Proven Attorneys for Your Premises Liability Case

Property owners and other responsible parties are legally required to keep their premises reasonably safe from hazards. If you or a loved one was injured on another party’s premises, from a public park to an active construction site or leased business, you may have grounds for a premises liability lawsuit.

Proving a premises liability case demands rigorous investigative skills and a deep knowledge of relevant laws. The attorneys at Block O’Toole & Murphy have a strong track record of experience in handling premises liability lawsuits, including $9 million and $7.2 million settlements. We distinguish ourselves through early investigation and strong trial skills, which we leverage both inside and outside the courtroom. Learn how our attorneys handle premises liability cases, and how our experience can help you.

Need To Know:

• It’s important to quickly determine the defendants, as a case involving municipal defendants could require rapid action in filing a lawsuit.
• Premises liability cases should be investigated promptly, as owners and contractors are quick to clean up accident scenes. However, if an investigation is delayed, a good attorney will find other ways to collect evidence.
• Winning a premises liability case depends on proving notice on the part of a defendant or defendants, which often requires strong trial skills.

In This Article:

• How Property Ownership Affects the Timeline of Your Case
• Investigating a Premises Liability Case
• Case Study: In‑Depth Investigation Yields $9 Million in a Teen’s Wall‑Collapse Case
• Proving Fault in Premises Liability Cases
• Case Study: $7,200,000 for Wrongful Death in Tragic Unsafe Elevator Case

How Property Ownership Affects the Timeline of Your Case

It’s important to identify potential defendants in a premises liability case as soon as possible, as this information could dramatically affect the timeline of your case. Typically, if your injury occurred on privately-owned property, you would have three years following the date of your accident to file a lawsuit.

However, if your accident occurred on property owned and maintained by the government, such as a public park, that timeline is seriously reduced. You will need to sue the municipality, which gives you 90 days to file a Notice of Claim, and only one year following the date of the accident to file a lawsuit.

The defendant in your case may not always be obvious. For example, suppose you tripped over a damaged sidewalk in New York City. Although New York City sidewalks are considered city property, the owner of the premises that adjoins a sidewalk is typically responsible for its maintenance. In other words, the City of New York may not be a defendant in your case unless the sidewalk is next to a public park or municipal building.

Only a good attorney can give you full insight into who might be responsible in your individual case. Hiring an attorney as soon as possible will ensure that any critical deadlines in your case are met.

Investigating a Premises Liability Case

An experienced attorney will conduct a thorough investigation in order to prove negligence and give your case the best chance of success. At Block O’Toole and Murphy, this includes the following strategies:

Immediate Investigation

Many property owners and contractors are quick to repair the defect that caused an accident, making it difficult for your legal team to gather evidence during discovery. By starting their investigation as soon as they sign your case, your attorney will have the best chance to document any defects before that repair can take place.

Securing Surveillance Footage

Security footage from nearby restaurants and businesses needs to be obtained quickly, as many security cameras automatically tape over and erase their footage — often in as short a time as two weeks.

Alternative Evidence Sources

If security footage is unavailable, we have other methods of gaining perspective on an accident. Google Maps, for example, has proved highly valuable to us in premises liability cases, frequently providing us with detailed snapshots of a location prior to the accident’s occurrence.

On‑Site Inspection & Demonstration

Whether or not direct evidence is available, traveling to the scene of an accident has often given us valuable perspectives on our cases. For example, in a sidewalk accident case we resolved for $1,700,000, a snow removal company left significant amounts of snow piled up against our client’s apartment building. The snow then thawed and the water ran to a sidewalk below, where it refroze and created the icy conditions that caused our client to slip and injure herself.

When partner Scott Occhiogrosso visited the scene, he observed the steep downgrade from the building to the sidewalk. Placing a handball against the building line, he took a video showing how easily the ball rolled from the building to the gutter below. That video proved valuable at mediation, where Occhiogrosso used it to demonstrate that the snow removal company created a dangerous condition by leaving snow at such an obvious incline.

Case Study: In‑Depth Investigation Yields $9 Million in a Teen’s Wall‑Collapse Case

A particularly challenging case we handled took place in the parking lot of a shopping mall, where our client — a 14-year-old boy spending time with his friends — reached out to touch the top of a cinderblock wall. The wall collapsed from the slight pressure of our young client’s hand, crushing his right arm. Our client needed multiple surgeries to save the arm. Even though surgeons were able to avoid amputation, he suffered from continued loss of functionality in the arm due to nerve damage. This was a devastating situation for a boy who had barely started high school.

Our client’s parents initially hired another attorney, but within thirty days of the accident, they had fired that attorney and hired our firm. From the start, it was clear to partners Daniel O’Toole and Frederick Aranki, who handled the case, that the pressure the client had put on the wall shouldn’t have been sufficient to make it collapse. To make their case, they would need to find out why the wall was so unstable.

Among the first things they discovered when investigating the scene was a security camera pointed directly at the wall. They worked quickly to secure footage of the accident, but unfortunately, the short month that elapsed before they were hired was enough time for the security camera to automatically erase its data. They needed to look elsewhere for information that would help them put their client’s accident in context.

