Defendant Denying Responsibility

Answer:

I’ve been asked, if there’s a situation in which the owner of the premises or the owner of the property doesn’t know that there’s a dangerous condition, can you recover? The answer to that is it depends on the design of the premises and who designed it. If the owner doesn’t know and they haven’t had notice of a defect, you’ve got a problem with the case unless you can prove a design defect. The way you prove a design defect is you have to look. For instance, you can have a situation where the gutter drips water in a particular place because of the design of the gutter, because of the way it was constructed. Those issues may bring into account whoever designed it, whoever constructed it, as a possible defendant in the case, but those are tougher cases if there’s no notice and nobody else has fallen over. Other similar incidents are very important in those kind of cases, usually, and you have to look into them. Oftentimes, there will have been other problems beforehand. It depends.

A friend of mine did a case against a casino in Arkansas. What occurred was that they had a number of elderly people which they draw into casinos that fall over a particular step. They had it on video. That’s information. There was a record of events that could be used against the premise’s owner. If you have a design defect in a case, and they also had notice to the owner, that’s a strong case. That’s how you put your case together.

Again, it depends on the case. We have to look at every case. If you want us to look at your case, just give us a call at our office in Cheyenne.