What Is Premises Liability?
Premises liability is an area of personal injury law that holds property owners and those responsible for managing or maintaining property legally accountable when someone is injured due to an unsafe condition on that property. The law recognizes that property owners owe a duty of care to those who visit, work on, or otherwise lawfully occupy their premises. When they breach that duty—and that breach results in injury—the injured person may be entitled to compensation.
To succeed on a premises liability claim, the law generally requires that four elements of negligence be proven:
- Duty of Care:Â The property owner or manager had a legal obligation to maintain the premises in a reasonably safe condition for those on the property.
- Breach of Duty: The property owner or manager failed to uphold that duty—for example, by ignoring a known hazard, failing to conduct reasonable inspections, or neglecting necessary repairs.
- Causation:Â The breach of duty directly caused the accident and resulting injuries.
- Harm:Â The injured person suffered actual damages as a result, including physical injuries, financial losses, or emotional distress.
Where Do Premises Liability Accidents Happen?
Every property owner who opens their doors to the public—or invites someone onto their premises—takes on a legal responsibility for what happens there. Our Arkansas premises liability attorneys have represented clients who were injured at:
- Grocery stores, retail stores, and shopping centers
- Restaurants and bars
- Parking lots and parking garages
- Apartment complexes and rental properties
- Hotels and motels
- Office buildings and commercial properties
- Construction sites and job sites
- Government-owned properties, including parks, sidewalks, and public buildings
- Private residences
- Daycares and schools
- Amusement parks and recreational facilities
If you were hurt on someone else’s property due to a hazardous condition that the owner or manager knew about—or reasonably should have known about—you may have a premises liability claim, regardless of what kind of property it was.
Common Types of Premises Liability Claims
You may be wondering whether your injury is “serious enough” to pursue a premises liability claim. The reality is that premises liability law covers a broad spectrum of accidents and injuries—many of which are far more consequential than property owners and their insurance companies want to admit.
Slip and Falls
Wet floors, icy sidewalks, freshly mopped tile without warning signs, and slick surfaces in parking lots and entryways are among the most common hazards that lead to slip-and-fall injuries. These accidents are frequently dismissed as minor, but a serious fall can result in broken bones, traumatic brain injuries, spinal damage, and other injuries that can alter the course of a person’s life.
Trip and Falls
Torn or buckled carpet, raised sidewalk sections, uneven pavement, poorly lit stairways, and debris left in walkways can all send a person to the ground without warning. Like slip and falls, these incidents can cause fractures, head injuries, and severe soft tissue damage that require extensive medical treatment and recovery.
Negligent Security
Businesses, landlords, apartment complexes, hotels, and other property owners have a duty to take reasonable steps to protect guests and tenants from foreseeable criminal activity. When inadequate lighting, broken locks, nonfunctional security cameras, or the absence of security personnel enables an assault, robbery, sexual attack, or other violent crime, the property owner may be held liable for the resulting injuries. Negligent security cases are often among the most complex premises liability claims, requiring a thorough investigation into the security measures in place, the risks the property owner knew or should have known about, and whether those measures were adequate.
Falling Objects
Improperly stacked merchandise in retail stores, unsecured shelving, defective overhead fixtures, and falling debris on or near construction sites can cause devastating injuries—especially traumatic head and brain injuries—when objects strike victims without warning.
Swimming Pool Accidents
Property owners who maintain swimming pools—whether residential or commercial—have a responsibility to keep them reasonably safe. Unfenced or inadequately fenced pools, defective or missing drain covers, slippery pool decks, and the absence of appropriate warning signage all create dangerous conditions, particularly for children. Drowning and near-drowning incidents can result in catastrophic injuries or wrongful death, and the legal responsibility for those tragedies often falls on the property owner.
Dog Bites and Animal Attacks
When a property owner’s dog or other animal attacks and injures a visitor, the owner may bear liability under Arkansas premises liability law and animal attack statutes. Dog bite injuries can be severe, often requiring surgery, causing permanent scarring and disfigurement, and leaving lasting psychological trauma—particularly in children.
Elevator and Escalator Accidents
Property owners and building managers are responsible for properly maintaining elevators and escalators. Mechanical failures, sudden stops or drops, unlevel floors, and malfunctioning doors can cause serious injuries, particularly to elderly visitors or young children. Identifying all responsible parties—including the property owner, the maintenance company, and potentially the manufacturer—is a critical part of building these cases.
Workplace Injuries
While workers’ compensation covers many on-the-job injuries, premises liability may come into play when a hazardous property condition—rather than a co-worker or job process—caused or contributed to the injury. In some cases, an injured worker may have claims against their employer under workers’ compensation and against a negligent property owner or third party under a premises liability lawsuit. Our attorneys can evaluate the specific circumstances of your workplace accident and identify all available avenues for recovery.
