The Stanley Law Offices

Every winter, we take great pains to shovel the snow and ice off the sidewalks in front of our house. The sidewalks are probably never graced with our footsteps after we clear them, since we tend to stay indoors or drive to wherever we need to go. You may wonder at times, why you bother to shovel the pavement at all. The answer is premises law, which could hold you liable if someone walking past your house suffered a personal injury by slipping and falling.

In premises law the owner or manager of a property is responsible for its reasonable upkeep. Visitors using that property expect that the conditions of the premises will not inflict bodily harm during reasonable use, such as walking on the sidewalk.

When deciding who is responsible, our premises liability lawyers will look at the type of visitor who was injured. Visitors are defined as:

• Invitees - people explicitly or implicitly asked onto your property for a commercial or business transaction. If you have a business for example, you are expecting people to come and look at your goods, even if you didn't send out a personal invitation to them.
• Licensees - social guests, typically invited explicitly or implicitly for purposes other than business, such as having a friend over for dinner.
• Trespassers - uninvited guests which have limited, if any, rights, should they suffer personal harm while on your property.

If you have any questions about premises laws, or your obligations and potential liability in personal injury cases, please contact the Stanley Law Offices today for a free consultation.