Control decides who answers for a property
An address names a place, not the person responsible for it. Texas premises law asks who controlled the part of the property where the injury happened, and the answer can be the owner, a tenant that occupies the space, a management company, or a contractor hired to maintain, clean, or secure it. A landlord that leases a store to a tenant and keeps the parking lot and walkways generally remains responsible for the areas it kept; the tenant answers for the space it occupies; and a maintenance or security contractor can answer for the work it agreed to perform. The lease, the management agreement, and the service contracts show that division, and the firm reads them before it decides whom to ask for records.
Why the injured person was there
Texas law also asks what kind of visitor the injured person was. A customer, a hotel guest, a tenant using the common areas, or anyone else present with the owner’s knowledge and for the mutual benefit of both is owed the fullest duty: to make the property reasonably safe or to warn of concealed dangers the owner knew about or should have discovered. Texas courts have generally treated a social guest in someone’s home as a person present with permission for their own purposes, who is owed a lesser duty, and a person present without permission is owed less still; the difference changes what has to be shown. This page describes the framework for business invitees, such as store customers, hotel guests, and tenants using an apartment community’s common areas.
What the owner knew, or should have discovered
For a business invitee, a premises claim has four parts: the owner or occupier knew, or should have known, of a condition on the part of the property it controlled; the condition posed an unreasonable risk of harm; the owner failed to use reasonable care to reduce or remove that risk; and the failure caused the injury.
Knowledge can be actual, as when an employee created the condition or was told about it, or constructive, meaning the condition existed long enough that a reasonably careful owner would have discovered it. Texas courts have declined to set a fixed number of minutes or hours for that judgment. They look at how long the condition was there, how close the owner’s staff were to it, and how noticeable it was, and they consider those facts together. The knowledge also has to concern the specific condition at the time and place of the injury. An owner’s general awareness that floors get wet in the rain or that stairs wear out is not the same as knowledge of the wet floor or the broken step that caused the fall.
A condition of the property or an activity on it
Texas distinguishes a claim that the property itself was unsafe from a claim about something a person was doing at the time. Broken stairs, a failed railing, uneven or heaved pavement, a missing drain cover, poor lighting in a stairwell or garage, and a sign, shelf, or facade element that was installed or anchored badly are conditions of the property, and they are reviewed under premises-liability rules. An injury caused by an employee’s ongoing activity, such as a pallet jack being pushed through a store aisle, is a negligence claim about the activity rather than about the premises, and the two are proved differently. Stored materials or merchandise that fell from a height can present the question either way, depending on whether the stacking that failed had been sitting there as a condition or was an act in progress. The review sorts that out early because the records and the proof are not the same.
Warnings and dangers in plain view
An owner can meet its duty either by fixing a dangerous condition or by adequately warning of it; Texas law does not require both. A warning is evidence, and whether it was adequate depends on where it was, when it was placed, and whether it addressed the danger that caused the injury. Texas courts have also recognized situations in which no warning is enough and the condition itself had to be addressed.
The general rule is also that an owner has no duty to warn of or fix a danger that is open and obvious, or that the visitor already knew about, because a visitor is expected to protect against a danger they can see. Texas recognizes two exceptions. The necessary-use exception can apply when the invitee had to use the dangerous part of the property and the owner should have anticipated that the invitee could not avoid the risk despite knowing about it. A separate exception concerns criminal conduct by someone else that the owner should have anticipated. In those circumstances, a known danger does not necessarily end the owner’s duty. In those situations the visitor’s own awareness may bear on how responsibility is divided, but it does not end the claim. An owner is not an insurer of a visitor’s safety, and an injury on a property does not by itself show that the owner did anything wrong.
Contractors injured while working on the property
A separate Texas statute governs a contractor, a subcontractor, or one of their employees hurt while constructing, repairing, renovating, or modifying an improvement on commercial property, when the injury arises from the condition or use of that same improvement. In that situation the property owner is not responsible for the injury, including a failure to provide a safe workplace, unless it kept or exercised control over how the work was done, beyond the right to order the work to start or stop, to inspect progress, or to receive reports, and it actually knew of the danger and failed to adequately warn. The statute does not reach an injury caused by a different part of the property than the one being worked on, and it does not raise the bar for a customer or tenant hurt on the same property. The coverage question comes first in every Texas work injury, and claims against companies other than the employer are third-party workplace claims.
The records that show control and knowledge
The property’s own records come first: inspection and sweep logs, maintenance work orders and vendor invoices, incident reports and prior complaints about the same area, video from the property’s cameras, staffing schedules, and the lease, management, and service contracts that divide responsibility. The firm asks in writing that video and logs be preserved as soon as it is retained, because camera systems and paper logs are replaced in the ordinary course of business.
Public records fill in what the property does not volunteer. In Houston, code-enforcement complaints made through 311 and the records of the Houston Permitting Center show what the city was told about a building or lot. The Houston Fire Department’s Fire Marshal’s Office holds inspection records for commercial occupancies. The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation keeps inspection records for elevators and escalators, whose owners must have the equipment inspected each year and must report an accident involving it to the department within twenty-four hours. Prior lawsuits against a property or its management company can be searched at the Harris County District Clerk. None of these records proves by itself what an owner knew about a specific condition; they are where the answer is found.
Falls, crime, dog bites, and serious injuries on someone else’s property
The evidence needed also depends on the setting. A slip-and-fall review turns on the surface that caused a fall and how long it had been there. A negligent security claim asks what crime the owner had reason to anticipate. A dog bite claim turns on the person who owned or kept the animal. A person hurt while using land for recreation, such as a park or trail, is owed less under a separate Texas statute, and that question is reviewed when it arises. A serious injury from any of these events is documented as a catastrophic injury or a traumatic brain injury, and a death becomes a wrongful death claim.
Leatherwood & Schindler represents people and families in premises-liability matters. A consultation begins with where the injury happened, why you were there, and what records you already have.