Injuries on another person’s property can result from someone’s failure to protect you from unsafe conditions. This can include not removing the danger or warning against those harms.
A Bangor failure to warn lawyer can help you pursue potential legal claims against responsible landowners or others in control of the property where your injury occurred. Learn more about premises liability cases involving the failure to warn and critical legal issues where an attorney can guide your case.
Types of Injuries and Accidents in Failure to Warn Cases
Personal injury accidents from dangerous land conditions can arise from natural and artificial events. For example, a natural cause might be a walkway covered in ice, resulting in a slip and fall incident. An artificial cause can include exposed electrical wiring or structural damage that leads to a collapsed building. The injuries from these accidents could include anything from lacerations and burns, to back injuries, traumatic brain injury, and death. A failure to warn lawyer in Bangor can help to establish grounds for a claim.
Who Can Be Liable for Failure to Warn of Dangerous Conditions?
Premises liability can extend to anyone (including an individual, business, or other entity) who had a duty of reasonable care to protect the person who was injured on the property. In many cases, this is the property owner or the party in possession, such as a tenant. The Supreme Court of Maine, in Brown v. Delta Tau Delta declared this duty can extend to parties in control of those in possession of the property. An example might be the duty of a national fraternity to protect social invitees against dangers on its local chapter’s premises.
When a dangerous condition exists on a property, those with responsibility generally have two options for meeting their duty of reasonable care. They can try to remove the hazardous conditions from the premises or mitigate the potential for injury, like sprinkling ice melts on the sidewalk before and after it snows. Another way to meet the duty of care is to warn guests about dangerous conditions and precautions to avoid injury. Learn more about liability in failure to warn cases by speaking with a Bangor attorney.
Key Issues That a Lawyer Can Help to Address
Several factors can limit the potential compensation available to an injured plaintiff under a failure to warn claim. One is the amount of knowledge the person in control of the property had about the hazardous condition before the injury. There is less of a duty to warn when there is no prior awareness of the unsafe conditions.
The focus in cases where no knowledge exists becomes the foreseeability of the dangerous condition. For example, a retail owner can foresee their store’s aisles becoming wet from foot traffic after heavy rainfall. This can create an obligation to inform customers of the potential for slippery floors by placing appropriate signs, even if the owner does not know the floors are wet.
Another challenge for injured guests on a property is the limitation of the duty in certain settings. This limitation can exist because of a guest’s status on the property or their purpose for being there. For example, Maine Title 14 § 159-A establishes a limitation of liability for landowners with hazardous conditions for visitors who are there for outdoor recreational or harvesting activities. A Bangor lawyer who has experience in failure to warn cases can explain in more detail.
Meet With a Bangor Attorney About a Failure to Warn Case
Your injury from dangerous conditions on another person’s land can be the result of that person’s failure to properly warn you. However, these cases are fact-specific, and liable landowners may raise defenses. A Bangor failure to warn lawyer can help push back against these arguments to obtain available compensation for your losses. Call us today to learn more.
