We all owe a responsibility to one another to help keep each other safe. Businesses owe a duty of care to customers, you owe a duty of care to friends and family that visit your home, and landlords have a duty to protect their tenants from injuries. If a person fails to uphold this duty and injuries occur, the injured party may be able to file a personal injury lawsuit to collect compensation for their injuries.
If you’re a renter and you’re injured in your apartment or while you’re on the building’s property, can you sue your landlord for damages? As you may assume, the answer is – it depends. In today’s blog, we explain what factors need to be present in order for a tenant to sue their landlord for injuries suffered on their property in Minnesota.
Suing Your Landlord For Injuries
There are a number of ways that tenants are injured on their landlord’s property every single day in Minnesota. Some common injuries include:
- Slip and falls on ill-maintained walkways, entryways or parking lots
- Falls on unsafe staircases
- Mold-related health issues
- Assaults in poorly lit parking lots or due to broken door locks
- Burn injuries from fires that are caused by poor wiring or without proper fire alerting safety features
Slip and fall injuries are far and away the most common type of injury that we see when dealing with a tenant-landlord personal injury case. If a broken stair wasn’t properly addressed, if snow and ice wasn’t removed in a timely manner, or a dimly lit stairwell led to your fall, you may have grounds to a personal injury lawsuit.
When it comes to suing your landlord for compensation, you don’t need to prove that they knowingly or intentionally caused you harm. You simply need to prove these four factors:
- The landlord owed you a duty of care.
- The landlord’s action or inaction contributed to a breach of this care.
- You suffered an injury as a result of this breach of care.
- You suffered actual losses (medical bills, lost wages, pain and suffering, etc.) as a result of your landlord’s breach of duty.
If you can prove these factors, you may be able win a personal injury case against your landlord. Winning your case won’t be easy, which is why we recommend connecting with an injury law firm who can review the evidence, build a strong claim and showcase your story to the insurance company or a judge to help you get the compensation you deserve.
Don’t expect the landlord or their insurance company to roll over and simply pay out your claim. They’ll likely try to diminish the landlord’s role in your injuries, and if their claims have some merit, you may find it tough to earn an award. They may try to suggest that your injury isn’t actually a result of their action or inaction, and some ways they may work to showcase this include:
Arguing You Contributed To Your Own Injuries – If you spilled some water in the hallway or you were running across an icy parking lot and slipped, the landlord may argue that you hold the majority of the responsibility for your accident.
Outside Their Control – Just because you were injured on their property doesn’t mean the landlord is automatically responsible. A tornado or similar natural disaster isn’t something a landlord can control.
No Notice – Landlords can only address problems that they are aware of, and they may argue that they were not aware of a danger or did not have adequate time to address it. However, even if they did not specifically know about the risk, if they should have been aware of it, you may still be able to collect compensation. Your lawyer can build a case to fight back any claims that your landlord wasn’t aware of a risk on their property.
Your landlord’s insurance company is going to fight hard to keep their money, so you’ll need a professional in your corner if you hope to collect compensation. Let the team at Hey Workers be your ally. We’ll go to bat for you and help you earn every penny you deserve. For more information, or for help with a different type of injury case, reach out to our team today at (844) 439-9675.
