ANNAPOLIS PREMISES LIABILITY LAWYERSPremises Liability

The Annapolis premises liability lawyers handle slip and falls, trip and falls, dog bite and ice claims throughout Maryland. Premises liability claims cover everything from falls on ice to dog attacks to inadequate security. As a general rule, premises liability cases are more difficult to establish than most personal injury cases.

Each area of premises liability claims requires an understanding of the applicable statutes, regulations, rules and case law. The Annapolis premises liability lawyers have litigated dozens of premises liability cases and are well versed in the applicable Maryland cases, codes, statutes and regulations that govern liability in these cases. For example, single step fall cases require knowledge about Maryland cases covering contributory negligence and model building codes that govern the design and construction of single steps. Dog attack cases require a firm understanding of local, county and state laws governing dogs such as leash laws. Falls in stores require an understanding of industry practices such as the maintenance of sweep logs.

Who is responsible is often a difficult legal question. Maryland imposes responsibilities on most people to take actions and evaluate circumstances to protect themselves from injury. Every property owner has a different level of responsibility to you depending on whether they invited you on the property for business purposes as opposed to social purposes. A property owner’s responsibility is different if they permitted you on their property for you to accomplish your own purpose, such as moving a table across their property to use at a neighborhood bake sale. You may be surprised to find out that a property owner has some limited responsibilities to people that have trespassed on their property.

The level of responsibility that you have for your own safety on someone else’s property is often altered by your age, your familiarity with property and any special training or skills that you may possess. If this section sounds confusing, it is. The property where you sustained the injury may have been dangerous but navigating Maryland premises liability law without legal help is like walking through an obstacle course blindfolded. A slip and fall or a trip and fall injury often appears at first glance to have been easily avoidable. A careful analysis of the building codes and the reasons for those building codes often reveals that trip and fall or slip and fall accidents is the reason the code provision was created.

Let’s face it. If people knew something was dangerous they most likely would not be hurt by that danger. Life is full of hidden dangers. The following are real examples of people that were injured and they needed help to find the reason why.

An Unsafe Supermarket Display Case.

A customer walks up to a display case at a deli counter to ask an employee where a certain food was kept. He turned to walk away and fell to the ground. There was nothing holding onto his shoe and there was nothing on the floor.

An investigation determined that a section of trim was cut off of the underside of the cabinet above a kick plate by a repair person. This left a sharp piece of plastic angled away from the customer that hooked a customer’s shoe as he turned to walk away.

Failure to properly repair a handicapped parking sign

A customer loading groceries in a handicapped parking space falls to the ground and breaks her ankle. Photographs showed a small hole but the area was repaved before she hired attorney George Patterson.

An investigation showed that the small hole was left by a handicapped parking space sign that was attached to a metal post buried in the hole. A closer examination of the photograph revealed that a portion of the metal post was sticking up an inch from the bottom of the small hole. This created a major tripping hazard that violated numerous codes and was very difficult to see.

A step with nearly a one-inch beveled edge

A customer parked her car in a parking garage. She walked toward a staircase that was surrounded by a raised concrete platform. She tripped and fell as she tried to step on the platform breaking her forearm in two places.

An engineer hired by attorney George Patterson examined the platform and found two serious safety hazards that would have been unnoticeable to most people. The first is that the concrete step was 9 ½ inches tall. Steps are supposed to be no more than 7 inches tall. Thousands and thousands of times we raise are feet to clear 7 inch steps. The other hazard was that the concrete platform had a beveled edge that was nearly an inch tall. Beveled edges by code should be limited to a quarter of an inch. The beveled edge created an optical illusion such that the last inch of height visually looked the same as the top of the platform as opposed to the perpendicular sides of the platform that were a darker color. The customer did not have the visual cues to raise her foot to the proper height causing her to fall forward and break her am.

A customer badly injured by a playful dog

A customer was purchasing a shed at an outdoor facility. She had recently undergone a neck fusion. The owner of the facility knew her condition and let his dog off the leash. The dog ran around a shed and knocked the customer’s legs out from under her and she fell on top of her head and lost consciousness.

Maryland law holds an owner strictly liable for conduct of their dog that the owner knew was dangerous and that the dog had a propensity to do. This dog had a propensity to run at full speed and do laps around the shed. This propensity of the dog was clearly dangerous to a customer with a neck fusion.