St. Petersburg Private Property Premises Liability Cases

A property owner has the right to kick someone off of their property and to keep them off. They have a right to conduct their business. For instance, imagine there is a construction site. The business owner has the right to perform construction on their property and they can keep people off of it with ropes and signs. If someone trespasses onto a construction zone and is injured, the property owner will have a good argument that it was all roped off and the person should not have entered the property because it is inherently dangerous as a construction zone.

The owner may be liable for negligence in St Petersburg private property premises liability cases if they have left items on the ground and knowingly had people around. Speak with an experienced premises liability attorney to discuss whether the details of your injury warrant filing a claim.

Applicable Rules for St Petersburg Landlords

It depends on the agreement between the landlord and the tenant. In most agreements, the landlord is the controller of the common areas of the property, meaning the parking lot, the wheelchair ramps and the roof. If someone goes wrong with those areas, the landlord is usually liable. If something happens within the tenant’s store such as water on the ground and someone slips, then usually the tenant will be liable for that because they are the controller of that area.

Some landlord-tenant agreements, though, have the landlord responsible for everything and others have the tenant responsible for everything. If it is one building and Home Depot is the only store in there, then sometimes the tenant can have more responsibility. And if it is a thrift store with a bunch of different businesses in there, the landlord usually has more responsibility.

Role of the Injured Visitor

An individual can establish comparative negligence in St Petersburg private property premises liability cases. It takes into account how person may also have been negligent in causing their own injuries and it may be determined that they have a percentage of fault which would divide the damages. If it is a 50-50 liability and the visitor is 50 percent liable, the owner is 50 percent liable, and the damages are $100,000, then the owner will only be liable for $50,000 of those damages.

Many homeowners or property owners will argue “open and obvious,” meaning if there is a big hole in the middle of the project because there is construction and a person walks into that hole, the person should have seen it because they should observe they are in a construction zone and there is a huge hole in the middle of a property that is “open and obvious.”

That instance could create some percentage of liability on the visitor of the property, not just the landowner. Even though maybe it should have been roped off, there could be a percentage of fault because the person did not notice something that was “open and obvious” that a reasonable visitor would have noticed.

Negligence Involving Multiple People

There are different ways comparative negligence in St Petersburg private property premises liability cases functions. The first is a split in the damages. If the injured party is 50 percent at fault, and the owner or controller of the premises is 50 percent at fault, and the damages are $100,000, they split those $100,000 damages. The landlord or owner of the property only has to pay the injured party $50,000.

Another way, in Florida, is the intoxication rule, which says that if someone injured is legally intoxicated, and is 51 percent at fault for the injury, then the monetary recovery is barred altogether. The owner of the premises or controller of the premises may have some duty to clean up anything that was spilled. Yet, the injured party will be held more than 51 percent responsible for that injury if they were intoxicated during the time of the incident.