Category: Negligent Security

What is Negligent Security?

Negligent security is a part of the law that falls under the category of premises liability. Premises liability covers harm that a person could experience on a business’s property as a result of negligence on the part of the business. This could include things like slip-and-fall injuries where there is no “wet floor” sign, injuries or deaths incurred by poorly maintained elevators or escalators, and any number of other potential harms. How Negligent Security Claims Work So, what is negl...

Landlords Must Do More to Protect Tenants from Violence on Mayson Turner Road

The amount of security a landlord must provide depends on the likelihood of violence on or around the property. If violent crime is unheard of in a certain area, landlords don’t need to protect against it. When violent crime is a known threat, on the other hand, landlords are legally obligated to provide tenants with appropriate protection. Unfortunately, landlords often refuse to accept this as part of the cost of doing business, until they’re forced to pay for crime-related damages in co...

Violent Crime Thrives on Landlord Apathy

Criminal violence is a massively complex issue with many interconnected factors. The behavior of landlords may not be the sole root of the problem, but it does play a much bigger part than many people realize. Once it becomes common knowledge that violence often happens on a particular property, and the perpetrators get away with it, other potential perpetrators become emboldened to hurt people on that property. In fact, that’s often how crime hotspots form — one or two businesses prove th...

Apartment Landlords Can Be Sued for Gun Violence Against Children

Atlanta’s children live with the constant threat of gun violence, and many will never get the chance to grow up because of it. Dozens of people aged 18 and younger were killed in shootings in Metropolitan Atlanta this past year alone. The danger isn’t limited to mass shootings at school or in public places. In fact, most of these deaths from 2021 occurred individually or in small groups, nearly half of them in or near homes. As grieving and worried parents know all too well, low-income ...

Apartment Complexes Must Protect Residents from Local Crime Patterns

Many people consider it a fact of life that only the rich can afford safety. Those who don’t own their own homes or pay luxury rates for their rentals end up living in areas with higher rates of violent crime, often in buildings lacking basic security measures. When a resident falls victim to a crime, there’s often an attitude of “you get what you pay for,” and an assumption that the landlord couldn’t possibly do anything about the local crime rates if they wanted to. As prevalent as this ...

Man Shot at Gas Station Could Have a Case Against BP

A BP customer was hospitalized with several broken bones and a collapsed lung after an altercation outside a DeKalb County gas station on January 5th, near the corner of South Hairston Rd and Redan Rd. As the survivor describes the attack, he was approached by a young man who offered to sell him marijuana. After he declined, the man signaled to several others with gang signs, and more arrived in a black SUV. One of the men grabbed the survivor and slammed his head repeatedly against the wa...

What are Examples of Negligent Security?

When you go out to enjoy yourself in a public place like a park, club, or movie theater, you have the right to expect the owner to keep the area safe. This falls under an area of the law called premises liability: property owners can be held liable for damages done on their property, if it can be shown that the owner’s failure to provide a reasonable degree of security contributed to the harm. This post will give you a few examples of negligent security, but bear in mind that these are only a...