The term premises liability is a broad one that encompasses a number of very different types of cases. Generally speaking, it covers cases involving the legal duties owed by the owner or manager of property to the public. The cases that I handle fall into a few subcategories. Slip and Fall and Trip and Fall cases are a well known variety. There are also other cases that are not as obvious including Negligent Security cases and Nuisance cases. I have handled these cases all over Georgia including  Roswell, Stone Mountain , Alpharetta, Tifton, Jonesboro, Riverdale and Marietta.

Negligent Security Assault and Rape Cases

As a former insurance defense lawyer, I defended properties for years on these cases and they are disturbing. All too frequently you hear of people getting raped, stabbed, shot and beaten in their apartments. The real shame is that many of the instances could have been avoided. Sometimes the assault is conducted by the employee of the complex and a simple background check would have spotted the criminal record. 

More commonly we see that the apartment complex knew there was a high crime problem in the area and continued to operate without sufficient security measures in place to protect the tenants. For example, in a case I handled, a 50 year old Atlanta woman was shot while in bed when a bullet from an AK-47 came through the wall. The bullet came from the rifle of a drug dealer outside errantly shooting at his rival. In discovery it became apparent that the apartment complex (next door to the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary) was overrun with drug dealers and yet they had no nighttime security patrols at all.In another case, my client was on the premises of an apartment in Stone Mountain Georgia in Dekalb County. He was carjacked and shot in the stomach and left to die. In discovery, we were able to show that the complex had knowledge of over 15 assaults in the area over the last two years and still left the main security gates wide open at night.

Sturbridge Partners, Ltd. v. Walker 267 Ga. 785, 482 SE2d 339 (1997) is one of the key cases in Georgia negligent security assault cases and lays out the analysis for prior similar crimes.

Slip and Fall and Trip and Fall Cases

At the outset, it is important for you to know that just because you fell on someone's property in Georgia, it does not mean that it was legally their fault. For example, if you are walking through a Kroger grocery store and you trip over a pallet of Wheaties boxes and hurt yourself, it is probably not going to be the store's fault under the Open and Obvious Doctrine. Think about it for a moment; the pallet is large and easily visible. The law reflects common sense in that you are expected to watch where you are going. Conversely, if there is spilled milk on the light floor of a Publix store and it has been there for a period of time sufficient for a careful store owner to have located and cleaned it, then the responsibility lies with the store.

One initial inquiry is what is the legal status of the injured person? Most people are aware that trespassers have comparatively few rights when they are injured on anothers property. A landowner owes the trespasser only the duty not to willfully or wantonly injure them. One of the key exceptions to this rule though pertains to children and is known as the attractive nuisance doctrine. The classic example is the neighborhood swimming pool. Everyone knows that kids like to swim and it is foreseeable that they might trespass. In a case stemming out of an Atlanta Georgia death, the Appellate Courts decided that where the property owner has taken a reasonable measure such as erecting a substantial fence, then the landowner cannot be responsible for the child's death and this makes sense, what else is the pool owner to do? Does this mean that recovery in those cases is impossible? Not at all. I have litigated several cases that seemed impossible from the outset including ones where there was a gate, but it was kept unlocked and in bad repair so that the child could easily get in. In another challenging case, the child died while playing with a weight lifting machine at his apartment gym. There we focused on the issue of how access was controlled and there was responsibility on the property owner.

The second category of persons on property is that of licensee. The property owner owes the licensee the duty to refrain from wantonly and recklessly exposing them to non-obvious perils. A social guest and a door-to-door salesman are classic examples of a licensee.

The most protected category of person is that of the invitee. The property owner owes the invitee the duty of ordinary care in keeping the premises and the area of approach safe. Invitees include shoppers, people doing work on the property at the owners invitation and anyone else there for the mutual benefit of the owner and the guest. The most common type of case we see in Atlanta is the shopper at Kroger, Publix or Family Dollar. I have many potential clients that call seeking a settlement for their injury in these stores and for many of them I go through the analysis and have to advise them that they do not have a case. Slip and Fall and Trip and Fall cases in Georgia are not an airtight proposition and if you are shopping for a lawyer, be sure that they are giving you a realistic view of the odds of taking a settlement or a trial verdict. Determining the legal status can be a tricky thing. For example, I represent a Papa John's pizza delivery driver who was shot while delivering pizza to an apartment complex. The cases say that so long as it was a tenant ordering the pizza, then the driver is an invitee. However, if the order of the pizza had been a ruse to draw the man in and the caller never intended to get the pizza, then the driver would only be a licensee.
Once the status of the claimant is known, the analysis shifts to the responsibilities of the parties. Generally speaking, in order for the fall to be the fault of the property owner, the injured person must show that the owner 1) had actual or constructive knowledge of the substance or item that caused the fall and 2) that the injured person did not know about the substance or item despite the exercise of care on their own part. Judges used to throw these cases out regularly where the injured person admits that they were not looking down at their feet as they were walking but that seemed unfair and so the appellate court's said that even where the person admits they were not on a constant lookout the case can still go to the jury.
It is important to note that slip and fall cases are still very vulnerable to efforts by the owner to throw the case out before jury trial, called Motions for Summary Judgment. One frequent danger is that the property owner will have logs showing that they had an inspection routine in place. The frequency of patrols under the law varies but for grocery stores, if the store can show that they patrolled looking for hazards every 15-20 minutes, then the Court will still throw the case out. Although this might seem unfair, you must realize that it is not cost effective to patrol the entire store and immediately spot every customer that drops an item. 

In summary it should be obvious that premises security cases are some of the most complex and motion vulnerable cases in the world of personal injury. If you want to ask questions about your case, please feel free to contact me.