To prevail in a premises liability case, the injured party must prove that the defendant violated a duty owed to the injured party, breached that duty, and that breach caused the victim’s damages.

Generally speaking, a landowner has a duty to keep the premises in a reasonably safe condition and breaches that duty when he has failed to repair or warn about a defect that he knows or should have known about. However, the scope of the duty that a landowner owes to an injured party depends on what the victim was doing on the land at the time of the fall. For example, a landowner owes a higher duty to keep the premises safe for a customer than for someone who just has permission to use the land.

In addition, premises liability cases are often defended on the theory of comparative negligence. This means that the defense attorney and insurance company may argue that even if the landowner was negligent, the victim was more negligent than the owner because he didn’t look where he was going.