The legal concept of premises liability makes a property owner responsible for visitor injuries in some cases. If poor property maintenance creates a dangerous situation and someone gets hurt, the injured party may have grounds for a premises liability lawsuit. They can hold the property owner accountable for dangerous animals or unsafe facility conditions. Injurious situations, including slip-and-falls or balcony collapses, could provide the basis for premises liability lawsuits.
Property owners sometimes fight claims for compensation by trying to blame the injured person. One of the more common defense strategies involves claiming that the hazard was open and obvious. When can property owners avoid responsibility for allowing unsafe property conditions to go unaddressed?
People should avoid obvious hazards
There is an expectation that those navigating private property or businesses should monitor their environment for obvious safety concerns. Property owners and business managers usually need to place signs warning people of latent hazards or make efforts to exclude people from unsafe areas.
However, that obligation does not exist in cases involving an open and obvious hazard, such as a large pit in a yard intended to serve as the trench for an in-ground swimming pool. What an owner believes is an open and obvious hazard may not necessarily be easy for a reasonable person to readily identify.
When the courts hear contested premises liability claims, the main consideration is often whether another reasonable person could identify the hazard and avoid it in the same situation. A large trench dug for a pool might be obvious on a sunny day, but during inclement weather or at nighttime, people could easily overlook what is otherwise clearly obvious.
Details about the situation therefore play a major role in whether or not the hazard was open and obvious enough to eliminate the need to draw visitor attention to it or prevent them from gaining access to the area. Injured people may need help assessing the situation. If they can show that another reasonable person may have overlooked the same hazards in a similar situation, then they may have grounds to hold the property owner or business accountable.
When property owners do not keep people away from hazards or provide appropriate signage, visitors can end up seriously injured due to that negligence. Those anticipating a complicated personal injury lawsuit brought on the basis of premises liability may need help assessing their case and preparing for court, and that’s okay.