Premises liability claims deal with injuries caused by unsafe conditions on someone else’s property. Whether you were injured because of a slippery sidewalk, a puddle in a grocery store aisle, a loose handrail on a staircase, or a blocked fire escape, most injuries based on a defect or hazard on the property are assessed the same way.
Premises liability claims are personal injury claims based on the property owner’s negligence. This means that they follow the same four elements of any other negligence claim: duty, breach, causation, and damages. This generally means that, in order to have a premises liability claim, you have to show that the property owner failed to keep the property reasonably safe for you, and that that failure caused the injuries you sustained. There are, however, more details that go into a claim like this.
For help with your potential premises liability case, call the Maryland slip and fall lawyers at Rice, Murtha & Psoras today at (410) 694-7291.
Premises Liability Basics in Maryland
As mentioned, premises liability claims are a type of personal injury claim based on “negligence.” Negligence is what is known as a tort – essentially the civil law version of a crime. In premises liability cases, you sue for the tort of negligence. This means that you must show the defendant owed you a legal duty, breached that legal duty, and that the breach caused your injuries.
In most cases, you file your claim against the property owner, though rented houses, apartments, and commercial properties might involve a claim against the tenant instead. For simplicity, we will primarily discuss things below as though the property owner is the one responsible.
Duty
The first element of a premises liability claim is duty: you must show that the property owner owed you a duty to keep you safe or prevent the injury in some way. The duty that the property owner owes you will depend on why you are on their property in the first place.
Categories
The law in Maryland has two potential burdens based on your classification as an “invitee” versus a “licensee” or “trespasser.” According to Richardson v. Nwaduiko (2009) and a line of similar cases, the duty owed to an invitee is the duty to keep the property safe and to protect them from unreasonable risks. With a licensee or trespasser, you only have to avoid willfully injuring them.
How Categories Affect Duty
To determine which category you fall into, we need to look at why you are on the property and what you were doing.
In most cases, invitees are there for “mutual benefit” – e.g., they are there to do business as customers or clients to the property owner. Alternatively, they can be seen as an invitee if there is an implied invitation to the public to come to their property even if they’re not buying anything. Typically, social guests – e.g., a friend coming over – also qualify as invitees.
A licensee is someone who has permission to use the property for their own benefit, but it doesn’t benefit the property owner.
A trespasser is the same as the typical definition: someone who does not have permission to be there.
Breaking this down into simpler terms, if you are on the property doing business with the property owner, as a customer, or as a social guest, they have to avoid any unreasonable dangers. If you are there just for your own benefit or while trespassing, they only need to avoid injuring you on purpose, through wantonness, or by putting up traps to injure you.
How Duty Affects Liability
Some cases will come down to arguments as to which duty is owed. If they injured you through unreasonable actions/inaction but not willfully/wantonly, then you want to be treated as an invitee to get the heightened duty. They will, in turn, argue you were a mere licensee so their duty was met by not intentionally injuring you.
One example of this is in the 2009 case cited above – Richardson. This case involved a husband and wife who went to the same doctor. The wife slipped and fell in the doctor’s wet office lobby one day. The issue of whether she was an invitee or a licensee came up because she was there for her husband’s doctor’s appointment that day, not her own appointment. The court found even though she wasn’t doing business that day, there was still an implied invitation that spouses were welcome along with the patient, so she was an invitee, requiring the heightened duty.
Breach
If there are unreasonable dangers that injured a social guest or customer, that would qualify as a breach of the owner’s legal duty. If the property owner left a trap or willfully injured a licensee or trespasser, then they would have breached that duty.
For a breach to occur, there must also be proof that the property owner knew about the danger and had an opportunity to fix it. On some properties, it is reasonable to assume that a property owner inspects their property regularly to stay aware of dangers that have been there for a while, giving them a chance to fix the danger. However, with things like a spill in a store aisle, there needs to be evidence it was there for some time or that the staff was actually notified about the danger to show that they could have reasonably cleaned it up or repaired the hazard. Without this chance to actually fix the danger, there can be no breach of duty.
Causation
You need to show that what the owner did – or, more commonly, failed to do – was what actually caused your injuries. If you were instead the one who did something wrong, the blame might shift to you, even if your shared fault was slight. If the injuries would have been unavoidable, even if the owner did everything right, then your case might also fail.
Damages
You need to have actual injuries and monetary damages (e.g., medical bills, lost earnings) for an injury case to succeed. Injuries themselves are enough to qualify; however, injuries also potentially come with medical bills, lost wages, pain and suffering, and other damages you can sue for.
Call Our Maryland Slip and Fall Lawyers Today
Call (410) 694-7291 to speak with the Baltimore slip and fall lawyers at Rice, Murtha & Psoras in a free case evaluation.