You shouldn’t have to be overly concerned about your safety when you enter property owned by someone else. While we’d hope that most people would take care of their land, that’s not always the case. So, to protect its citizens, Texas law requires owners to maintain safe premises through its premises liability laws.
If a property owner doesn’t take this responsibility seriously, they can be legally and financially responsible if a visitor gets hurt or is killed.
If you’ve been hurt because of unsafe conditions on someone else’s property in Texas, an experienced premises liability lawyer in Round Rock can help you navigate a legal claim, prove a property owner was negligent, and fight for the full value of your personal injury claim.
What is Premises Liability?
Premises liability simply means that property owners in Texas can be financially responsible for avoidable injuries or deaths that occur on their premises.
The state’s premises liability laws give individuals the right to sue owners for negligence in matters related to:
- Slip and fall accidents
- Dog bites
- Falling object accidents
- Swimming pool accidents
- Negligent security
- Defective conditions
- Toxic exposure
In the context of premises liability cases, negligence means:
- A property owner owed a visitor a duty of care because they were lawfully on the premises with the owner’s implied or express consent
- The property owner breached this duty of care by failing to take necessary steps to prevent avoidable harm
- The owner’s actions resulted in a hazardous condition existing on the premises, which was a direct and proximate cause of a visitor’s injury or death, and
- The visitor suffered damages.
Essentially, if you were injured on someone else’s property, you need to demonstrate that you got hurt because the owner didn’t take appropriate steps to prevent the hazardous condition that caused your injury. If they’d been more on top of keeping their premises safe, you probably would not have gotten hurt.
A premises liability attorney can help establish this causation and prove the property owner’s negligence.
What Is a Property Owner’s Duty of Care?
Property owners have to maintain their premises in a reasonably safe condition. This doesn’t mean they have to ensure that visitors won’t get hurt. So, what exactly does an owner have to do to satisfy their duty of care under Texas’s premises liability laws?
It really depends on how a visitor is classified. Texas recognizes three types of visitors: invitees, licensees, and trespassers. Each is owed a distinct duty of care.
Invitees
Invitees are individuals who enter property with the owner’s implied or express consent for some business-related purpose. The owner of the premises enjoys some benefit from an invitee’s visit.
You can be considered an invitee when you enter businesses open to the public, enter public property, or enter private property for a business transaction.
Under Texas premises liability laws, owners assume the highest duty of care in regard to invitees. Generally, an owner should inspect the premises for potential hazards, make repairs or remedy hazards when they’re discovered, and/or provide adequate warnings of known dangers to invited guests and visitors.
Licensees
Licensees are individuals who enter property with the owner’s implied or express consent, too. The difference is that a property owner doesn’t enjoy business-related benefits from a licensee’s visit. The visit is social in nature or to benefit the licensee, such as in the case of solicitors.
Property owners in Texas do not have to go to great lengths to protect licensees from reasonably foreseeable harm. Under the law, property owners are expected to fix hazards of which they have actual or constructive knowledge and to provide warnings of known safety threats.
Trespassers
Trespassers enter the property without the owner’s consent. In Texas, owners of property do not have to take steps to protect a trespasser’s safety. There’s no obligation to inspect, repair, or warn of known threats – with one major exception.
If an owner has an attractive nuisance on their premises, they have a duty to protect trespassing children. An attractive nuisance is a man-made condition that could attract children onto the premises, such as a swimming pool, a trampoline, a hot tub, or an abandoned vehicle. In these situations, the owner has to take “reasonable care to eliminate the danger or otherwise protect the child.” Often, this means putting up a fence or other safety barriers to keep children safe.
A premises liability lawyer can help determine your visitor classification and whether the property owner met their legal duty of care.
How Do Property Owners Defend Against Premises Liability Claims?
A property owner might not go to great lengths to keep their premises safe, but they will do everything they can to contest your claims in a premises liability lawsuit.
Common defenses to premises liability claims include:
- The hazard was open and obvious
- The owner didn’t have actual or constructive knowledge of a hazard, and
- The individual wasn’t lawfully on the premises.
These can be disputed, often by pointing out that a hazard would have been known if the owner had inspected their premises more closely, arguing that a hazard would not be obvious to a reasonable person unfamiliar with the premises, or establishing your status as an invitee or licensee based on the fact that the premises were offered and open to the public.
An experienced Round Rock premises liability attorney can effectively counter these defenses with compelling evidence and expert testimony.
Can Comparative Negligence Affect Premises Liability Claims in Texas?
Yes. There are times when a property owner will successfully argue that a plaintiff was at least partially responsible for an injury sustained on their premises. In these situations, Texas’s premises liability laws and comparative negligence laws will both apply.
Texas follows a system of modified comparative fault with a 51 percent bar to recovery. Simply put, sharing most of the blame for an injury sustained on someone else’s property can be a total bar to recovery. You won’t be able to hold the property owner accountable for your injuries, even if they share some of the blame.
In situations where you’re assigned some, but less than 51 percent, of the blame for an accident on another person’s property, you can receive a reduced monetary award. Damages are reduced in direct proportion to fault. Sharing 10 percent of the blame for a slip and fall would result in a 10 percent reduction in damages.
A skilled premises liability lawyer can minimize your assigned fault and maximize your recovery.
Call a Round Rock Premises Liability Attorney at Dow Law Firm For Help With Your Case
Premises liability cases can be complicated, so it’s important to enlist the help of an experienced legal advocate at Dow Law Firm to help you protect your rights and financial interests. Our personal injury lawyers in Round Rock are skilled litigators with decades of experience handling complex premises liability disputes.
Our premises liability attorneys bring the knowledge, resources, and passion for justice you’ll need to make the most of your legal claim. Contact us today at (512) 240-9951 to schedule a free consultation with our Round Rock premises liability lawyers.