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Parking lot personal injuries often arise from premises liability claims involving slip-and-fall hazards or vehicle collisions. If you can prove negligence, you may be able to collect compensation for your damages.
Property owners must maintain safe conditions, and as an injured party, you have up to two years to file a lawsuit. Continue reading this page to learn more about how claims work after personal injury in parking lots and how an attorney from Lowenthal & Abrams, PC can help you with your claim.
To file a successful personal injury claim after a parking lot accident, you must establish negligence. This requires you and your attorney to prove that another party’s carelessness, rather than your own, caused the accident. Reckless driving is a common factor in parking lot accidents. These accidents rarely involve automatic liability. A driver’s actions determine fault, including the following:
These types of personal injury claims may also involve premises liability. This applies when the law holds property owners or managers accountable for hazardous conditions. These individuals have a duty of care to maintain safe conditions for the public. Failure to repair hazards such as potholes or to clear snow and ice can lead to liability. However, that alone is not enough to win the case. You must also prove that the responsible party knew, or should have known, about the hazard and failed to address it.
When injuries in parking lots involve vehicle collisions, Pennsylvania’s no-fault system may affect how insurance covers medical expenses. Under this mandatory auto insurance structure, your Personal Injury Protection policy will pay medical expenses, regardless of fault, up to the limits of your coverage.
Liability for damages such as vehicle repairs or pain and suffering depends on the tort option you select. Limited tort policies offer lower premiums but restrict pain and suffering claims, while full tort policies allow you to pursue compensation for all types of losses.
Pennsylvania operates under a modified comparative negligence system, specifically the 51 percent bar rule. This legal doctrine allows injured parties to recover damages if they are 50 percent or less at fault. If the court finds a claimant to be 51 percent or more at fault, they are ineligible to receive compensation.
Your percentage of fault also reduces damage awards in injury claims arising from parking area accidents. For example, if another driver was backing out of a spot and hit you while you were speeding in the wrong lane, courts can divide liability based on responsibility. If a court found you 40 percent at fault in this scenario, you would forfeit 40 percent of your settlement due to the state’s comparative negligence law.
Claims involving personal injury in parking lots are rarely straightforward. With questions about liability, comparative negligence, and duty of care, many of our clients choose to schedule a free consultation. While our firm’s primary focus is on Philadelphia, we are also proud to serve clients in other locations. Contact Lowenthal & Abrams, PC today.
LOWENTHAL AND ABRAMS, P.C.
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