Articles Posted in Premises Liability

When a person slips, and falls on another’s property in Indiana, the fall victim may be able to collect damages for the injuries they sustained. Indiana premises liability law establishes when a property owner is responsible for an accident victim’s injuries. Thus, it is important that slip and fall victims understand the state’s statute of limitations, duties, defenses, and damages before filing a lawsuit against a negligent property owner.

Under Indiana Code section 34-11-2-4, personal injury complainants must comply with the state’s two-year deadline. The statute of limitations applies to all negligence, intentional tort, and defamation lawsuits in Indiana. There are certain exceptions to the two-year deadline, such as if the injured party was under 18 years old at the time of the accident or they are mentally incapacitated. An exception may also apply if the culpable party leaves the state or attempts to conceal their identity.

Indiana slip and fall victims must be able to establish that the property owner owes the plaintiff a duty to exercise reasonable care from foreseeable hazards on the property. However, it is essential to note that the law does not require property owners to ensure a person’s safety while they are on the property. Typically, a property owner will be liable if they had knowledge of the dangerous condition, or if it was present for enough time that the owner should have discovered the hazard and prevented the injury. Indiana property owners must inspect and keep their property in a reasonably safe condition.

Under Indiana tort law, landowners have an obligation to ensure that their property is safe for the people they host, either as social guests or business invitees. In general, a property owner must exercise reasonable care when maintaining their property to discover and eliminate any hazards. If a hazard cannot be remedied, a landowner should warn guests of the hazard’s existence.

Thus far, the focus of the discussion has been on the knowledge and actions of the landowner. However, Indiana premises liability cases also consider the knowledge and conduct of the victim. For example, if a hazard is open and obvious, the law generally holds that a plaintiff should recognize such dangers and use necessary caution. In these cases, a landowner may not be liable for a plaintiff’s injuries if the jury determines that most of the fault is attributable to the plaintiff. However, it is typically not a court’s job to determine whether a plaintiff was negligent; that task belongs to the jury. A recent case illustrates the importance of this distinction.

According to the court’s written opinion, the plaintiff was injured when she tripped and fell over a broken sidewalk at her condo complex. At the time of the accident, the plaintiff had lived in the complex for ten years, and regularly crossed the broken sidewalk without incident. She admitted that she knew there were safer paths to take, and that she knew about the broken sidewalk.

A waiver of liability, also called a liability release waiver, is a legal document that purports to release a party of liability in the event another party is injured. Waivers of liability are very common in Indiana, and whether most people realize it, chances are they have signed one at some point.

Companies use release waivers to limit or eliminate any legal exposure through an Indiana personal injury lawsuit. Common situations where release waivers are used include:

• Sending a child on a field trip;

In May of 2019, a federal appellate court issued a written opinion in an Indiana premises liability case discussing whether the jury should have been presented with the evidence that the plaintiff was not wearing a hard hat when he was injured. Finding that Indiana’s Comparative Fault Act precluded the admission of a plaintiff’s failure to wear safety equipment unless such a failure was related to the cause of his injury, the court reversed the jury’s verdict in favor of the defendant and ordered a new trial.

According to the court’s opinion, the plaintiff agreed to help his friend, the defendant, cut down trees on his property. The two agreed the plaintiff would operate the chain saw, and the defendant would keep an eye out for any hazards. While the plaintiff was cutting down a tree, a dead branch fell onto the plaintiff’s head, resulting in near-fatal injuries. The plaintiff was not wearing a hardhat.

At trial, the defendant presented evidence to the jury that the plaintiff did not wear a hardhat and thus assumed the risk of any injury that befell him. The defendant explicitly told the court that he was not arguing that the plaintiff’s injuries would have been less serious if he was wearing a hardhat; the sole focus of the defendant’s argument was that the plaintiff was negligent himself, and should not be permitted to recover for his injuries. The court concluded that the evidence could be used “to show assumption of risk, comparative fault, and whether [the plaintiff] acted as a reasonably careful person.” The jury ultimately found that the plaintiff was 51% at fault and the defendant 49% at fault. Under the Indiana Comparative Fault Act, the plaintiff recovered nothing. The plaintiff appealed.

One of the most important determinations in an Indiana slip-and-fall case is the status of the injured party. Visitors are classified into three categories, invitees, licensees, and trespassers. Under Indiana premises liability law, the highest duty is owed to invitees, who are guests who are invited onto the landowner’s property for the landowner’s benefit. Invitees most often are guests who are visiting for business purposes, such as customers. When it comes to the duty owed to an invitee, an Indiana landowner must make reasonable efforts to clear any known hazards on their property or at least warn the invitee of the known hazard.

On the other end of the spectrum are trespassers. For the most part, Indiana landowners do not owe trespassers a duty. However, the landowner cannot willfully or maliciously cause a trespasser harm. Occupying the middle ground between invitee and trespasser is the licensee. A licensee is someone who has either express or implied permission to enter a property, and does so “for his own convenience, curiosity, or entertainment.” The most common licensees are social guests, including friends and family members.

Landowners owe a duty to licensees to refrain from “acting in a manner to increase their peril.” A landowner also has a duty to warn licensees of any known dangers on their property. A recent state appellate decision discussed a landowner’s potential liability to a social guest who was injured on his property.

Businesses in Indiana have an obligation to their customers to ensure that the area accessible to customers is kept in a reasonably safe condition. Indiana grocery stores are no exception, and a large number of Indiana slip-and-fall accidents are the result of grocery store management failing to keep the store’s aisles safe for customers.

Of course, a grocery store will not be held responsible for every slip-and-fall accident that occurs in the store. Under Indiana law, a plaintiff must be able to show that the grocery store was negligent before they will be able to recover for their injuries. This includes showing that the store employees knew or should have known about the hazard. A few common types of negligence that may occur in a grocery store are:

• the improper stacking of goods;
• the failure to clean up the mess caused by a product that either fell off the shelf or was dropped by another customer; and
• the failure to ensure areas of high pedestrian traffic are kept dry during wet weather.

A recent state appellate decision discussed whether a plaintiff presented sufficient evidence to find that the defendant grocery store knew or should have known about the hazard that caused her fall.

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