We all understand the concept of duty. Parents have duties toward their children, children toward their parents, husbands and wives have duties toward each other, and anytime you take a job you agree to undertake certain duties. While some duties are prominent and obvious, others sit in the background, almost invisible.
For example, everybody has a duty not to steal, and owes that duty to everybody else. Every driver on the road owes every other user of the road the duty of paying attention to his driving, keeping his car under control, and not running into anyone. Surgeons (and lawyers) owe it to their patients (and clients) to perform their work with the degree of skill to be expected of a person in that profession. Generally, we all owe it to each other to behave reasonably.
Negligence is a failure to perform such a duty in a way that hurts somebody else. When a driver fails to pay attention to the road, runs a red light, and t-bones an oncoming car, that driver has been negligent. When a surgeon amputates the wrong limb, or loses track of a surgical instrument and leaves it inside a patient, that surgeon has been negligent. An attorney who takes on representation of a client and then unreasonably fails to file the client’s lawsuit within the time allowed by law has been negligent.
Negligence can exist wherever one person owes a duty to anoth
“Slip and fall” is the shorthand name given to a class of cases within the area of premises liability. Premises liability refers to the liability that arises from owning or occupying land.
Georgia law states that the owner of land or the occupier of premises has certain duties toward users of that land or those premises. Examples of these duties include the duty of a shop owner to keep the floors free of unexpected obstacles or slippery substances, the duty of a landlord to keep the stairs at an apartment complex in good repair or to provide adequate security, or the duty of the owner of a restaurant to keep the restaurant’s leased parking lot free of potholes.
The terms “slip and fall” or “trip and fall” came into use because so many of the injuries arising from neglect of these duties are caused by people slipping in puddles, tripping in holes or over obstacles, and falling. Cases concerning the same kind of duty can feature other mechanisms of injury, though, such as a railing or structure collapse, the sting or bite from a venomous animal, fire caused by faulty wiring or allowed to spread by a malfunctioning sprinkler, or an object falling from a tall shelf in a store.
What all these cases have in common is the failure of the owner or occupier of land to meet his duty to prevent injury to users of that land — whether customers, tenants, employees, or social guests. A “slip and fall” may sound minor, but the injuries that arise from these cases can be serious. If you have been injured like this, give us a call.
er, fails to live up to that duty, and causes harm.