Undeterred, our attorneys subpoenaed an architect involved in the construction of the shopping center, who provided them with photographs of the wall being built. These photographs demonstrated that a significant portion of the wall had been built without the steel rebar framing necessary for holding a concrete structure together. The base of the wall had been reenforced, but the top of the wall — the part our client touched — had no such structure and was completely unstable.

In addition to these photographs, O’Toole and Aranki obtained images from Google Maps which showed that the wall had been leaning dangerously for some months prior to the accident. They sued multiple defendants, including the property owner, the property manager, the shoe store to which the area was leased, and the construction company responsible for building the wall. Citing not only our client’s injuries, but his future healthcare costs and loss of employment opportunities as a result of the accident, they were able to achieve a combined settlement of $9,000,000.

Proving Fault in Premises Liability Cases

Like other kinds of personal injury cases, your attorney will have to demonstrate that your injury was caused by negligence on the part of the owner of the premises, or another responsible party.

Ways to Establish Negligence

To establish negligence, one of three things must be true:

• The defendant caused or created the dangerous condition. Example: The floors of a grocery store are cleaned and waxed, but the business is re-opened before the floor can properly dry, causing somebody to slip and fall.
• The defendant had “actual notice” of the defect. This means that the owner or their employees had direct awareness of a hazard on the premises but did not correct it. Example: Employees see that the entrance to their business is covered in black ice. They know they must put down salt but want to have a cup of coffee first. While they wait, somebody walks by and slips on the black ice. Importantly, property owners are given a reasonable amount of time to rectify icy conditions, but in this case, the property owner chose his comfort and coffee over the safety of people lawfully on his property.
• The defendant had “constructive notice” of the defect. Constructive notice means that there should have been an awareness of a hazardous defect if the controlling entity was taking good care of their premises. To prove this, it usually must be demonstrated that the defect was visible for a reasonable amount of time to have been noticed. Example: Block O’Toole & Murphy represented a young woman who slipped and fell when walking into a CVS in her neighborhood. Photographs and the investigation revealed a recurring ice condition resulting from poor maintenance procedures. This young woman sustained fractures to the pelvis, and the case was settled for $1,200,000.

Proving Notice

Proving notice, along with reasonable opportunity to repair, can be very difficult, and often requires strong trial skills from your attorney regardless of whether your case goes to trial.

In a ceiling collapse case that our firm resolved for $2,300,000, a superintendent who had made a temporary repair before the ceiling collapsed on our client claimed that he had not had time to do more. Partner Joseph Donahue took a careful deposition of the superintendent, using cross-examination skills to demonstrate that he understood how the problem — caused by wet sheetrock — should have been handled, yet had skipped essential safety measures, which would have included dismantling a portion of the sheetrock ceiling or taking steps to drain the water out of it.

In the previously-mentioned case of the client injured by a crumbling cinderblock wall, Daniel O’Toole and Frederick Aranki faced the challenge of holding an out-of-possession owner accountable. The owner of the site had leased the area to a tenant and was living in another part of the country. Because this owner never came to the property and had left it in the care of other people, he claimed not to be responsible: after all, he had not been warned of the dangerous condition or witnessed it for himself.

But that owner did have a responsibility to our client, due to a provision in the law regarding structural defects. By making it clear that the problems with the wall had not been caused by any outside force, but had been inherent in the construction of the wall from the beginning, Aranki and O’Toole were able to hold the out-of-possession owner accountable for a portion of the damages.

Case Study: $7,200,000 for Wrongful Death in Tragic Unsafe Elevator Case

One of the most devastating premises liability cases that our firm handled occurred in the wake of a power outage at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. A 25-year-old employee who had been working late on the site was found dead at the bottom of an elevator shaft. The worker, a driver who bussed employees on and off the site, had been trapped in the elevator when the power outage occurred. He had attempted to escape by forcing the doors open, not realizing that the elevator had misleveled — in other words, that it was between floors. Stepping into thin air, he fell 50 feet down the shaft to his death. He was survived by his 27-year-old wife and their two young children. 

Like many tragedies, this incident was not caused by a single failure, but by several. Partners David L. Scher and Stephen J. Murphy, who handled the case, worked quickly to determine what those failures were, starting with the power outage. With the help of an electrical engineer whom they hired to inspect the Navy Yard and its on-site power plant, they found that a company which had been testing on the site made an error which caused the power outage. Our attorneys were only able to confirm this fact after suing the proper company, allowing them to conduct depositions and seek access to relevant records. 

Scher and Murphy also retained an elevator expert who inspected the cab of the elevator to get a better sense of the victim’s last moments. Our expert found that the company responsible for servicing the elevator had failed to maintain several important safety features. The elevator’s restrictor — which would have prevented the victim from opening the doors in the event of a misleveling — had not been functioning properly. A communication device within the elevator would have enabled the victim to call for help, but its batteries were dead. 

This would have been devastating under any circumstance, but the victim’s wife informed us that her husband had suffered from claustrophobia. Had he been able to call for help, an emergency responder might have calmed him down. As it was, he scratched desperately at the door — the marks of his nails were visible inside the cab — before forcing the doors open. 

