Personal Injury Law

Who is Liable for an Injury at a Rented Florida Holiday Property?

By Flaxman & Lopez

Florida has a large market for rental summer properties. Each year, tourists arrive here and rent Miami condos as well as cottages and vacation homes outside of the city. In most cases, a great vacation is the result. In rare cases, however, renters and visitors sustain a serious personal injury while staying in their vacation home and this usually generates a number of legal questions.

If you have been injured at your Florida rental property, you should seek medical help at once and then contact a qualified Florida personal injury attorney. While some accidents are simply the result of bad luck, some are caused by poor maintenance of a vacation property. A good attorney can investigate all the causes of an injury and can help you determine whether negligence has played a role.

The property owner of your Florida vacation rental is responsible for maintaining the property and keeping it safe. He or she is expected to take reasonable steps to ensure that the property is safe for visitors. If there is a step that is in poor condition or if lighting is inadequate, for example, this can lead to slip and fall accidents. In this situation, the owner may be held liable if any injury does take place. In addition, the owner of a rental property in Florida may be held liable in a few different situations:

1) If there is not adequate security at the rental property. In some cases, Florida vacation property rentals may result in inadequate security cases. For example, if someone rents out a condo in a Miami neighborhood with a higher crime rate but fails to maintain the doors and windows on the property, so that criminals can easily enter, the owner may be held partly liable if a guest is injured during a break-in while staying at the property.

2) If someone visiting you is injured. If you are staying in a Florida vacation rental, you may invite friends and family over to visit you at your vacation home. If one of your guests is injured because the property owner failed to take steps to keep the property safe, he or she may also be held partly liable.

3) If there is lack of correct safety measures. Property owners are expected to ensure that basic safety measures are in place ? such as working fire alarms, for example. Many injuries and accidents occur simply because these measures are not in place. Many Florida pool injuries and drowning accidents, for example, take place because of a lack of safety gates and similar safety precautions. If you suffer an injury because basic safety precautions are not in place, the owner of the property may be held liable.

4) If there are no warnings of hazards. If there are hazards in your Florida rental property which cannot be reasonably fixed, the owner should warn you about these hazards either in writing or verbally.

5) If repairs are not completed in a timely manner. If you notice a safety hazard in your vacation property and report it to the property owner, he or she should investigate and fix the problem in a timely fashion. If this does not take place and you are injured by the problem, you could have grounds for legal action.

If you are injured while staying at a Florida vacation property, determining liability can be complex. For this reason, you will want to contact a good Florida personal injury attorney after your accident.

Full post as published by Florida Injury Lawyer Blog on July 06, 2010 (boomark / email).