South Carolina Slip and Fall Attorneys

Proving a premises liability claim can be complicated, especially when there is disagreement over whether a dangerous condition actually existed, whether the property owner knew about the hazard, or whether the injured person could have reasonably avoided it. Simply being injured on someone else’s property does not automatically mean the property owner is responsible.

Instead, several factors can determine whether an injured person has a valid South Carolina premises liability claim. Courts may consider the property owner’s responsibility to maintain reasonably safe conditions, how the visitor was using the property, and the circumstances surrounding the accident. Understanding these basic principles can help explain when a property owner may be held responsible for injuries that occur on private or public property.

Those rules are as follows:

The reasoning behind this rule is pretty simple: the owner has the ability and opportunity to keep a premise safe from hazards and dangers, while the visitor does not. Because of this, the owner has a legal duty to protect any visitors—whether they are a tenant, shopper, or personal visitor—from any unreasonable risk of injury due to the design of the property, the construction of the property, or the condition of the property. For instance, if the owner of a hotel learns of a broken banister railing but fails to fix it in a timely fashion, and a young child falls through that banister and injures themselves, the owner of the hotel will have neglected their duty to keep the hotel safe, and will therefore be liable for any damages sustained as a result of the child’s injury.

Just because an individual is injured on someone else’s property does not automatically make the owner of the property liable for their injuries. In order for a property owner to be held liable, the visitor must not have been using the property as it was intended to be used when the injury occurred. For instance, slip and fall injuries are common at public pools due to children running on wet cement, but one hardly ever hears of a public pool being sued for premises liability. This is because public pools take proactive measures to avoid premises liability by posting signs everywhere that specifically prohibit running around the pool, or that warn, “Slippery When Wet.” A public pool is not a track, and therefore, most individuals would be hard-pressed to sue the owners for injuries sustained as a result of running and slipping.

On the other hand, if an individual were to be walking into the public pool’s restroom and slip on a puddle on the tile directly in the restroom’s entryway, the property owner could be held liable. This is because a) the visitor was not doing anything wrong, and b) that particular hazard (a puddle) should not have existed in that particular area of the property.