Premises Liability

March 24, 2011

Wrongful Death Suit Filed After Man Murdered Outside of Bar

As a Dallas Wrongful Death attorney, I am providing this lawsuit article from Cleveland.

The family of a Cleveland man who was gunned down in 2009 during a robbery at a local bar have filed a lawsuit against the building owners and the security company.

The wrongful death suit claims local security officers did nothing to stop a group of men from attempting to rob Jeremy Pechanec and eventually executing him and a friend in a park across from the bar.

None of the bar’s security cameras were on, the suit claims, and bar tenders continued to serve the men even as they began to harass Pechanec. The wrongful death lawsuit is seeking more than $100,000 in damages.

What is a Wrongful Death Lawsuit? Dallas Wrongful Death Attorney explains

A wrongful death lawsuit alleges that the victim was killed as a result of negligence on the part of the person or business entity being sued, and that the victim’s survivors are entitled to monetary damages as a result of the negligent act and improper conduct.

This type of legal civil claim is different from a normal negligence lawsuit, which is filed by the person injured for the resultant damages. Originally under “common law” (the general legal principles or judge made law, passed from England to the United States over many years), a wrongful death claim did not exist based upon the legal reasoning that the claim died or was extinguished with the victim where there was no way to compensate him for damages. The surviving family members then could not claim damages from the person who caused the victim’s death. This was an injustice for the dead victim’s family and a legal loop hole.

Slip and Fall Premises Liability Update

by Dr. Shezad Malik

As a Dallas Slip and Fall Attorney, I would like provide a quick explanation and an update of Texas Slip and Fall law.

A slip and fall accident is a type of personal injury claim that occurs when a person slips and falls on another person’s property. It is based on the breach of duty that the owner of the property was negligent in failing to correct the dangerous condition that caused the slip and fall.

If you were in a public place or a private residence in Texas and hurt yourself due to a slip and fall, you may file a slip and fall lawsuit. But if the accident was your fault, or there is some other intervening circumstance that does not satisfy the slip and fall lawsuit requirement, you can expect that it would get dismissed.

You have to prove negligence on the part of the company or private citizen at whose Texas property the slip and fall injury took place. A classic example would be a wet floor. We are all familiar with businesses that mop their floors and put out bright yellow or orange caution signs and/or cones to warn people that the area is wet and not to cross it. If these signs are clearly posted and you cross into the slippery area anyway, the business has a good chance of not being liable for the fall.

The term Premises Liability is used when assigning responsibility for injuries caused by the defective design or maintenance of property, including private homes, public buildings, and anywhere a person would have a reasonable expectation of safety.

“Negligence” means failure to use ordinary care to provide a safe place and to reduce or eliminate an unreasonable risk of harm created by the condition or use of a place, equipment or procedures.

Property owners have a duty to keep their property safe. To hold the property owner responsible, one of the following three conditions must apply to the incident:

1. The owner of the property, or one of their employees, caused the worn or torn spot, the spill or the dangerous surface that resulted in the slip and fall.

2. The property owner knew about the dangerous condition but didn’t do anything about it.

3. The owner of the property should have known about the dangerous condition because a reasonable person tending to a piece of property would have detected the problem and taken steps to correct it.

To read more, click here.

March 17, 2011

Slip and Fall Explaination of Texas Premises Liability Law

by Dr. Shezad Malik

As a Dallas Slip and Fall attorney I am writing this article to provide guidance for folks who are considering to file a slip and fall claim. You know folks, litigating slip and fall accidents in Texas is difficult because of the premises liability rules generated by our Texas Supreme Court.

In Texas, the status of the plaintiff is important; whether they are an invitee, licensee or mere trespasser. The duty of the premises owner will depend on the plaintiff’s status.

“Slip and fall” or “trip and fall” accidents are the most common form of premises liability cases. Common everyday conditions or defects leading to premises liability accidents include wet slick floors, slippery surfaces, uneven floors or steps, cracked sidewalks, broken stair rails, falling objects, high-stacking merchandise, torn carpeting, poor lighting, inadequate security, dangerous conditions caused by inclement weather such as sleet, rain and ice, and failure to secure a swimming pool area etc.

TCU Fort Worth Law Suit For False Claims of Safe Campus

by Dr. Shezad Malik

As a Fort Worth Sexual Assault and abuse attorney, I am providing this update for the TCU lawsuit involving rape and sexual assault on campus.

According to a lawsuit the student filed against the university, Texas Christian University officials should have known that two athletic recruits accused of raping an art student had criminal histories and posed a threat on campus.

The woman who filed the lawsuit, alleged that she was was drugged and then gang-raped by three athletes in 2006 while visiting a dormitory room. The three were arrested and were permanently separated from the university.

Attorneys representing the woman in her lawsuit maintain that if TCU officials did not know, they should have known that, the attackers, Jones and Taylor had criminal histories and that Jones had had his probation revoked in connection with an assault causing bodily injury in a 2005 Collin County case.

