If a dangerous condition on someone else’s property caused you harm, you may be able to recover compensation through a premises liability lawsuit. However, it’s crucial that you act quickly, as you only have a limited amount of time to file your case, and your lawyer needs time to gather evidence.
Contact Bartholomew, Shevlin & Flack, LLP to get started with a free consultation. Our highly qualified personal injury lawyer will explain the process of seeking compensation for your injuries and answer any questions you have about your case.
Premises liability is the legal concept that holds a property owner or manager financially liable for damages caused by a hazardous condition on their property. Damages refer to the compensation sought by an insurance claimant or legal plaintiff for their injuries, property damage, and other negative consequences of the incident.
Basically, if you sustain an injury on someone else’s property that’s caused by a hazard they knew or should have known about and failed to remedy, you could seek compensation from them.
However, depending on the hazard that caused your injury, it could be challenging to show that the property owner had prior knowledge of it. This is why you need the help of an experienced premises liability attorney who will thoroughly investigate the incident.
Properties can be hazardous in many different ways. Some of the most common hazards on properties include:
While some states recognize three types of property visitors, Illinois only recognizes two. Some individuals are allowed to be on a property, and some are not.
Under common law, visitors allowed on a property were formerly split into two categories: licensees and invitees. However, Illinois abolished the separate definitions and rights of those types of visitors and has since combined them.
Now, if you are on someone else’s property for any legal reason, including as a social guest or a customer, the property owner owes you the same duty of care. This duty of care means the property owner must either remedy known or expected hazards or warn you about them if they are hazards that cannot be immediately rectified.
The other type of property visitors are trespassers. In general, property owners don’t owe trespassers a duty of care beyond avoiding causing them intentional harm. However, some exceptions may apply, such as in the case of child trespassers or known trespassers.
Known trespassers are those the property owner knows about, but has not taken additional steps to prevent them from trespassing. For example, if a property owner knows people regularly cut through part of their property as a shortcut and doesn’t put up a fence or sign warning the trespassers, they may have a harder time arguing that they didn’t owe the trespassers a duty of care.
A strong premises liability case is built on a solid foundation of evidence. Some of the evidence your lawyer may collect to support your case includes:
Your lawyer may have to work quickly to collect some of this evidence, such as accident scene photographs and surveillance camera videos. This makes it essential that you speak to a premises liability lawyer as soon as possible after your injury.
The compensation you could recover for your injuries caused by a dangerous condition on someone else’s property may cover your:
An experienced premises liability lawyer can accurately assess the value of your case and help you seek fair compensation for it. Individuals who try to handle their cases without the assistance of an attorney often have trouble determining their case’s value and end up getting lowballed by the at-fault party’s insurance company as a result.
In most cases, the property owner or manager isn’t personally liable for the compensation recovered through a premises liability lawsuit. Instead, their homeowner’s, renters, or business insurance covers your damages.
This is important to keep in mind because some people don’t want to file a lawsuit against their friends or family, even if they sustain injuries on their property. Ultimately, it won’t be your friends or family who have to pay. It will be their insurance company.
If you are partly responsible for your injuries sustained on someone else’s property, it could impact your compensation. For example, if you slipped on a wet floor because you were looking at your phone, the property owner’s insurance company may claim you were partly at fault and reduce the amount it’s willing to settle your case for.
Additionally, if your case goes to court, Illinois’ modified comparative negligence law could result in the court reducing your awarded compensation by your percentage of assigned fault.
Illinois law generally gives individuals injured due to property hazards two years to file lawsuits against the parties responsible for remedying those hazards. You must file your premises liability lawsuit within this period or risk the courts dismissing your case without a hearing. Some cases may have shorter deadlines.
However, while you have two years to file your lawsuit, that doesn’t mean you should wait to begin working with a lawyer. Investigating the incident and gathering supporting evidence takes time. And in many cases, that evidence may be lost if you wait too long to begin working on your case.
Were you injured by a hazardous condition on someone else’s property in Illinois? Contact Bartholomew, Shevlin & Flack, LLP, for a free consultation with an experienced and knowledgeable premises liability attorney. We’ll help you understand your options for seeking compensation and will walk you through what to expect from your case.