How Can You Prevent Premises Liability At Your St Pete Business Or Home?
Michael Babboni
Premises Liability
Anyone that owns the property has a basic legal responsibility to maintain a safe environment. This doesn’t mean that home or business property owners must take extraordinary lengths to protect residents, employees, and visitors, but it does mean that common sense precautions should be observed.If owners see a potential risk of injury on their property and decide to ignore it, they leave themselves legally exposed to premises liability. Premises liability is when someone is injured on a property due to a known but neglected risk, leaving the property owner financially accountable for the injury’s treatment, recovery, and any additional associated costs.
If you’re a property owner and want to protect yourself from premises liability, here are some things you should do.
Regularly Inspect Your Property
Knowledge of a problem is your first line of defense. Depending on your property type, daily inspections may be necessary for a business, while only seasonal checks are required for a residential property. However, in either case, the goal is the same. Inspections should be done to reassure yourself that everything is safe and in order or, if not, alert you to a possible threat.
In the case of premises liability, ignorance is not necessarily an excuse, especially if it’s a longstanding injury risk since that reflects poorly on your performance as a property owner. For example, if you own and operate a small grocer, and there’s a spill of juice on the floor that you didn’t know about, that doesn’t absolve you from premises liability should a customer eventually slip and fall on it hours later.
Be Proactive About Prevention
Once you know that a risk exists, you should try to address it promptly. If you operate an auto repair garage and motor oil is spilled on the ground, get it cleaned. If you have trees on a property inspected and are told that some branches risk falling and injuring someone below, have the trees trimmed. If a light bulb goes out in a stairwell with no windows, forcing people to travel up and down the stairs in pitch black unless they use a light source, like their phones, get it replaced.
The best way to avoid premises liability is to eliminate the risk once you know it. The longer you leave the risk unaddressed, the greater the chances are that someone will fall victim to it and target you as the responsible party.
Secure Dogs
This is an especially important precaution for homeowners that are also dog lovers. Unlike other states, Florida has zero tolerance for dog aggression, and ignorance is not an excuse. If your dog attacks someone, and you didn’t know the animal was capable of that level of aggression until that point, you are still legally and financially responsible for the attack.
Accidents can still happen even if a dog is not normally aggressive, such as when a Florida resident allowed her dog to remain unleashed on her front lawn. A man was walking past just as a car drove by with a faulty exhaust that made a loud noise to startle the dog into attacking the nearest target, the pedestrian.
Secure Firearms
Another common cause of premises liability is the accidental discharge of firearms because they have been left loaded and placed in an easily accessible and unattended area. It is crucial, especially in a situation where children may be present or the activities on the property include drug or alcohol consumption, that firearms are secured in a location that is not easily accessible.
On the other hand, if you’ve been the victim of an injury due to a property owner’s negligence, you should seek out a premises liability attorney. Find out your next moves to get the compensation you’re owed.