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Have you been hurt on another's property?
Premises liability is the legal responsibility of property owners to ensure the safety of those who enter their property. If you're injured on someone else's property due to unsafe conditions or negligence, the owner may be held liable for damages in certain circumstances. Proving these cases in Texas can be complex, but Guy Wade is a knowledgeable Texas premises liability attorney who can guide you in moving forward.
What is premises liability?
Premises liability is not a separate species of tort, like fraud, trespass or conversion. Instead, premises liability is a branch of the law of negligence. One of the central concepts of negligence law is the concept of “duty”. A defendant may not be held liable for negligence unless the defendant violates a duty, such as the duty of reasonable care, to the plaintiff.

Premises liability is the body of law that sets forth the general parameters of the duties an owner or occupier of land owes to persons who come onto his or her real property to protect them from injury on account of defects of dangerous conditions on the property or the conduct of agents and employees.
The most important concept of premises liability law is that an owner or occupier of land owes duties to entrants on property that depend on the characterization or classification of the entrant, rather than the individual facts and circumstances of each case.
Who can be held responsible in a premises liability case?
Premises liability holds property owners and operators responsible for maintaining safe conditions on their property. Hazards that are known (or in the exercise of reasonable reasonable diligence should have been known) by the owner or operator but are not fixed and thereby result in physical harm can result in a claim. In order to establish liability for an injury suffered from a defective or dangerous condition of property, the plaintiff must prove that the defendant either owned or was in charge of the operation of the premises at the time of injury. The predicate for imposition of premises liability is most accurately described as “control” of the property, that is, the right of access to the premises as well as the authority to exercise dominion over it.
How much does it cost to talk with a premises liability lawyer?
GIW PLLC will conduct an initial consultation with you for free to discuss your potential premises liability claim. After that initial consultation, if you decide to retain GIW PLLC to handle your premises liability claim and GIW PLLC agrees to handle the case on your behalf, GIW PLLC will handle your case on a contingency basis. This means GIW PLLC takes a percentage of the compensation the client receives as the fee for services (in addition to the reimbursement of any out of pocket expenses incurred by the lawyer in working up the case). Therefore, it doesn’t cost you anything to initially discuss your potential premises liability claim with GIW PLLC so that both you and GIW PLLC can determine if there is a good fit to work together.
How long do I have to file a premises liability claim after I am injured on another’s property?
In Texas, the period within which a premises case must be brought is the same as for other negligence cases: you have two years from the date of the incident giving rise to your injuries to file a lawsuit seeking to recover for those injuries. This is known as a “statute of limitations” and is a legal rule that prevents people from filing a lawsuit after a particular time period has passed. Even if you have a strong case, if you file a lawsuit after the statute of limitations has passed, your claim most likely will be thrown out by the court on grounds you did not file your case before the limitations period expired. There are certain kinds of legal cases in which the statute of limitations does not begin to run until after a “latent” injury actually manifests itself, but premises liability cases generally do not fall into that category.