There are different types of premises liability accidents. Snow and ice cases are a big thing. When somebody falls while walking on a pathway, walkway, or sidewalk that has ice on it or is covered in ice, one of the things we need to know right away is what the weather was.
We have to obtain weather reports for a period of time before that accident. Did the homeowner or the person responsible for that property have sufficient time to remove that snow and ice?
The second step is, once that snow and ice is removed, what kind of job did they do? Did they create a dangerous, unsafe, or icy condition?
It’s important that when they remove snow and ice, it’s done properly. To remove only some of the ice and leave patches of ice or black ice behind creates a dangerous condition. That’s something we have to discover in those types of cases.
In a non-snow-and-ice case, such as a traditional broken sidewalk, a hole in the ground, or a raised sidewalk, you want to know, first of all, who maintains that location. Second, you want to get photographs, find out if anybody knew about that defect, and determine who controls that area.
Is this a broken sidewalk in an area where the garbage is taken out and placed every night at the close of business? If somebody is placing a garbage can every day next to a big hole in the sidewalk, I would imagine that the person who’s taking that trash out every day has seen it before.
So, you really want to know everything about the business and everything about the property where an accident occurs. That’s necessary to establish that somebody was responsible, somebody had a duty, and somebody failed to meet that duty and do what they were supposed to do.