Premises Liability Attorneys in Austin, TX

The world is full of dangers and hazards that can lead to severe injuries or death. Some of them are unavoidable. Other dangerous conditions, however, are the direct result of property owners who fail to maintain their premises in a reasonably safe condition or disregard hazards that they knew or should have known about yet didn’t fix. Slip and fall accidents are probably the most well-known types of premises injury accidents.

Not every accident or injury that happens on someone else’s property can be the basis of a lawsuit for compensation. But Texas law imposes specific duties on landowners and those responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of property that can make them liable for many injury-causing incidents on their property.

That law is based on the legal principle called “premises liability.” In Texas, premises liability law is complicated, and proving liability in these cases involves a great deal more than just showing that a plaintiff was hurt while on the defendant’s property. A hazard that may be the basis of liability under one set of circumstances may not support a claim in other cases.

In premises liability cases, more than just the property owner’s conduct is at issue; the injury victim’s identity and the circumstances around how and why he or she was on the premises when injured will play a significant role in determining whether an injury victim will receive compensation for his or her losses.

While Texas property owners are not necessarily responsible for every injury that occurs on their land, they can be liable for damages that resulted from their breach of duty to injury victims. The nature of the duty owed by a property owner depends on the reason that the visitor was on the property, whether the person was on the property with the owner’s consent, or whether the property was open to visitors and customers for a business purpose.

Under Texas law, a property owner has the following obligations to the following types of individuals:

• For a trespasser, a person who is on the property without the owner’s consent – the owner is only liable for damages or injuries he or she causes willfully or intentionally. A burglar won’t be able to recover damages because he or she slipped on a spill in the kitchen, for example.
• A licensee is someone the owner has invited onto the premises for a non-business or commercial purpose, such as a social guest. Owners owe licensees a duty to warn them of hazards on the property that create an unreasonable risk of harm if the property owner is aware of the condition and it is unlikely to be discovered by the licensee.
• An invitee is typically a customer, client, or visitor at a store or business – and if the owner failed to use reasonable care to protect against hazards that he or she knew or should have known about, the owner could be held liable for any injuries that result from such a danger.