By Robert I. Feinberg | Published August 23, 2018 | Posted in Personal Injury, Premises Liability | Tagged Tags: Duty of Care, Landowners | Comments Off on Commonsense View of Fault in a Fall Down Case
As you are aware by now, many of my blogs have dealt with the concept of landowner liability. Maybe that’s just a fancy way of referring to an owner of property. For example, many such personal injury cases involve a commercial establishment which has a duty to maintain its property, inside and out, in a reasonably safe manner. From my experience, I would have to say that one very helpful factor, one that has come up a lot in recent cases, is if the condition that causes the accident has been a long standing condition.
Over the past several years the point of these blogs has been to try to educate the consuming public, to those who might have a case or those wondering about the lawsuit/litigation process. As in any profession, there can be misconceptions about what happens. In the past I’ve discussed how long a case takes. Certainly there are no hard and fast rules on that.
I recently resolved a case at mediation, very satisfactorily in my opinion. The case concerned a client who sustained a bad elbow injury as a result of a fall on an outside stairway leading from a side exit. The client was working as a security guard at the time of the fall. I think it is instructive to bring up the three arguments that I had to overcome -all presented for the first time at the mediation- to obtain the favorable recovery. The case was on for trial in a matter of weeks had we not settled it at the mediation. The three arguments that the defendant/insurance company put forth were:
A premises liability case is one in which a person sustains an injury while on somebody else’s property, whether it be a landlord, business or other entity. These cases almost always involve an issue of management or control over the premises. The question is whether the landlord or other person in control exercised reasonable care in maintaining the area.