Premises liability refers to the potential damages a business might have to pay after being sued for due to incidents that occurred on the business premises as a result of negligence.
Whether it’s a back office, retail outlet or a cafe, should accidents happen and cause personal injury to employees, patrons or guests, the company or business owner can potentially be sued for not keeping the premises in reasonably safe conditions.
Such legal actions can be brought to landlords or occupiers of a property.
And the damages being sought by the aggrieved party usually consist of lost wages, medical expenses, and other short and long term financial hardship due to the injury.
The most common accidents that causes personal injury are slips and falls, and items falling on people from above.
Sometimes the case is brought onto the landlord instead of the commercial tenant renting the space.
This could be because that the victim feels that the fault is more of the landlord’s doing, the lawyer feels they have a stronger case against a landlord than a business occupier, or simply that the landlord is deemed to have more money to pay compensation.
Because of this possibility of landlord liability, experienced landlords often include terms written into tenancy agreements whereby it is expressly stated that tenants would bear full legal responsibility in maintaining safety standards in the premises.
With these terms in place, even when a landlord is facing a lawsuit for negligence on the part of the business tenant, the tenant would still ultimately be liable to pay of the damages.
Legitimacy of claims
While the law allows protection to consumers and employees on business premises, it is important to know that lawmakers have no intention of enabling people to exploit businesses with premises liability suits.
So even when a person suffers some form of injury, it is not a given that the business would end up losing the case and have to pay a hefty sum of damages.
Victims first and foremost have to prove among others, that an incident occurred, that injury was a result of the incident, that there was negligence on the part of the occupier, and that it resulted in financial hardship.
If the business has hired some expensive attorneys on their side, then one can expect a case to not be as straight forward as it might initially seem.
Whether you are a plaintiff or defendant, it is best to talk to a property lawyer to discuss your possible moves.
Minimize premises liability
For a business, there’s very little that can be done when faced with such a suit other than to launch a vigorous defense with a capable lawyer on it’s side.
Otherwise, prevention should always be the top priority.
This means that business operators should regularly conduct inspections to assess the conditions of the premises and identify safety hazards are might be present.
Once problems has been discovered, immediate action must be taken to rectify them.
When these issues cannot be corrected immediately, maybe because of waiting for professional help, then signboards can be put in place to warn people about the hazard nearby.
Yet no matter how vigilant one is, there would always still be a possibility for accidents to happen.
So to cover oneself from liabilities, a general liability insurance policy might be a pragmatic choice.