Protecting Your Rights After an Injury Caused by Poorly Maintained Property
When you visit residential or commercial property, you expect that the owners (or those persons who exercise control over the premises) have taken reasonable steps to ensure that you won’t get hurt. Unfortunately, far too often, a shopkeeper or homeowner will either ignore known dangers or fail to properly monitor the property for potential risks. How do you protect your rights if you suffer needless injury on someone else’s property? What duties are owed to you?
Premises Liability in Texas
As a general rule, in the DFW Metroplex and across Texas, both residential and commercial property owners (and those in control of such property) owe a duty of care to anyone legally visiting the property. There is generally no duty owed to trespassers (persons entering land or premises illegally or without consent) other than the duty not to intentionally inflict harm.
The duty owed to a visitor in Texas varies based on that person’s legal status as either an “invitee” or a “licensee” at the time of the injury:
- Invitees—An invitee is someone who with an express or implied invitation to enter property, typically for a business or transactional purpose. Invitees to a commercial property include customers or clients. Invitees to residential property might include contractors, repairmen, or delivery people.
- Licensees—A licensee is someone with permission to be on the premises but not for a commercial or business purpose. A social guest in your home is a licensee.
How Does the Duty of Care Differ for Invitees vs. Licensees?
As a general rule, a property owner or person in control of property owes a higher duty of care to an invitee than to a licensee. The duty owed to invitees includes an obligation to reasonably inspect the premises for potential dangers and to either fix any hazards or provide reasonable warnings of the potential dangers. With respect to licensees, a property owner still has an obligation to either remedy or provide reasonable notice of any known dangers, but there is no requirement that the property owner conduct any type of inspections.
Who Is Potentially Liable for Slip and Fall Injuries?
A person may be liable if they have both control of the premises and the ability to correct or warn of any hazardous conditions. That includes not only the owner of the premises but also a tenant or a property manager.
Contact the Experienced Slip and Fall Accident Lawyers at Bailey & Galyen
At the law offices of Bailey & Galyen, we have a thorough understanding of the laws governing liability for slips, trips, and falls in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex and across the state of Texas. For more than 40 years, we’ve provided effective counsel to individuals across Texas who suffer any type of loss because of another person’s negligence, including clients injured in accidents on residential or commercial premises.
In our years in practice, we’ve recovered hundreds of millions of dollars in judgments and settlements for personal injury victims. We are proven trial attorneys who will be a strong voice for you in all proceedings. Contact us by e-mail or call our offices at one of the convenient locations listed below. Our phones are answered 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