Construction Site Accidents
Construction sites are among the most hazardous environments imaginable, and property owners, general contractors, and subcontractors all have a duty to maintain reasonably safe conditions for workers, subcontractors, and members of the public who may be exposed to those hazards. Falling debris, unsecured trenches and excavations, unmarked hazards, defective scaffolding, inadequate barriers, and inadequate site supervision are among the dangers that can give rise to a premises liability claim.
Daycare Injuries
Parents trust daycare facilities to keep their children safe while in their care. When a dangerous property condition—broken or defective playground equipment, unsecured hazards within reach of young children, inadequate fencing near roads or bodies of water, or poorly maintained facilities—contributes to a child’s injury, the daycare and its owner may be held liable. These cases often involve both a premises liability claim and a separate claim for negligent supervision.
Common Injuries in Premises Liability Cases
While property owners may dismiss on-site injuries as minor incidents, these accidents can have devastating and long-lasting consequences for victims and their families. Some of the most serious injuries resulting from unsafe premises include:
- Broken bones and fractures, including hip, wrist, and ankle fractures
- Traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) and concussions
- Spinal cord injuries and herniated discs
- Soft tissue damage, including torn ligaments, muscle tears, and tendon injuries
- Shoulder and knee injuries
- Lacerations, puncture wounds, and scarring
- Facial injuries and fractures
- Internal organ damage
- Severe burns (in fires or chemical exposure incidents)
- Wrongful death
If you’ve been hurt on someone else’s property, don’t assume your injuries aren’t serious. While they may seem minor at first, the adrenaline rush that follows a stressful incident can initially mask pain. And symptoms of certain injuries—including traumatic brain injuries, soft tissue damage, and spinal injuries—may not appear for hours or even days. Getting checked at the ER or urgent care will safeguard your health and create a record linking any resulting injuries directly to the dangerous premises.
Who Can Be Held Liable for a Premises Injury?
Determining who is legally responsible for a premises liability injury isn’t always straightforward, and in many cases, more than one party shares responsibility. Depending on the circumstances of your accident, potential defendants may include:
- Property owners—both residential and commercial
- Property management companies responsible for the day-to-day maintenance of the premises
- Business tenants or lessees who have assumed responsibility for maintaining the space
- Landlords responsible for maintaining common areas in apartment complexes and multi-tenant buildings
- Government entities—municipalities and other government agencies that own or maintain public property, though special notice requirements often apply in these cases
- Security companies contracted to protect the property
- Cleaning or maintenance contractors whose negligence created or failed to correct a hazardous condition
- Manufacturers, if a defective product or component contributed to the accident
Our Arkansas premises liability lawyers dig into property records, maintenance logs, inspection histories, and lease agreements to make sure every responsible party—and every available insurance policy—is identified and held accountable. The more parties we can hold responsible, the more compensation may be available to you.
Visitor Status and How It Affects Your Claim
Under the laws of Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma, the duty of care a property owner owes to a person on their property can depend, in part, on the legal status of that visitor:
- Invitees—people who are invited onto the property for business or public purposes, such as retail customers, restaurant guests, or tenants—are owed the highest duty of care. Property owners must take reasonable steps to inspect for hazards, correct known dangerous conditions, and warn invitees of dangers that cannot be immediately fixed.
- Licensees—social guests or others who enter with the owner’s permission for their own purposes—are owed a duty to warn of known hazards that the visitor is unlikely to discover on their own.
- Trespassers—people who enter without permission—are generally owed a limited duty of care. However, important exceptions apply, most notably the attractive nuisance doctrine, which holds property owners liable for injuries to children who are drawn onto the property by a dangerous condition (such as an unfenced pool or accessible construction equipment) that the child cannot be expected to appreciate as dangerous.
The insurance company’s first line of defense is always to question your legal right to be on the premises at all. Our team has heard it many times before, and we know exactly how to shut that argument down.
What If I’m Partly to Blame?
If your own actions contributed to your injuries—you were looking at your phone when you tripped, for example, or you ignored a warning sign—you may still be entitled to recover at least some compensation. In Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma, these cases are governed by comparative fault laws that outline how much—if any—a victim can recover when they share blame for their injuries:
- Arkansas follows a modified comparative fault system. You can recover compensation as long as your share of fault is less than 50%. However, your damages will be reduced proportionally based on your percentage of fault.
- Missouri follows a pure comparative fault system. You can recover compensation even if you are found to be 99% at fault, though your award will be reduced by your percentage of responsibility.
