Patronizing a business often necessitates physically visiting its premises. Whether someone needs to pick up merchandise from the store or sign tax paperwork before their accountant submits the documents to the IRS, their physical presence may be necessary to complete a transaction.
Anytime people visit a business, there is a small but noteworthy possibility that they could get hurt while at the company’s facilities. They might slip in a puddle by the entrance and break an arm or trip over an exposed power cord and end up with a concussion.
Many people have heard stories about premises liability claims but may not know much about them. If someone gets hurt while at a business, when is the company financially responsible for their injuries?
When negligence is to blame
There are scenarios in which someone could cause their own injury by wearing very unsafe footwear and then entering public spaces while severely inebriated. Sometimes, people do something that put them at elevated risk of falling.
There are plenty of other scenarios in which a property owner or business created the circumstances that led to someone’s injury. Perhaps the company has a practice of scheduling only one worker at a time, meaning that there is no one to tend to the facilities when there are customers. Perhaps the owner or manager of the business has repeatedly deferred maintenance and repairs.
If the person who gets hurt could reasonably claim that the business was negligent, they may be in a position to pursue a premises liability claim. Negligence can involve failing to do something that would increase safety for others or doing something that would obviously diminish the safety of others. In a legal claim, the standard for negligence that the courts apply is typically whether or not a reasonable person would agree that the business’s actions or omissions were negligent.
There may be insurance coverage available that can reimburse someone for medical expenses, lost wages and property damage losses generated by a slip and fall or similar incident on private property. People who slip and fall in a business often benefit from reporting the incident to a manager and seeking medical evaluation for any serious injuries.
Pursuing a premises liability claim can help someone recover losses they suffer because a business or property owner doesn’t make safety a top priority.
