Torts-Premises Liability
Another area of the law that produces many tort claims is premises liability. A person who is lawfully on someone else’s premises and who is injured as a result of some negligence of that property owner may have a claim against the property owner. The duty or standard of care to which the property owner is held may depend on the status of the injured person.
The different statuses that may apply are that of invitee, licensee or trespasser. An invitee is typically someone who comes onto the property for some legitimate business purpose. A licensee may generally be thought of as a social guest. A trespasser is someone who is not allowed on the premises and who is there without the knowledge or consent of the property owner.
Exactly what duty is owed by the property owner to each of these different classes of persons may vary dramatically from state to state. The general rule of law, however, is that a property owner has a duty to exercise ordinary care to keep his or her premises in a reasonably safe condition. When an owner fails to exercise that ordinary care and someone who is lawfully on the premises is injured as a result, the property owner may be liable.
One thing that distinguishes premises liability claims from other types of tort claims is that the party who is injured (the plaintiff) must prove that the property owner had notice of the defective condition on the premises. For instance, if your daughter slips and falls on a banana peel that was on the floor in the school cafeteria, she does not necessarily have a basis for a claim against the school system or the company that runs the cafeteria. She must present some evidence of how long that banana peel had been on the floor in order to prevail on such a claim. If it turns out that the banana peel had only been there a short period of time and was there because of the actions of some other student in the school, the school may not have had a reasonable opportunity to see the banana peel and clean it up. Thus, there may not be any negligence on the part of that school.
A property owner can only exercise ordinary care toward defects or deficiencies that he or she has knowledge of.
The logic of this rule is that a property owner is not necessarily a guarantor of the safety of all persons on his or her premises but is simply required to exercise ordinary care. A property owner can only exercise ordinary care as to those defects or deficiencies that he or she has some knowledge of or that he or she should have known of.
In the case of your daughter, she must prove that the banana peel had been on the floor long enough that the school system or the manager of the cafeteria should have known that the banana peel was on the floor. The school system or cafeteria manager should therefore have cleaned it up or placed signs out to warn customers of the presence of the object on the floor.
If the banana peel was placed on the floor either intentionally or accidently by an employee of the entity that operates the school cafeteria or by an employee of the school system, then your daughter may not have to prove that that entity had notice of the presence of the banana peel on the floor. The negligence of the employee in placing it there would simply be imputed to the employer.
Take another example of a premises liability claim.
Example: Suppose you are the tenant in a large apartment building where there have been a series of crimes committed resulting in serious personal injuries to the occupants. The property owner is aware of those crimes, but takes no steps to warn other tenants of the crime wave in that building and likewise takes no steps to improve security in the building. If you are subsequently assaulted and injured as a result of a person coming onto the premises for the purpose of committing a crime, then you may have a claim against that landlord based upon a negligence theory. That is, the landlord knew or should have known that there was a danger to the tenants, yet the landlord took no steps to either warn the tenants or to decrease the security risk to the tenants.
Look at that claim from the point of view of how the four elements of a tort claim apply. The first element of a tort claim is the establishment of a duty owed by the defendant to the plaintiff. The duty in this case arises out of the relationship of the parties. That is, the property owner or the landlord owes a duty of reasonable care to persons who are lawfully on the premises.
Reasonable care is that degree of care that a prudent person would exercise in a given circumstance.
You may ask, what is reasonable care? Reasonable care is whatever a jury says it is. A textbook definition of reasonable care is that degree of care that a prudent person would exercise in that circumstance. If the landlord in this instance failed to take some steps to warn the tenants or persons lawfully on the premises of the criminal incidents occurring, then that may be evidence of a breach of the duty to exercise reasonable care and fulfill the second element. If the assault in question was perpetrated by some person who was unlawfully on the premises, then the third element of a tort claim has been met in that the breach of duty has been shown to be a cause of injury. The final element of a tort claim is simply that of injury or damage. In this case, the injury or damage consists of the personal injury to the plaintiff.
