Oftentimes shoppers become injured when they slip and fall on something that has been left sitting in the aisle of a store or they are mugged in a store that should have security posted but does not. Such claims are based on a set of legal theories that fall under the umbrella term of “premises liability”. Premises liability claims, at their most basic, are about the failure of a property owner or occupier to take reasonable precautions to ensure that their property is safe for those who may enter.
The experienced personal injury and premises liability lawyers at Staver Accident Injury Lawyers, P.C. wanted to share further details with you about premises liability claims under Illinois law and what can make a good case if you ever find yourself in the position of needing to decide whether to hire an attorney in connection with a premises liability claim.
Premises liability is a legal term that deals with the responsibility of a property owner or operator to ensure that their property is safe for patrons and members of the public or other persons who visit those premises. Under Illinois law, the owner or operator of a business owes a different type of duty depending on the legal status of the third person who enters upon that owner or operator’s land or property. If the person is a trespasser, or someone who enters the premises unlawfully, the property owner owes no duty to a trespasser under Illinois law except in fairly limited circumstances that we will not cover here. A landowner or occupier owes a duty to exercise reasonable care to ensure that the property is reasonably safe for the use of those who are lawfully on that owner or occupier’s property, however. In practice, this would mean that a store owner or manager would be responsible for ensuring that his or her store is reasonably safe for those who come to the store for purposes of transacting business there or making a purchase.
To borrow an example from above, if you visit a store in a high crime area where people are routinely mugged inside businesses and the store owner has not hired any security personnel to monitor the safety of store patrons and you are mugged on the store premises, you may have a good premises liability claim. Further, if you have suffered injuries in the process of being mugged, this would make for an even better claim. Similarly, if you were at a grocery store and a careless stock person had dropped a gallon of milk on the floor, which the grocery store management knew about but unreasonably delayed cleaning it up, and you then slipped on the milk and suffered serious injuries, this also would be a good premises liability claim.
Typically, to evaluate whether you have a good claim, you need to (i) have suffered injuries and (ii) be able to tie those injuries directly to some action that a property owner negligently did not take that they should have. In the example of the milk on the grocery store floor, it was the fact that store management was aware of the milk on the floor that was negligent on the part of store management, whereas in the mugging example it was the store owner’s knowledge that his store was located in a high-crime neighborhood with many robberies inside area businesses every year that made his failure to employ any security personnel to monitor the premises negligent.
Staver Accident Injury Lawyers, P.C. has extensive experience representing persons who have been injured due to a property owner or occupier’s negligence in maintaining their premises in a condition that is safe for users of that property. The aggressive personal injury and premises liability attorneys of Staver Accident Injury Lawyers, P.C. will fight hard for you to recover every dollar of damage that you have suffered as a result of a property owner’s negligence in maintaining his or her property.
Therefore, if you find yourself in a position of having been injured as a result of a property owner’s negligence in maintaining or failing to maintain his or her property, your first call should be to the aggressive and experienced attorneys of Staver Accident Injury Lawyers, P.C. at (312) 236-2900.
When you’re fighting for maximum compensation, we know what it takes to get it.
