Jacksonville Premises Liability Lawyer

Property Owner Negligence in Duval County

Public and private property owners alike have a duty to ensure their businesses, homes, and other premises are reasonably safe and well-maintained. Property owners should promptly remove, repair, or warn of any dangerous conditions that could cause foreseeable harm. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always happen. Often, innocent individuals are seriously hurt due to property owner negligence. If this happened to you, you do not have to face the consequences on your own.

From our Jacksonville office, we represent clients who have been hurt due to unsafe conditions on others’ properties throughout Duval County. In helping you file a premises liability claim against the negligent property owner, our goal is to aid you in recovering full and fair compensation for your resulting medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering.

For a free, no-obligation consultation with an attorney with one of our Jacksonville premises liability lawyers, please call (855) 933-3881.

What Is Premises Liability?

Premises liability is an area of personal injury law that has to do with the responsibility landowners have to people who visit their properties. Generally speaking, property owners must ensure that their businesses, homes, buildings, and land are reasonably free of potentially harmful hazards or that such hazards are clearly marked.

Florida property owners owe differing duties of care to different types of visitors:

• Invitees: An invitee or invited licensee is someone who has been expressly or implicitly invited to a property. Examples include a guest who has been invited over to someone’s home, customers shopping at a retail store, and people walking through a public park. Property owners owe the highest duty of care to public and business invitees, i.e., customers, and the next-highest duty of care to invited licensees, i.e., social guests.
• Licensees: An uninvited licensee, or simply licensee, is someone who has not been expressly or implicitly invited onto the property but is not prohibited from being on the property by the property owner. Someone who enters a gas station to use the bathroom but does not purchase gasoline would be considered an uninvited licensee. Property owners in Florida owe a similar, though slightly higher, duty of care to uninvited licensees as to trespassers.
• Trespassers: The last category of visitors is trespassers. A trespasser is someone who is not permitted to be on the property but enters it anyway. Property owners owe the lowest duty of care to trespassers in that they only have a responsibility to refrain from causing willful or wanton injury. One notable exception is instances involving attractive nuisances, in which children/minors are attracted to a specific feature on the property (such as a swimming pool or trampoline).

If you were visiting a property as a public or business invitee, invited licensee, social guest, or uninvited licensee, and you were injured due to a dangerous property condition, you could have grounds to bring a claim against the landowner.

Grounds for Filing a Premises Liability Claim

If you were one of the protected types of visitors described above and were injured on someone else’s property, you could be entitled to financial compensation.

To have grounds for a premises liability claim in Florida, you must prove all of the following:

• You were lawfully on the property
• A dangerous condition existed
• The property owner knew or reasonably should have known about the dangerous condition
• The property owner failed to take adequate steps to remove, repair, or warn others about the dangerous condition (or failed to properly maintain the property)
• You were injured because of the dangerous condition
• You were not being negligent
• The condition was not one that could be easily seen and avoided
• You sustained damages

Proving each of these elements can be exceedingly difficult without the help of an experienced attorney, especially because the property owner and their insurance provider will almost certainly fight against your claim. For this reason, it is important that you reach out to a legal team that can help protect your rights and aggressively advocate for you.

Types of Premises Liability Cases We Handle

At the Law Offices of Ron Sholes, P.A., our Jacksonville premises liability lawyers represent clients in all types of property-related accident and injury claims.

We can represent you if you or a loved one was injured due to any of the following:

• Slipping, tripping, and/or falling
• Being bitten or attacked by a dog or another animal
• Negligent security, leading to assault/injury
• Unsafe swimming pools
• Structure collapses, including roofs, porches, and balconies
• Defective or poorly maintained elevators or escalators
• Property fires and explosions
• Defective property conditions
• Attractive nuisances, leading to child injuries

These are just some examples of the types of cases we handle. If you or someone you care about was injured on another person’s property—whether in a home, at a place of business, or in a public area—our firm is ready to fight for you.

Call Us 24/7 for a Free Consultation

We strive to be there for you when you need us most. To that end, we answer all calls 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. When you reach out to us, you will always be connected with a real person who can answer your questions and walk you through the next steps.

As your neighborhood attorney, the Law Offices of Ron Sholes, P.A. is committed to advocating for you and working to create a safer community for all. We offer legal services in Spanish, Russian, and German, and because we offer contingency fees, you do not owe anything unless we win your case.

Get started with a complimentary case evaluation today; call (855) 933-3881 or contact us online.