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Blog 2016 February Understanding "Duty of Care"
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Understanding "Duty of Care"

Posted By McCloskey Law Center || 25-Feb-2016

Consider the following scenario: a shopper at a supermarket slips and falls on wet tile, injuring their wrist. Can this shopper then hold the store owners responsible for her medical bills or any other burdens resulting from her injury? It all depends upon a legal concept called "duty of care."

Duty of care is the responsibility that all property owners, residential and commercial, have to provide safe conditions to welcome visitors on their premises. Additionally, if there are hazards of any kind, the owners have the responsibility to warn these visitors of them. Figuring out whether or not you owed duty of care first depends on what "type" of visitor you were to the property.

What type of visitor were you?

When it comes to premises liability matters, there are generally four categories of "visitor" the injured party can fall into. These categories determine whether or not the injured party was owed duty of care and, in turn, if the property owner can then be held liable for an injury.

The four types of visitors include:

  • Invitees. Invitees are any individuals who are welcome and wanted on the property. For residential owners, this can mean social guests and for commercial owners, this can mean customers and patrons. Invitees are owed duty of care.
  • Licensee. A licensee is someone who is not necessarily welcome on the property but is allowed. The most common examples of licensees are service people: repairmen, delivery personnel, plumbers, etc. Under most circumstances, licensees are owed duty of care.
  • Trespassers. A trespasser is an individual who is in a location where they are not allowed. This can mean that they have broken into a property after hours and are breaking the law, or even just gone through a door that was clearly marked "employees only." Trespassers are not owed duty of care.
  • Children. Minors required certain, nuanced considerations in these cases. In many instances, even children who are trespassing can be owed duty of care because of "attractive nuisance" laws, which understand that children might be naturally attracted to dangerous areas because they do not know any better. If your child has been hurt, speak with a proven St. Louis personal injury attorney to explore your legal options.

It is important to note that these categories can be fluid. For instance, an individual who buys a ticket at the zoo can be considered an invitee—until they willingly leap into the lion exhibit, then they are a trespasser.

Dissecting the Supermarket Fall

Once you know what kind of visitor you are and if you know you were owed duty of care, you can proceed with your premises liability claim. In the case of our supermarket shopper who fell, she is owed duty of care: she was an invitee present during regular business hours. However, there is one other critical consideration to her premises liability options: when dangerous conditions occurred.

In order to hold a property owner responsible for unsafe conditions, they need to have reasonably known or reasonably should have know about the conditions. So where did the water on the wet tile come from?

  • In one scenario, the water came from a freezer which regularly leaked and the store owners did nothing to fix it. In this scenario, the property owners knew about the leak and did nothing about it. They are liable.
  • In a second scenario, the water came from another customer who spilled a beverage. While staff ran to get a mop and a hazard cone, the shopper in question rounded a corner and slipped on the puddle. In this scenario, the store is likely not liable—they were responding to the spill in a timely manner, but the injured shopper's timing was just unfortunate.

If you believe that you have a claim against a property owner for dangerous conditions that harmed you, we invite you to contact us at McCloskey Law Center today. Our dedicated legal team of injury advocates have more than half a century of legal experience. We know how to assess the details of your case, provide actionable legal options, and, if necessary, take exacting and aggressive legal action against the parties responsible for your injury.

It can be possible to recover the relief you deserve. Contact our firm today start exploring your options.

Categories: Premises Liability

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