Negligent security claim attorneys in Virginia

Now, what is negligent security?

The concept of premises liability also extends to security on a property.

If you are the victim of a crime on someone else’s property in Virginia, you may be able to hold the property owner liable for your losses and injuries, depending on what happened.

If the owner didn’t have any security in place to keep you safe from certain crimes, like rape or assault, he could share part of the responsibility. This is called a “negligent security” or “inadequate security” claim. But proving a property’s owner violated his duty of care can be tricky, especially in a negligent security claim.

How do you prove a property owner is liable?

A property owner is not automatically responsible for everything that takes place on his or her property. To have a successful negligent security claim, you have to show that the property owner knew about a dangerous condition on the property, or should’ve known about it. The crime had to have been a “foreseeable” danger.

For example, a man owns a store in a high-crime neighborhood for several years. Because he’s owned the store for some time, he knows that the area is dangerous for people visiting his store, and that he needs to take reasonable measures to ensure their safety. Reasonable security measures could include:

• Hiring a security guard
• Installing surveillance cameras
• Installing a silent alarm
• Putting up a security fence
• Placing caution signs

If he doesn’t do any of these things, and a customer is robbed in his store, a case could be made that the owner was partly liable for the assault because he did not take appropriate measures to prevent a foreseeable danger.

On the other hand, if the same man also owns a store in a fairly safe neighborhood, he could not reasonably be expected to provide the same amount of security at the store in the good neighborhood as he must in a store in the bad neighborhood.

What’s reasonable in these cases?

Virginia law doesn’t say that property owners must guarantee the security of visitors – just that owners must provide “reasonable” security.

For the store in the high-crime neighborhood, it could be argued that having a security fence, warning signs, cameras, and a security guard patrolling the parking lot are reasonable security measures.

On the other hand, having an armed security guard to escort every single customer from his or her car to the store and back would probably be considered an “unreasonable” security demand.

Who can sue for inadequate security?

The law divides visitors to property into three categories:

• An invitee is someone who is welcomed onto a property for reasons related to the property owner’s business. For example, a customer shopping in a store is an invitee. If a crime was committed against that customer on the property, the customer could sue if the owner didn’t provide reasonable security.
• A licensee is someone who is welcomed onto a property for a non-business reason, such as a party guest at a person’s home. If another party guest, who is known to get violent when he drinks, assaults Party Guest 1, the home owner may be held liable for not providing adequate security, because the alcohol-related violence was a foreseeable threat.
• A trespasser is someone who enters a property without implicit or explicit permission. In most cases, a property owner does not need to supply reasonable security for a trespasser. For instance, if a trespasser breaks into a store to rob it, and is assaulted by another robber who broke into the same store, it’s highly unlikely that the store’s owner would be held liable for Robber 1’s injuries.

Negligent security claims can be very subjective, with few hard and fast rules about when security needs to be provided, and to what degree.