All of the parties we held responsible — including the Navy Yard, the elevator company, and the company that caused the power outage — maintained that our client was the sole cause of his own death. Instead of waiting for help, they alleged, he had taken his fate into his own hands when he opened the elevator doors. 

But the evidence our attorneys had uncovered did not add up to a story about recklessness. Scher and Murphy prepared for trial, retaining expert witnesses in electrical engineering, forensic pathology, elevator mechanics, and economics to help tell the story of a responsible husband and father who had been let down at every opportunity by the people who owed him a duty of care. 

Before trial began, however, the case resolved for $7,200,000. Although no amount of money could replace the loss of a beloved husband and father, our attorneys sought to do justice to his memory by securing his family’s financial future. 

Injured on Unsafe Property? Contact Block O’Toole & Murphy Today

If you have been injured on somebody else’s property, it’s important to reach out to an experienced personal injury attorney with a track record of success. The attorneys at Block O’Toole & Murphy are experienced in premises liability law and have a long history of winning successful verdicts and settlements in premises liability lawsuits. Besides the cases mentioned in this article, other notable results include:

• $20,181,484 verdict in an upstate New York case for a client who suffered serious injuries after a serious crash resulting from icy roads
• $7,000,000 settlement in a Supreme New York case for a worker at a major food retailer whose back came into contact with elevator doors that opened, causing him to fall down the elevator shaft
• $5,850,000 settlement for a woman who required multiple spinal surgeries after her apartment ceiling collapsed
• $5,500,000 settlement for a Manhattan worker injured in an elevator accident, causing multiple herniated discs
• $3,750,000 settlement for a union laborer who tripped and fell over a broken piece of wood on a dark construction site
• $3,500,000 settlement for a pedestrian who fell through a deteriorated vault door in a Brooklyn sidewalk
• $3,125,000 award in a Brooklyn case for a woman who was injured when she slipped on a hotel floor
• $2,750,000 settlement for a mother of two who tripped and fell due to an uneven sidewalk at a shopping center
• $2,700,000 settlement for a woman who tripped and fell on a raised and cracked sidewalk flag, requiring multiple spinal fusion surgeries
• $2,650,000 settlement for an electrician who fell after stepping into a shallow depression while descending a newly-installed staircase
• 2,400,000 settlement for a 54-year-old woman who fell on an uneven sidewalk in Brooklyn
• $2,250,000 settlement for a Bronx woman who fell down her apartment stairs which were wet due to a water leak coming from the roof
• $2,250,000 settlement for a woman who was injured after a partial ceiling collapse occurred in her apartment due to water damage from upstairs
• $2,000,000 award for a man who was injured when the elevator he was riding malfunctioned and came to a sudden stop between floors
• $1,900,000 settlement for a woman who slipped and fell down steps which had recently been mopped, causing multiple cervical herniations
• $1,900,000 settlement for a worker who was injured when an elevator malfunctioned, causing an escape hatch to fall and injure him
• $1,850,000 settlement for a client who slipped on an icy driveway while at work investigating the home conditions of two children in Westchester County
• $1,765,000 settlement for a 71-year-old client who was working as a porter in a residential building when she was caused to trip and fall while exiting an elevator
• $1,650,000 settlement for a wrongful death caused by a building code violation of improper ventilation
• $1,500,000 settlement in the case of two workers injured in an elevator fall
• $1,500,000 settlement for a woman who slipped and fell on an icy sidewalk in the Bronx, requiring ACDF surgery
• $1,500,000 settlement for the tenant of an apartment who slipped and fell due to snow at the entrance of the building
• $1,500,000 award for a Bronx tenant who tripped over a slightly-raised metal strip on the edge of the step
• $1,500,000 settlement for a plaintiff who was stabbed by an unknown assailant at a hospital due to negligent security
• $1,450,000 settlement for a Brooklyn tenant who suffered neck injuries after a portion of the ceiling collapsed on top of her
• $1,300,000 settlement for a home health aide who slipped and fell on a wet floor in the deli section of a supermarket
• $1,200,000 settlement for a Manhattan dental assistant who tripped on an uncovered, depressed drain while walking into her workplace, injuring her foot and ankle
• $1,175,000 settlement a woman was injured by jugs of juice which fell on her while she was shopping at a supermarket
• $1,000,000 settlement for a mother of four who suffered neck, back, and shoulder injuries that required two surgeries after the ceiling of her Bronx apartment collapsed onto her
• $1,000,000 settlement for a client who tripped over a raised sidewalk flag that was not properly maintained by the property owner
• $950,000 settlement for a 48-year-old mother of two who was injured when a portion of her bathroom ceiling collapsed on her
• $750,000 settlement for a 66-year-old client who tripped and fell on a raised sidewalk flag bordering her residential building in Queens

Our attorneys serve all five boroughs of New York City as well as the entirety of New York State and New Jersey. Contact the experienced personal injury attorneys at Block O’Toole & Murphy to receive a free legal consultation by calling 212-736-5300, or by filling out our online contact form.