Premises Liability Attorneys in Austin, Texas

Premises liability is the area of Texas law that governs injuries occurring on another person's or entity's property due to unsafe conditions. It covers a wide range of situations beyond slip and fall accidents: inadequate lighting in a parking garage, a broken handrail on a staircase, an unsecured swimming pool, or a dangerous condition on commercial property that the owner knew about and failed to correct.

The three-tier visitor classification system is the foundation of every Texas premises liability case. Business invitees — people invited onto the property for business purposes — receive the highest duty of care. The owner must inspect, discover, and address or warn of unreasonably dangerous conditions. Licensees, such as social guests, are owed a duty to warn of known dangers the owner knows the visitor is unlikely to discover. Trespassers receive only a duty not to cause willful injury, with exceptions for children under the attractive nuisance doctrine.

Proving that the property owner had knowledge of the dangerous condition is often the central challenge. Your attorney will look for inspection records, maintenance logs, prior incident reports, and surveillance footage. In commercial properties, these records often exist and must be preserved through a litigation hold before they're overwritten or deleted.

Property owners in Texas cannot simply post a warning sign and eliminate their liability. The warning must be adequate for the specific hazard. An inadequate warning — or no warning at all — combined with a dangerous condition that the owner knew about is the core of many successful premises liability claims.