San AntonioPremises LiabilityLawyer

You were just running an errand.

You were shopping. Picking up a prescription. Walking into an apartment building you’d walked into a hundred times. You had every reason to trust the floor under your feet.

Then a hazard that someone else was supposed to fix put you on the ground. If that’s how you got hurt, here’s how these cases actually work, and how I work them.

Why these cases turn on notice

Premises liability (the area of law about injuries caused by unsafe property) turns on a couple of questions most people never think about until they’re hurt.

The first is what you were doing there. Texas law generally sorts visitors into categories. A customer or a guest is usually an invitee (someone on the property for the owner’s benefit), and invitees are owed the highest duty of care. Someone there for their own reasons may be a licensee, who’s owed less. The category can change what the owner had to do for you.

The second question, and often the whole case, is notice. To be responsible, the owner usually has to have known about the dangerous condition, or to have had it there long enough that a reasonable inspection should have caught it. A spill that happened thirty seconds before you fell is a different case from a spill that sat for an hour while employees walked past it. Proving which one you’re dealing with is most of the work.

Evidence goes away quickly

So much of a premises case lives on video that nobody keeps for long. Surveillance systems commonly record over themselves within thirty to ninety days, sometimes sooner. The footage that shows how long the hazard sat there, or that shows an employee walking past it, can be gone before anyone thinks to ask.

That’s why I send preservation letters early, in writing, to put the property owner on notice to keep the video, the incident reports, and the inspection logs. If you can, document the condition that hurt you before you leave: photos of the hazard, the lighting, the missing warning sign, and the names of anyone who saw it.

The chain of responsibility

The property owner is often not the only one responsible for a hazard. A store may lease its space from a landlord. A separate company may handle the cleaning, the maintenance, or the security. A contractor may have left the danger behind. In apartment cases, a management company may answer alongside the owner.

Each of those can be a separate responsible party, and often a separate insurance policy. Sorting out who actually controlled the spot where you fell, and who was supposed to keep it safe, is a large part of the case. That’s where my years reading the contracts between companies earn their keep.

Here in San Antonio

San Antonio runs on the kind of properties where these injuries happen: grocery and big-box stores along Loop 1604 and I-10, hotels and restaurants downtown and along the River Walk, and apartment complexes all over the city and the counties around it. When one of them lets a hazard sit, the people who get hurt are usually the customers and residents who trusted the place.

What to do now

If you were hurt on someone else’s property, get medical care first, even if you think you can walk it off. Some injuries, especially to the back and head, can show up days later. Then talk to a lawyer while the video still exists and the scene is still fresh.

Before you give any insurance company a recorded statement, talk to someone whose job is protecting you. You can involve a lawyer without committing to anything. The consultation is free, and you’ll talk to me.

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