Determining Homeowner’s Liability For Slip And Fall Incident

A homeowner should not welcome visitors to some sort of haunted house. Even the home’s yard should be safe.

The home and yard should be reasonably free of recognized hazards.

The Personal Injury Lawyer in Kitchener is of the opinion that the homeowner should have known about the hazard, if he or she had not seen it. The homeowner is expected to have gained knowledge of a given hazard’s existence within a reasonable amount of time.

Homeowners that do not have time to remove a hazard do have the ability to warn any guest about the same danger/hazard. If a guest chose to ignore that warning and got injured, then the same guest would not have a strong personal injury case.

In some states, the nature of the homeowner’s response is supposed to depend on the category into which the visitor falls.

Some visitors are called licensees: That means the host has given them permission to come onto the property. According to this legal system, both guests and solicitors are licensees.

Some visitors fall into the category of invitee: Each of them has come onto the property to perform a service. A technician that had come to fix a computer would fall into that category.

The final category has been created for trespassers: They have made an unauthorized entrance. Trespassers are not protected, unless they are children.

Homeowners’ insurance policies normally recognize the most common hazards in a private residence.

Many homeowners have pets. That is why a majority of homeowners’ policies provide legal backing, in the event that a visitor suffers a dog bite. A biting injury to a licensee or an invitee would be covered by the policy; a bite to a trespasser would not, unless that same trespasser was a child.

A pool would be a hazard, if a fence or other barrier did not surround it. Yet a barrier that had been left open would not be able to keep out a wandering child. If that child were to fall in the pool, then the homeowner’s policy would not cover the policyholder.

On the other hand, the policy might not cover any homeowners that allowed a child to leave some toy on the home’s front steps. The adult that owned those steps would be expected to learn about the presence of that same toy, and then arrange to have it removed.

Ideally, the child that was careless enough to leave a toy on those steps should be the one to remove that small but dangerous object. Of course, it could prove difficult to get children to appreciate the extent of a homeowner’s responsibilities. A lucky person would own a home on the same street where a lawyer’s children had learned to appreciate that particular fact.