How Does a New Jersey Premises Liability Case Work?

While a premises liability case is most often known as a “slip and fall” case, it can cover any type of case where a person gets hurt on another person’s property. Slips and falls are simply the most common way this can happen.

Knowing how these cases work can help you determine whether you’ve got an issue that’s worthy of a lawsuit or whether you’re simply in a situation where you’ve hurt yourself and need to deal with that like you’d deal with any other injury.

Duty of Care and Negligence

In order for a personal injury case to exist, the following must be true:

• Someone must have a “duty of care” to someone else. That means they must do something or avoid doing something to help avoid the possibility of injuries and accidents. In the case of a property owner, this is usually ensuring hazard warnings are posted or hazard conditions are rectified in a timely fashion.
• They must have failed in this duty, that is, they must have been negligent.
• This must have led directly to harm, and that harm must have resulted in a loss.

That’s why you don’t have a personal injury case if you slip and fall on your own property. There was nobody who had a duty of care to you. Nor would you necessarily have a case if you walked past a dozen warning signs and interacted with a hazard anyway.

In addition, property owners can often defend themselves by pointing out they did not have sufficient time to know about and rectify a hazardous condition. If it snowed and the walks turned icy ten minutes before your slip and fall you’d have a hard time proving that the property owner was negligent. They needed time to get someone out there to shovel the walks. 

Mode of Operation

The condition that caused the injury must also not be something that would be normal for the way a business operates. There are certain unavoidable hazards that can come with doing certain types of business. 

For example, if you get hit in the head with a tennis ball while standing on a tennis court you’d have a hard time proving the person who owned the tennis court was negligent. It’s a tennis court. New Jersey law recognizes that there are going to be tennis balls flying around. This is a very simplistic example, of course.

Contributory Negligence

Finally, New Jersey requires the accident victim to be no more than 50% responsible for their own injuries before they can recover damages. If you were doing something reckless or negligent yourself then you can be assigned a percentage of fault.

In addition, your eventual injury award can be reduced by that percentage. 

Need Help?

Despite these general guidelines, there’s no good reason to try to guess for yourself whether or not you have a viable premises liability case. You can get a no-obligation consultation by calling our offices to schedule an appointment today.