- Oklahoma follows a modified comparative fault system. You can recover as long as your fault does not exceed 50%, with your damages reduced proportionally.
Comparative fault laws give insurance companies an opportunity to limit their payouts, and they’ll try to shift as much blame as possible onto an injured victim for the sake of their bottom line. Our Arkansas premises liability lawyers are all too familiar with their tactics, and we know what it takes to build a case strong enough to counter the insurance company’s narrative.
What Is My Premises Liability Case Worth?
That’s the first question most people ask, and it’s the one we can’t honestly answer on day one. The full value of a premises liability claim only becomes clear once we understand the full extent of your injuries and what they mean for you and your family—how they’ll affect your ability to work, what your long-term medical needs look like, and how your quality of life has changed. Rushing to put a number on your case before that picture is clear is exactly what the insurance company wants you to do. Our attorneys won’t do that to you.
What we can tell you is that compensation in these cases typically falls into two categories:
Economic damages—the tangible, financial losses directly resulting from your injuries:
- Current and future medical expenses, including emergency care, surgeries, physical therapy, and long-term rehabilitation.
- Lost wages and income during recovery.
- Lost earning capacity, if your injuries prevent you from returning to your previous occupation.
- Property damage.
Non-economic damages—the personal, intangible losses that profoundly affect quality of life:
- Pain and suffering.
- Emotional distress.
- Loss of enjoyment of life.
- Loss of consortium (the impact of your injuries on your relationship with your spouse and family).
If you have tragically lost a loved one because of a property owner’s negligence, you and your family may be entitled to pursue a wrongful death claim. While no amount of money can ever replace the person you’ve lost, a successful claim can provide some measure of compensation for funeral and burial expenses, the loss of your loved one’s financial support, and the immeasurable loss of their companionship—providing your family with at least some measure of financial security during an unimaginable time.
In cases where a property owner, business, or other responsible party acted with reckless disregard for safety, punitive damages may also be on the table. These are intended to punish particularly egregious conduct and discourage similar behavior in the future.
The property owner’s insurance company may approach you with a quick settlement offer. However, settling too soon is one of the costliest mistakes you could make. The company knows the true extent of injuries might not yet be clear, and that early offer has one purpose—to save the insurer money. Once you accept a settlement, that’s it—there’s no going back if your condition worsens or you rack up additional expenses down the road.
How Our Arkansas Premises Liability Attorneys Can Help
When you’re recovering from a serious injury, you have enough to deal with. The last thing you need is to spend that time fighting with an insurance company that’s prioritizing its profits over your well-being. When you hire our Arkansas premises liability lawyers, you’re free to focus on healing—we handle the rest.
- Conducting an independent investigation:Â Our attorneys will work quickly to preserve surveillance footage, incident reports, maintenance records, inspection logs, and any other evidence that documents the hazard and the property owner’s knowledge of it. We’ll also identify and interview witnesses while their memories are fresh.
- Identifying all liable parties:Â We leave no stone unturned in determining who is legally responsible for your injuries, including property owners, management companies, contractors, and any other parties whose negligence contributed to the accident.
- Handling all communications with the insurance company:Â We don’t want you to be pressured or taken advantage of while you’re recovering. From the moment you hire us, all communications with the property owner’s insurer go through our team.
- Calculating the true value of your claim: We work with medical, financial, and vocational experts to fully understand the impact of your injuries on your life—now and in the future—so that no element of your losses is overlooked.
- Countering attempts to shift blame:Â Insurance companies routinely try to argue that injured visitors were careless or at fault. We’re prepared to push back aggressively and protect your right to full compensation.
- Preparing your case for trial:Â While settlement is primarily our goal, we begin preparing every case for trial from day one. If the insurance company refuses to offer fair compensation for all of your losses, we’ll be ready and willing to take your case to court. This approach gives us leverage that purely settlement-focused firms simply don’t have.
- Personalized attention and 24/7 accessibility:Â You are not a case number at Caddell Reynolds. Our team is available around the clock, by phone or email, to answer your questions, address your concerns, and keep you informed at every stage of your case.
- You only pay if we win:Â We handle premises liability cases on a contingency fee basis. You pay nothing up front, and if we don’t win your case, you owe us nothing.
Don’t Face This Fight Alone
After a premises liability injury, the property owner and their insurer will move quickly to protect their interests. You deserve an advocate who will be just as tenacious in protecting yours.
Call 800-671-4100 anytime—we’re available 24/7—or contact us online to schedule your free, no-obligation case review. An experienced Arkansas premises liability attorney will listen to your story, explain your rights, and provide all the information you need to make the right decision for you and your family.
Read More: What are Your Rights After Being Injured on Someone Else’s Property?
