You’ve likely heard the commercials advertising personal injury legal services, but you might not be aware of what constitutes a personal injury claim, especially those that involve businesses.
If you own your own business, it’s beneficial to understand the types of personal injury claims that could come your way. The personal injury experts at Grillo Law discuss common personal injury cases for businesses in Canada.
Slips and Falls
While not all slips and falls are due to the negligence of others, many are, especially if someone slips and/or falls on another person’s property. It is the property owner’s responsibility to keep their walkways well-maintained so that they do not present a hazard to anyone who is invited onto the property.
Slips and Falls applies to both public and private property, so if a customer falls at a store because of a wet floor that wasn’t properly marked, they might be able to file a claim.
Some slips and falls are just complete accidents, but if the property owner fails to fix or warn customers about a known hazard, such as ice, snow, broken tiles, uneven surfaces, and wet floors, it’s possible they could be found negligent. Note that a person has to be invited on the property for a slip and fall case to be successful. If they are trespassing on either public or private property and they fall, they probably won’t be compensated.
Premises Liability
Premises liability personal injury claims encompass slips and fall. Still, there are other risks that business owners have to mitigate to ensure they are not negligent if a customer or other visitor to their property is injured. For example, business owners are responsible for adequately maintaining their property so that no one can be damaged by non-maintained elements, like a malfunctioning elevator, a broken fence that has a jagged edge, or an improperly maintained amusement park ride.
Another considerable liability risk is a swimming pool. Since there are already known risks associated with having a pool on a property, it’s almost a given that if someone is injured at the pool, the owner will face a premises liability claim.
As a business owner, if you have a pool on your property, you must take precautions such as having a locking pool fence surrounding the pool, posting warning signs, and draining the pool in the winter.
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Dog Bites
Unfortunately, a man’s best friend is responsible for many personal injury cases at businesses in Canada. More and more often, dog owners are bringing their pets into private businesses, which means that both the dog owner and the business could be liable for injuries sustained from a dog bite.
Again, if a dog bites someone while they are trespassing on private property, the dog owner or business owner may not be liable for their injuries. But, as a business owner, you certainly do not want to take the risk of a dog biting one of your customers, so you might want to consider having a “no pets allowed” policy in your business to prevent such actions.
Conclusion
It’s an unfortunate part of owning a business, but when you invite others onto your property for the purpose of conducting business, you open yourself up to personal injury claims. However, knowing what some of those claims are can help you prevent injuries in the first place.
