Category: Blog

Apartment building insurance is not to be confused with renter’s insurance. While a renter’s insurance policy covers a renter and his or her belongings, apartment building insurance covers the property itself and its owner. Every policy is different, but most will include owner liability coverage in addition to insuring the building and fixtures.

If a tenant or visitor files a personal injury claim against the owner or manager of an apartment, the landlord would be covered by the liability portion of his or her apartment building insurance. Laws and insurance policies vary, and every case is different. A knowledgeable, local personal injury attorney can help you sort out the specifics of your landlord’s policy and assist you in filing a claim for damages.

When you rent a property, it’s the landlord’s responsibility to maintain safe premises. Property owners who don’t take proper steps to prevent foreseeable harm caused by their premises are legally negligent. If that negligence causes you to be injured, you may have a strong legal claim for damages.

Property Owners and Duty of Care

Landlords and property managers owe a duty of care to their tenants and visitors. This means the law requires property owners to prevent foreseeable harm caused by their property. Property owners must maintain their premises in such a way that tenants and visitors are safe from hazardous conditions.

Unsafe conditions caused by property owner negligence can include:

• Missing handrails
• Broken or missing steps or stairs
• Uneven flooring
• Uneven pavement outdoors and in the parking area
• Toxic mold growth
• Hazards caused by pest infestations
• Water on the floor from broken appliances or leaking roofs

Key to a premises liability claim is that the harm caused by poor maintenance was foreseeable. For instance, if you fall because of an earthquake, that is not foreseeable harm because the property owner could not have predicted or prevented your injury.

If you fall down the stairs because there was no handrail, that is foreseeable harm. Any reasonable person knows there should be a secure handrail for people to hold onto when using the stairs.

These are just some examples. If you’re a renter, and you think your landlord’s poor property maintenance caused your injuries, the law may be able to help. It’d be wise to discuss your case with an experienced personal injury lawyer to see if you can collect damages for your injuries.

When you go to a business or a rental property, you expect that the owner has kept the premises reasonably safe. Legally, property owners have a duty of care to do exactly that. If they don’t, the law holds property owners accountable for injuries caused by poor maintenance.

For instance, if a person trips over debris in the poorly lit parking lot of a grocery store, he or she probably has a valid premises liability claim for the resulting knee injury. Why? Because the property owner failed to prevent foreseeable harm.

The property owner was negligent, because poor lighting and debris lying on the ground where people routinely walk can foreseeably cause someone to be injured. The key to the claim of negligence is foreseeability. For example, if the knee injury was caused by a fall due to an earthquake, that would not be foreseeable.

Knee injuries are particularly painful and often require surgery to correct. If your knee injury after a parking lot fall was caused by unsafe conditions, you may have a solid legal claim against the property owner.

Following an injury, you may be considering filing a lawsuit to recover your expenses and get your life back on track. Deciding whom to file suit against is a good place to start.

Who’s to Blame?

If you’re injured in a public place, against whom would you file a personal injury claim for damages? That depends on whose negligence caused your injury. Usually that would be the business or property owner, who has a legal “duty of care” to prevent foreseeable harm to visitors and patrons.

Often, injuries in public places such as stores and restaurants happen because of some unsafe condition on the premises. In such an instance, you would file your claim against the owner of the business. Here are some examples:

• A slip and fall on a wet floor not marked with “wet floor” signage
• Cutting oneself on an exposed nail sticking out of a wall
• Becoming ill from improperly stored or prepared food

If you’re not sure whose duty it was to prevent the hazardous condition that caused your injuries, your personal injury attorney can offer guidance in identifying the negligent party.

Slip and fall accident claims arise when a person falls down and is injured due to a pre-existing hazard that a property owner or manager should have fixed. Classic slip and fall accidents often occur in stairwells, sidewalks, showers and bathtubs, on parking ramps, or in falls from balconies.

What Makes a Typical Slip-and-Fall Accident Claim?

A typical slip and fall case looks like this: A person is climbing stairs where a liquid was spilled. The person slips in the liquid and is injured. The injured person can sue the property owner or manager for money to pay for the injury arguing that the property owner should have cleaned up the liquid and the liquid caused the injury.

In these cases, courts have found that property owners have a duty to use reasonable care to keep the property reasonably safe. Based on this duty, courts often award the injured money to help with the injury.

Could You Be Awarded Damages After a Slip-and-Fall?

Before a court will award what lawyers call “damages” (money for an injury) to an injured person, the injured person must prove to a judge or jury three things. First, the injured person must prove that the property where the injury was sustained was not in a reasonably safe condition. In the example above, the injured person must prove that there was, in fact, liquid on the stairs and then prove that the liquid made the stairs unsafe.

After this, the injured person must prove that the property owner was negligent in failing to keep the property in a reasonably safe condition. Negligence is defined as “the lack of ordinary care.” A negligent person fails to use the kind of care that a normal person would use in a similar situation.

In the stair-climbing example, the injured person must prove that a reasonable property owner would have recognized the danger in the liquid on the stairs and then took reasonable actions to clean the liquid up making the stairs safe to climb again.

The last thing an injured person must prove for a successful slip and fall claim is that the unsafe condition was a substantial factor in the injury. The unsafe condition is considered a substantial factor in an injury if a reasonable person would conclude that the unsafe condition caused the injury.

To use the stair-climbing example, again, the injured person must prove that the liquid on the stairs that the property owner negligently failed to clean up was the cause of the injury.