Most premises liability cases require that the injured party prove that the fault of the property owner caused the injuries they sustained on their property. Property owners may be at fault when they provide inadequate security for visitors. To prove negligent security, an injured party must demonstrate:
- The negligence of the liable party caused the incident that resulted in the victim’s suffering. To show the element of negligence, injured parties may demonstrate that the property owner failed to take safety precautions to protect the injured party. The law requires property owners to take precautionary actions to protect visitors. Precautionary actions may include fixing broken locks or reporting suspicious activities to the police.
- The property owner knew of or should have been aware of the dangers or foreseeable risks of danger before the injury occurred. For example, similar crimes may have happened on the property before. If the owner knew of those prior incidents, then they are aware that those crimes may happen on the property again.
- In the same situation, a reasonably responsible individual would have acted differently to prevent the danger.
Proving these elements can create tremendous challenges, as the evidence is very fact-specific. In addition to showing that the crime was foreseeable, injured victims must also show they had a specific relationship with the property owner.
