A Complete Guide To The Law
When you walk into a store, an apartment building, a parking garage, or a friend’s home, you trust that the property is reasonably safe. Most of the time, it is. But when a property owner lets a dangerous condition exist, a spill left on the floor, a broken stair, an unlit lot, a hidden hazard, and someone is seriously hurt, the law holds that owner responsible. This area of law is called premises liability.
This guide explains, in plain language, how premises liability works in Pennsylvania: the duty property owners owe, how that duty changes depending on why you were on the property, what you have to prove, the range of cases premises law covers, and how Pennsylvania’s fault rules affect what you can recover. It is written for people who were seriously injured on someone else’s property and want to understand their rights.
If you are trying to figure out whether a property owner is responsible for your injury, this guide pairs with our companion article on the signs a property owner is liable for your injury. This first article explains how premises liability works. The second helps you recognize it in your own situation.
Contact Us for a Free, Confidential Consultation
Article written by Brendan Lupetin, Esq. Brendan is a managing partner in the law firm of Lupetin & Unatin, a medical malpractice law firm located in Pittsburgh and serving Western Pennsylvania.
Our practice is limited to high-value catastrophic cases because that is where we can do the most for our clients and for patient safety.
What Premises Liability Means
Premises liability is the legal principle that people who own or control property have a duty to keep it reasonably safe for people who come onto it. When they fail that duty, and someone is seriously injured as a result, the property owner, or the business or entity that controls the property, can be held financially responsible.
The key word is reasonably. A property owner is not automatically responsible every time someone is hurt on their property. The law does not make owners guarantee that no one will ever be injured. Instead, it asks whether the owner acted reasonably: did they fix or warn about hazards they knew about, or should have known about and had time to address? Premises liability lives in the gap between an unavoidable accident and a preventable one the owner ignored.
The Duty Owed Depends on Why You Were There
One of the most important features of Pennsylvania premises law is that the duty a property owner owes depends on the visitor’s legal status, why you were on the property. Pennsylvania recognizes three categories.
Invitees. An invitee is someone invited onto the property for a purpose connected to the owner’s business or interests, most commonly a customer in a store, but also a tenant, a hotel guest, or a patient at a medical facility. Invitees are owed the highest duty of care. The owner must not only fix or warn of known dangers, but must also reasonably inspect the property to discover hidden hazards and protect against them. If you were shopping, dining, or otherwise on a property open for business, you were almost certainly an invitee.
Licensees. A licensee is someone on the property with permission but for their own purposes, rather than the owner’s business, often a social guest in someone’s home. The owner owes a duty to warn licensees of known dangers that the guest is unlikely to discover, but generally does not have the same duty to inspect for unknown hazards.
Trespassers. A trespasser is someone on the property without permission. Owners owe trespassers the lowest duty, generally only a duty not to intentionally or recklessly harm them. There is an important exception for children, however: the law recognizes that children may be drawn onto property by hazards like swimming pools, under what is sometimes called the attractive nuisance doctrine, and owners can be responsible for failing to guard against that.
Your status matters enormously, because it defines what the owner was required to do. The strongest premises cases usually involve invitees, business customers and others owed the highest duty of care, who were hurt by a hazard the property owner should have caught and fixed.
The Notice Requirement: The Heart of Most Cases
For most premises cases, especially slip-and-fall and trip-and-fall claims, the central question is notice: did the property owner know, or should they have known, about the dangerous condition in time to do something about it?
Pennsylvania law generally recognizes notice in a few ways:
Actual notice. The owner actually knew about the hazard, for example, an employee saw the spill, or a tenant reported the broken lock, and did nothing about it in a reasonable time.
Constructive notice. The owner should have known about the hazard because it existed long enough that a reasonable owner, inspecting the property as they should, would have discovered and addressed it. A puddle that sat for an hour in a busy store is different from one that spilled seconds before the fall.
A hazard the owner created. When the owner or its employees created the dangerous condition themselves, for example, mopping a floor without a warning sign, notice is essentially built in, because they knew about the very condition they made.
This is why premises cases so often turn on evidence about time and knowledge: inspection logs, surveillance video, maintenance records, employee testimony, and prior complaints. Establishing notice is frequently the difference between a winning case and a losing one, which is one reason these cases benefit from prompt, thorough investigation.
