When someone suffers an injury on a business’s property, that business owner – or the corporation itself – may be liable. In many cases, the issue is simply that the business owner was negligent. They may have known about the dangerous condition, such as inadequate lighting or a slick floor, but failed to take the proper steps to protect customers or other visitors to the property.
As such, business owners will sometimes argue that they did not know about the hazardous condition in the first place and therefore should not be liable. Is this a viable defense?
Only in some cases
Sometimes, this can be a valid defense. For instance, say that someone owns a grocery store. They meticulously clean the store every day and always try to address known hazards. However, a customer spills a gallon of milk on the floor, and another customer immediately slips and falls. The business owner could not have known about the spill or cleaned it up that quickly, so they may not be liable.
But if the condition existed for a significant amount of time, then the business owner can still be liable under the doctrine that they should have known about the hazard. Essentially, their negligence was in not discovering and fixing the hazard in time. An example of this could be if a pipe had been leaking for months, creating a slick floor, but the business owner simply failed to investigate the source of the leak. They may claim they did not know the leak existed, but they should have known if it was a long-term issue.
Of course, these cases can get very complicated for business owners, and it can be difficult to determine how long a dangerous condition existed or when the business owner “should have” been aware of it. While working through these cases, the parties involved need to understand their legal options.