Premises Liability Claims: Plaintiff and Defense Strategies in Unsafe Workplace and Failure to Warn Cases

The CLE course will provide guidance to personal injury plaintiff and defense counsel for pursuing or defending premises liability claims involving unsafe workplaces and failure to warn cases. The panel will feature a plaintiff’s attorney and defendant’s attorney perspective on drafting a complaint, crafting a defense, strategies for discovery and litigation, and developing trial themes.

There are many different kinds of premises liability scenarios, including the unsafe workplace or business and the failure to warn of known dangerous conditions. Despite different kinds of claims, there are common themes that can be applied to most cases whether you are on the plaintiff or defense side of the matter.

Whose fault was it anyway? From a defense perspective, there may be other entities responsible for creating, identifying, correcting, or warning against the hazard, be it third parties or the plaintiff herself. While plaintiff’s counsel will attempt to demonstrate statutes, industry standards, and best practices to show patterns of defendants' negligence and indifference to safety.

Defense counsel will attempt to show that the defendant acted reasonably under the circumstances and third parties or plaintiff was in a better situation to address the dangerous condition. Careful discovery and consistent adherence to a theme can demonstrate that the opposing side was, in fact, on notice of the dangerous conditions and able to avoid or fix it. Starting with a failure to properly assess dangers all the way down to how employees routinely cut corners can show that plaintiff or defendants' conduct deviated from safe practices every step of the way.

Listen as this experienced panel shows counsel how each side should assess the strengths and weaknesses of their own case.