Living in a free society in which people and businesses have rights means sometimes facing a reasonable risk of danger or injury. However, this does not mean everyone must be subjected to unreasonable risks of danger on a daily basis. Freedom means both freedom to choose and the freedom not to be subjected to unreasonable risks of harm by landowners. Texas law recognizes the freedom not to be subjected to these unreasonable risks by requiring landowners to make reasonable efforts to reduce or eliminate unreasonable risks of injury to the people who enter their land.
Landowners can inflict serious, life-altering injuries on unsuspecting people when they fail to make those reasonable efforts. If you have been injured by a landowner’s failure to maintain safe conditions on his or her property then you may be entitled to financial compensation. To learn more, call a Dallas personal injury lawyer at Bush & Bush Law Group at (469) 977-7777 for a free consultation about your legal rights.
Why Trust Us with Your Personal Injury Claim?
When you’ve been injured due to another’s negligence, choosing the right attorney is a critical decision. Here’s why you should trust our team of experts:
- No Fees Until We Win: You won’t owe us anything unless we secure compensation for you.
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Our experience in handling personal injury cases allows us to build a strong claim on your behalf, maximizing your compensation. We also work with a network of professionals, such as doctors and financial experts, to strengthen your case. We take the time to understand your story and goals, tailoring our approach to meet your unique needs and achieve the best possible outcome.
Property Owners Face Legal Liability for Unsafe Premises Under Texas Law
Texas law imposes a duty on landowners to exercise care to keep their premises in a safe condition by taking reasonable steps to reduce or eliminate unreasonable risks of harm of which they are or should be aware. A property’s condition poses an unreasonable risk of harm when there the probability of a harmful event occurring is high enough that a reasonably prudent person would have predicted the harmful event or something like it.
The nature and extent of the landowner’s duty to make reasonable efforts to make his premises safe depends on the circumstances under which the person entered the premises. Generally, a landowner’s only duty to a trespasser on his land is not to intentionally harm the trespasser. This duty is more complex in situations involving invitees, licensees, and children in cases of attractive nuisances. In rare cases, a landowner can be held liable for injuries caused by a third person’s negligent, intentional, or criminal acts.
Invitees
An invitee is a person who enters premises owned by another person at the express or implied invitation from the owner of the land. Invitees enter the premises for the potential or actual financial benefit of the premises owner. One example of an invitee is a person who enters a business for the purpose of buying vegetables from the store’s owner.
Invitees are owed a general duty to reduce or eliminate unreasonable risks of harm of which the property’s owner is or should be aware. A risk can often be reduced under the law by providing a warning to the invitee.
Licensees
A licensee is another legal category person who enters the property with the landowner’s permission. While an invitee comes onto the property for the landowner’s purposes, a licensee enters the property for the licensee’s own purpose. Common examples of licensees include social guests who enter a home for a party or people who enter the premises to perform plumbing work on the premises.
The owner of the property owes licensees a narrower duty than the one they owe to invitees. Landowners owe licensees a duty to either warn them about or make safe any dangerous condition that the landowner is actually aware of and the licensee is not.
Injuries to Children by Attractive Nuisances
Landowners can be liable for injuries to young children who are attracted to enter the premises by the landowner’s maintenance of an unattractive nuisance. To prove a claim for an attractive nuisance, a plaintiff must show:
- the property owner created or maintained an artificial condition;
- small children were likely to frequent the property and play on it;
- the landowner knew or should have known the property’s artificial condition posed an unreasonable risk of death or serious injury to children;
- a child would not understand the danger of the artificial condition, and
- the burden on the landowner to remove the artificial condition was light compared to the probability of injury.
A landowner can be sued under a theory of attractive nuisance even if the child is technically trespassing on his or her land. Woolridge v. East Texas Baptist University, 154 S.W.3d 257 (Tex. App. Ct. 2005) established the principle of law that children are regarded as being rightfully on the premises in attractive nuisance cases. Woolridge also held that landowners are not liable under the attractive-nuisance doctrine when a young child is injured by a natural condition such as lakes, rivers, trees, or creeks.
Liability for the Actions of Third Parties
Occasionally, a property owner can be held liable for harm to those who enter his property caused by a third person’s negligent, intentional, or criminal actions. There are two requirements for a landowner to be responsible for a third party’s actions under a theory of premises liability:
- the landowner must control the premises and either know or have reason to know of an unreasonable, foreseeable risk of harm posed by third parties; and
- there must be a special relationship between the landowner and the injured person such as that of an invitee in a business, an employer-employee relationship, a parent-child relationship, or that of an independent contractor-contractee.
Cases brought against a premises owner on the basis of third parties’ actions are often decided based on the following questions:
- had any criminal conduct previously occurred on or near the property?
- how recently has that criminal conduct occurred?
- how often did the criminal conduct occur?
- how similar was the prior incident to the incident that caused the plaintiff’s injuries? and
- did or should the landowner know or have known about the prior incident?
Our Premises Liability Attorneys Regularly Litigate Premises Liability Cases
At Bush & Bush Law Group, our premises liability attorneys have significant experience in litigating premises liability cases. Our premises liability attorneys commonly litigate premises liability claims for injuries caused by the following situations:
- wet floors in restaurants and stores;
- broken or defective staircases;
- ceiling collapses;
- defective or ill-maintained amusement park rides;
- property owners failing to abate ice and snow; and
- defective elevators or escalators.
If you have sustained a traumatic brain injury on another person’s premises, contact one of Bush and Bush’s expert Dallas brain injury attorneys today.
Call the Premises Liability Attorneys at Bush & Bush Law Group Today for Your Free Consultation
The law of premises liability might be abstract, but our clients’ injuries are not. The premises liability lawyers at Bush & Bush Law Group understand the brutal realities that our clients face in the wake of an injury caused by a property owner’s negligent maintenance of or failure to warn them about dangerous conditions on the premises.
In selecting our attorneys to represent you, you are choosing premises liability attorneys with deep legal knowledge of premises liability ready to leverage our significant experience and connections on your behalf. We utilize our connections with some of the nation’s most respected medical professionals to make sure our clients get the best medical care possible.
Our attorneys believe your treatment is so important that we will even provide transportation to and from your medical appointments. In hiring our attorneys at Bush & Bush Law Group, you are choosing to receive the personalized client service of a small firm and the legal experience of a big firm.
To schedule your free consultation, you need only contact us online or call (469) 977-7777.