Slip And Fall

An invitee is someone who is invited to be on someone?s property. An invitee is also someone who enters the premises for purposes connected with the business of the owner. For example, house guests and store customers are invitees. Firefighters and law enforcement officers are invitees if performing their lawful duties.

A landowner owes two basic duties to invitees. First, to use reasonable

care in keeping and maintaining the premises. Second, to give the invitee warning of concealed dangers which are known or should be known by the landowner, and which are unknown to the invitee and can?t be discovered by the invitee by exercising due care.

An uninvited licensee is a person who comes on somebody?s property for their OWN purpose without an express or implied invitation.

For example, a door to door salesperson or a neighbor trying to borrow sugar are uninvited licensees. They are not trespassers because their presence is not forbidden. Landowners owe a duty to warn the uninvited licensee of dangerous conditions that are known to the landowner but not readily observable by others.

A trespasser is a person who goes on a person?s property without

permission and whose presence is forbidden. The only duty that a landowner owns to an unknown undiscovered trespasser is a duty to refrain from intentional misconduct. For instance, a landowner can?t put land mines on his property to deliberately kill trespassers! If the landowners learns of a trespasser, the landowner owes the same duty as he would an uninvited licensee.

However, if something is considered to be an attractive nuisance, the landowner may be liable for trespassing children. An example of an attractive nuisance is a swimming pool. Because it is reasonable to believe that children might be attracted to a pool, and that children could get hurt if they fell in, a landowner must make reasonable efforts to eliminate the danger. In other

words, a person could be liable if they fail to construct a fence around a swimming pool.

In slip and fall cases, a landlord has a duty to take reasonable care to eliminate known dangers, protect invitees from the known dangers by excluding them from the area, and to warn invitees of dangers. Obviously, if something is spilled on the floor by the owner or employee of the business, the owner has actual knowledge of the danger and must take appropriate measures to

protect the public. Failure to take these appropriate steps makes the owner liable.

However, when the business owner or their employees don?t have actual knowledge that a substance has been spilled, liability is much trickier. Businesses open to the public have a duty to make reasonable and diligent inspections of the premises at certain intervals of time.

If it can't be proven that the owner had actual knowledge of the danger, the owner could still be liable if it can be proven that the dangerous condition existed for a lengthy period of time so that the owner should have reasonably had knowledge of it, or that the dangerous condition occurred with regularity and was therefore foreseeable. This is caused constructive knowledge.

Evidence of rotting food, smudges, streaks, tracks, footprints, and the size of puddles are the types of evidence that a good slip and fall lawyer will look for in order to prove whether the owner reasonably should have known of the dangerous condition.

Slip and fall cases are more complicated than they see. If you have ever been injured due to a slip and fall that

occurred in Clearwater, New Port Richey, or anywhere else in the Tampa Bay area, don't hesitate to call an experienced slip and fall lawyer We offer FREE CONSULTATIONS and you to not have to pay for the services of your injury law attorney unless we win your case.