Put experience on your side after your accident
Whether you've been hurt in a slip and fall, injured due to negligent security, or any other type of accident on someone else's premises, you have rights under Georgia law. To protect those rights, however, you need to take strong and immediate legal action. Premises liability is a complex area of law, and premises cases are factually intensive. The insurance companies fight hard to reduce or deny claims.
You can fight back with an experienced personal injury lawyer from Gary Martin Hays & Associates on your side. Here's how we build strong premises liability cases:
Establishing your legal status at the time of the injury
Premises liability law puts a great deal of emphasis on the injured person's status at the time of the injury; that is, the reason you were on the premises. There are three general categories of persons who may be on someone else's premises:
- An invitee is someone who has been invited onto the premises by the property owner for a business purpose. For instance, an HVAC contractor who a homeowner asks to come inside to repair an air conditioner is an invitee. Customers in a retail store that is open for business are also invitees.
- A licensee is someone who is on the premises with the property owner's knowledge and consent, but not for the owner's business purpose. Social guests are considered licensees, as are door-to-door salespeople or canvassers for political campaigns.
- A trespasser is someone who is on the premises without the owner's knowledge or consent. Adult trespassers have very few legal rights (for the most part, the premises owner just has to refrain from intentionally injuring them), but a higher duty of care applies when the trespasser is a child.
Once your legal status is established, we can determine the property owner's duty of care (that is, their responsibility to you to maintain safe premises) and move forward with a claim.
Proving liability & damages under premises liability law
In order to recover compensation for your injuries, we need to show that the property owner owed you a duty of care (based on your legal status at the time of the accident), that the duty of care was breached, and that you sustained an injury as a result of the property owner's negligence.
For instance, if you were injured in a slip and fall on a wet floor at a store, we need to show that the store knew about or should have known about the wet floor, that they didn't take actions to address it (i.e. clean up the spill) or warn you of it (i.e. put up a wet floor sign), and that you sustained a significant injury because of it. To establish the chain of events that led to your injury, we may talk to witnesses, review photographs and physical evidence from the scene, and secure camera footage that shows what happened.
Our approach to building premises liability cases
We take a comprehensive approach to building premises liability cases. We're not only looking for compensation for your immediate expenses (such as medical bills and lost wages from missing work), but also potential long-term costs. For instance, if you sustained a knee injury, we'll determine whether you may need a future knee replacement. We can incorporate that potential cost into your claim. If your injury may permanently affect your ability to work, we'll seek compensation for your lost future earnings.
The bottom line here is that property owners have a responsibility to keep their premises safe. When they don't meet that responsibility, victims deserve to be made whole again. If you've been injured on someone else's premises, we'd be glad to meet with you for a free consultation. There's no cost and no obligation. We give you our Zero Fee Guarantee—you don't owe us a cent until and unless we recover compensation for you.
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