The Range of Premises Liability Cases
Premises liability covers a wide range of dangerous property conditions, including:
- Slip, trip, and fall injuries, from spills, wet floors, uneven surfaces, broken stairs, poor lighting, or ice and snow.
- Negligent security, when inadequate security, poor lighting, broken locks or gates, or a lack of cameras or guards allows a foreseeable assault, robbery, or other crime to happen.
- Falling merchandise or objects, especially in warehouse-style stores.
- Swimming pool accidents and drownings, including cases involving children.
- Structural failures, like collapsing ceilings, railings, or decks.
- Fires and inadequate fire safety, including blocked exits and missing alarms.
- Elevator and escalator injuries.
- Exposure to dangerous conditions, from toxic substances to unsafe premises of many kinds.
Two of the most common and most serious categories, slip-and-fall injuries and negligent security, are covered in depth in their own guides: slip, trip, and fall injury claims explained and negligent security: when a property owner fails to protect you.
How Pennsylvania’s Fault Rules Affect Your Case
Pennsylvania follows a rule called modified comparative negligence, and it is critical to understand, because property owners and their insurers use it constantly to fight these cases.
Under this rule, your financial recovery is reduced by your own share of fault. If you are found 20 percent at fault for your own injury, your recovery is reduced by 20 percent. And there is a hard limit: if you are found to be more than 50 percent at fault, that is, more responsible for the injury than the property owner, you recover nothing.
This is exactly why property owners so often argue that the injured person “should have watched where they were going,” or “should have seen the hazard.” They are trying to push your share of the blame over that 50 percent line to defeat the case entirely, or at least to reduce what they owe. Overcoming these arguments, with evidence and a clear account of the owner’s greater fault, is a central part of winning a premises case. It is also why having a serious injury and a genuinely negligent owner matters so much to the strength of a claim.
The Injuries That Drive Serious Premises Cases
While anyone can slip and fall, the cases that matter most involve serious, lasting injuries. Falls in particular can cause catastrophic harm, especially to older adults. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, falls are a leading cause of injury, and they are the most common cause of traumatic brain injuries. Common serious injuries in premises cases include:
- Traumatic brain injuries (TBI), from striking the head, which can cause lasting cognitive and physical harm.
- Spinal cord injuries, including paralysis.
- Hip fractures and other broken bones, which can be life-altering, particularly for older adults.
- Shoulder, knee, and back injuries requiring surgery.
- Chronic pain conditions.
- In the worst cases, death, which may give rise to a wrongful death claim.
The severity of the injury is a major driver of a case’s value, because it determines the medical costs, the lost income, and the human toll the law allows you to recover for.
The Time Limit to File in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania sets a deadline, called the statute of limitations, for filing a premises liability lawsuit. In most cases, that deadline is two years from the date of the injury. There can be important exceptions, including shorter notice requirements when a government entity (such as a city or transit authority) owns or controls the property. Because these deadlines can be shorter than people expect, and because premises evidence like surveillance video can disappear quickly, it is wise to act promptly. You can read more on our statutes of limitations page.
How Lupetin & Unatin Can Help
We are Lupetin & Unatin, a Pittsburgh law firm, and we are among the most accomplished premises liability trial lawyers in Pennsylvania. Our results in these cases are, we believe, among the best in the Commonwealth. Our firm secured what are believed to be the two largest slip-and-fall verdicts in Erie County history, including a $7.25 million verdict against UPMC Hamot and a $3.2 million verdict against Saint Vincent Surgery Center, along with a $2.1 million jury verdict against Target Corporation in Allegheny County, a case Target had offered just $85,000 to settle.
We take premises cases seriously because we know how much is at stake, and we know how hard property owners and their insurers fight to avoid responsibility, often by blaming the injured person. We investigate quickly to secure the evidence that proves notice and fault, we work with leading experts, and when insurers refuse to be fair, we are trial lawyers who will take the case to a jury. Many of our largest results came in cases that other firms had declined because the facts looked difficult.
Free Consultation — No Fee Unless We Win
We take a limited number of cases so we can give each one real attention. We work on a contingency fee, which means you pay nothing up front. You pay nothing unless we win. We advance the costs of building your case, and if we do not recover for you, you owe us nothing.
If you or someone you love was seriously injured on someone else’s property, you deserve answers. A short conversation can tell you a lot. Call Lupetin & Unatin today for a free, no-pressure review of your case.