Premises Liability, Early History: English common law
Modern American law allows you to sue for compensation if you have been injured while on someone else's property. A Premises Liability lawsuit due to crime or other cause of injury has not always been allowed. If you think you may have a Premises Liability lawsuit, fill out this simple questionnaire for a FREE case evaluation and find out your legal rights.
Unlike criminal or contract law, American civil tort law is based primarily on precedence established by court decisions, a process known as the "common law." American civil law has its roots in English common law.
Historically, English common law held fast to the rule that one person was under no duty to take any steps to protect another person from the wrongful acts of a third party. Thus, landowners had no legal duty to prevent criminal assaults on visitors to their property, and no legal liability could befall them.
Early case law developed the notion that a person engaged in a trade or calling who undertook to perform certain activities with respect to another's person or personal possessions had to meet the standards of that particular profession or calling; if they failed to live up to those standards and the person was injured or his goods damaged thereby, the tradesman could be sued for deceit in wrongfully representing himself as skilled in the trade.
From this notion developed the concept of "special relationships," i.e., those relationships that created an expectation on the part of one person that another was undertaking to provide some degree of protection against the criminal acts of others. Two of the earliest special relationships were that of an innkeeper and a guest and a common carrier and its passengers.
In spite of these narrow exceptions, English common law clung tenaciously to the notion that the landowner was sacrosanct, and the general rule of nonliability, despite the special relationships exception, held sway for many decades.
see also:
English Common Law
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