The three athletes, Behling, Taylor and Jones were arrested in October 2006 after the woman reported that Taylor sexually assaulted her. Taylor lured her to his dorm room on the pretext of repaying money he owed for a hamburger. There, the woman told police, she was given a drink that caused her to pass out. Then she was attacked repeatedly by the athletes.

December 26, 2010

Fort Worth Police Used Taser on Hospital Patient

by Dr. Shezad Malik

As a Fort Worth Medical Malpractice and Personal Injury Attorney, I am providing, what is in my opinion one of the most outrageous civil rights, medical malpractice and personal injury claims involving Taser usage.

A confused post-surgical patient at Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Hurst-Euless-Bedford was tasered. Bedford police said that on December 14, an off-duty police officer working at the hospital responded to a report of a “violent situation.”

According to the police, when the officer arrived, “there had been two hospital employees that had been assaulted” by the patient, and the officer “used his Taser to restrain the subject.”

December 22, 2010

Texas Premises Liability: $66 M Awarded to Woman Crippled by Gym Machine

by Dr. Shezad Malik

As a Fort Worth Personal Injury and Premises Liability Attorney I am providing this news story.

A New York jury has rendered a premises liability negligence verdict for a Buffalo woman. The verdict awarded was $66 million for injuries she suffered on a Cybex weight machine.

The plaintiff, a physical therapist, had her vertebra crushed when the 500-pound machine fell on her in 2004. The injuries were so severe as to render her a quadriplegic.

October 7, 2010

Fort Worth Slip and Fall Accident and Injuries

by Dr. Shezad Malik

As a Fort Worth Personal Injury attorney, I represent a lot of clients who have suffered personal injuries following a slip and fall accident.

Earlier in the week I defended a slip and fall deposition involving my client. The client is a 55 year old engineer who slipped and fell while walking to the bathroom at a sushi restaurant.

He slipped on something greasy that was left on the slick tiled floor and went down so hard that he was knocked out and had to be transported to the hospital and placed on the ventilator until he could recover.

The defense is making the argument that he fell off his stool at the bar but they could not explain how he happened to be found by the bathroom. Obviously they are making the argument that he could be in 2 places at once! They are making the claim that the law of physics do not apply in their restaurant…they are not familiar it would appear with Einstein’s theory of Relativity..

I will continue to update this story.

October 3, 2010

Southlake Car Wreck Attorney Update

by Dr. Shezad Malik

As a Southlake car accident and car wreck attorney I frequently provide updates to my readers.

If you are involved in a car accident, car wreck, hit and run, fender bender or any other terms you that may use for a car collision, you should be familiar with the Texas driving rules of the road.

As a Fort Worth Car Wreck attorney, I am involved with many of the similar types of car accident cases as I read about this weekend.

September 25, 2010

The Fort Worth Personal Injury Seige Continues

by Dr. Shezad Malik

The personal injury sage continues. As a Fort Worth Personal Injury attorney I am writing this blog to hopefully provide insight to my readers, about the law works with its byzantine rules and regulations.

The Law and its practical applications are murky at best and we as lawyers have developed our own rituals and our own special language. Because if we spoke in plain English, then it would not be special anymore.

In my last missive I detailed the week before an actual trial that we were getting ready to do on our slip and fall case. The case got continued. Now we are using this opportunity to continue in our siege of the defendants castle. We continue to press our charge and are unrelenting in our skirmishes.

September 19, 2010

Fort Worth Personal Injury Attorney Who Will Fight For You 817-900-8439

by Dr. Shezad Malik

“Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.”

And so it begins, twenty four hours from now, with a drop of the hammer and a cry of “Order, Court now in session,” the battle banners would have unfurled with the sounds of trumpets.

As a Fort Worth Personal Injury Attorney, I would like to offer the following insights. As I mentioned in my last posting from the battlefront, we were due in court tomorrow to argue our slip and fall case which just got canceled and set for a new date.

The foul air would have been filled with the clanging of steel, the clashing of shields, the stench of panic and fear permeating the air to be supplemented with whiffs of gunpowder. My friends, this was no ordinary skirmish, but the accumulation of 3 years hard labor. But it was not to be…

My friends that is what a court room feels and sounds like, all shrouded in the fog of war and at the end of the day, one victor and the vanquished. Carnage and havoc for both.

Trials are no easy things and the plaintiffs all want their day in court. It is hard to then explain to them when you get a worse deal at trial that in settlement talks a year earlier.

In this particular battle, the decision to go to war was easy, we had no offers to settle or offers through mediation. Here, if we had failed to press our charge and we lost, what did we lose? We came with nothing and left with nothing. Then the next time the defense would know we spared no quarter, we yielded no ground, and we fought to the last man. Each man died a hero, with sword in hand, a bloody battle indeed.

In this battle dear readers, there are no prisoners.