Premises Liability Lawyers in Marietta
Premises cases turn on what the property owner knew and when they knew it, and that proof lives in incident reports, inspection logs, maintenance tickets and video that is often on a thirty-day loop. Georgia law also gives the defense a well-worn argument that the hazard was open and obvious. We move fast on preservation, we look for the prior complaints rather than the single incident, and we are candid early about which of these cases are worth bringing.
What we do on these cases
- A preservation demand goes out immediately for video, incident reports, inspection logs and sweep sheets, because a thirty-day retention loop does not pause because someone was injured.
- We look for the pattern rather than the event. Prior complaints about the same hazard, repeated maintenance tickets on the same fixture, and a sweep log with gaps in it are what convert a case about one afternoon into a case about a system.
- We deal with the open-and-obvious defense directly, because it is coming, and because the answer is usually about distraction, lighting or the ordinary way customers are directed through a space rather than about whether the hazard could theoretically be seen.
- We tell clients early when we think a premises case will not carry its own costs. A substantial proportion of them do not, and saying so in the first month is more useful than saying so after a year.
What the insurer is doing while you wait
The first thing that happens after a fall in a commercial space is an internal incident report, written by an employee, on a form designed by the company's risk department. It records the customer's own explanation, the weather, the footwear, and whether the customer declined medical attention. It is created in anticipation of a claim, and the defense will argue about whether it has to be produced at all.
Meanwhile the video is running down its retention clock. In most of these cases nobody sets out to destroy anything; the system simply overwrites on schedule while the injured person is still deciding whether to call anyone. By the time a demand letter arrives at ninety days, the footage that would have shown how long the hazard had been there is gone, and what remains is a company representative's recollection.
What it costs
There is no fee to talk to us and no fee unless we win. These cases carry real investigation costs and a genuine risk of recovering nothing, and we are direct with you about both before we take one.
“No fee unless we win” refers only to the attorney's fee — court costs and other expenses of legal action usually must be paid by the client, and contingent fees are not permitted in all types of cases.
Results in this area
- $1.45MFall from an unsecured loading platformVerdict · 2021
- $$$Fall on an unmarked wet surface in a retail spaceConfidential settlement · 2022
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Every case is different, and the value of any case depends on facts that are specific to it.
Questions we get about these cases
The store says the spill was obvious. Does that end it?
No, but it is the argument the case will be fought on. Georgia's framework asks what the owner knew about the hazard and what the customer knew about it, and a hazard the customer could have seen is a real defense. It is answerable — by lighting, by the way a display draws attention, by the ordinary route customers are funnelled along — but it has to be answered with evidence rather than with indignation.
They told me the video is gone. Is it?
Sometimes genuinely, sometimes only the portion nobody thought to export. Many systems overwrite on a loop of roughly thirty days, and it is common for a store to have preserved a two-minute clip of the fall itself while the surrounding hour — which is what shows how long the hazard was there — has been lost. Whether that loss carries consequences depends on when the company knew a claim was coming, which is precisely why a preservation letter is dated.
Do I need to have filed an incident report?
It helps and it is not required. What matters is that the event is documented somewhere close to the time it happened: photographs on a phone, a message to someone that evening, a same-day medical visit. If an employee did fill in a report, ask for a copy at the time — many chains will hand one over on the day and decline once a lawyer is involved.
Tell us what happened.
Three steps, about two minutes. A lawyer reads every one of these.