What's the law

When a person is injured on the land or premises of another, the law of premises liability determines how compensation is paid. A premises owner can be a store owner, a factory owner, a home owner, or just about anyone who owns land or structures on land. In general, a premises owner must exercise a high degree of care toward people who may be on the land. This is most accurate for persons invited onto the premises for business or personal reasons, although the law also extends protection to other visitors and even trespassers. A high degree of care means that the landowner is liable for dangerous conditions on the land that the landowner knows, or should know, exist. A landowner is considered to be on constructive or legal knowledge of dangers that he or she could have located through reasonable inspection of the premises. A premises owner can rarely claim ignorance of the dangerous condition.

Representative cases

Slip and fall at K-Mart -- $3.5 million verdict

The firm recently won a $3.5 million verdict on behalf of a woman who had fallen in K-Mart on a rolled up carpet left by the cleaning crew. K-Mart argued unsuccessfully that they did not know that the cleaning crew would leave the carpet in a dangerous location inside the door. The trial judge held, however, that K-Mart was in fact liable for the negligence of its cleaning crew, and held K-Mart responsible to their customer. Based on testimony that our client suffered a bulging disk that was likely to cause future pain and suffering, the jury awarded $3.5 million in damages.