What is Premise Liability and How Does it Impact Your Personal Injury Claim?

You’ve been in this grocery store hundreds of times. Today you just need to run in for one quick thing, as you approach the refrigerators that hold the gallons of milk, you slip and break your ankle. What do you do now?

At the offices of Barbas, Nunez, Sanders, Butler & Hovsepian, we have experience in personal injury cases. We understand how stressful an injury can be for you. We will handle your case with the utmost care and make sure that you are compensated fairly for your injury.

What is Premises Liability?

Premises liability is the responsibility of the owners of a property to keep their property in a condition that is not likely to cause injury to people on their property.  In order to prove a successful case of premises liability, you need to prove that the area of the accident was knowingly in a condition that would potentially cause injury. The statute goes on to say that people need to practice the common law duty of care. A duty of care is the expectation that the person injured did not act in a way that they knew to be likely to cause injury. A duty of care also applies to the business at which your injury was sustained, if there is a foreseeable danger of injury, the business has a responsibility to change the environment to prevent injury. An example of duty of care is setting out a wet floor sign. If the company put the sign out and you ignored it, you are less likely to win a lawsuit than you would be if you fell because of a wet floor without a sign. 

What’s My Responsibility in a Personal Injury Claim?

When you are filing a personal injury claim, companies are going to try to prove that they are not liable for the injury. The ways that this is done varies by each company. Your responsibility will be to prove that you are in good physical health, meaning you have no pre-existing conditions that could have contributed to the injury. The second element that you will have to prove is that you were behaving in a way that practices a reasonable duty of care, and that you weren’t doing anything dangerous. 

How Will I Get Justice?

This is complicated because the amount of money that stems from a personal injury case varies significantly by each case. Some of the factors that are considered are the severity of the injury, lost wages, long term care, and a changed quality of life. Our goal at Barbas, Nunez, Sanders, Butler & Hovsepian is to get justice for you, including fair compensation. 

What Do I Do Now?

At Barbas, Nunez, Sanders, Butler & Hovsepian, we understand how overwhelming taking the first step toward justice can be. Our experienced Tampa personal injury attorneys are eager to help you. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us today for a consultation.

Resource:

leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&Search_String=&URL=0700-0799/0768/Sections/0768.0755.html

https://www.barbaslaw.com/do-pre-existing-conditions-affect-personal-injury-claims/