability claim.