Should The Owner Have Done More To Protect You?

If you have been recently injured in an assault or other traumatic event, you are probably running through the details in your mind. It’s only natural for anyone who has been a victim to wonder what they could have done to prevent the tragedy from striking.

What may be more important is what the owner of the property where you were injured should have done to prevent it. That may not be obvious to you right away, but it is critical. Many people are not aware that property owners are responsible for the safety of guests and patrons. You may be entitled to compensation for your injuries if they were preventable.

Negligent security

New York state premises liability law is very clear on the standard for what is expected of a property owner. Everyone who enters the property has a reasonable expectation of not being injured while there. In order to guarantee this, they are required to take steps to protect against any foreseeable incident, which includes:

• Providing proper lighting
• The presence of appropriate security
• Adequate training by staff

This standard applies for any property that is open to the public, including parking facilities, retails stores, and nightclubs. Failure to provide the proper protection is called negligent security.

A nightclub example

Bars and nightclubs have a number of unique responsibilities in order to meet the standards. This includes staff on hand and properly trained in de-escalation of situations which have become or are about to become violent.

Simply being involved in a bar fight is not enough to justify that security was negligent. In order to establish whether the incident where you were injured was foreseeable might mean looking through the history of the nightclub to see if there have been a number of similar incidents. If so, that is a sign that the bar owners should have taken more steps to prevent this from occurring to you.

Talk to an attorney

If you have been injured in an assault on a property that was not properly lit or in a bar fight that should have been stopped, you may have a good case of negligent security. It is important to talk to an attorney experienced in premises liability who can go through the steps necessary to establish whether it was indeed negligent security on the part of the property owner.