Posted on November 16, 2016 in Firm News

This blog has discussed various aspects of premises liability law in Connecticut and whether a property owner is liable for injuries someone suffers while on that property. We have touched on the fact that this partially depends upon the status of the injured party; that is, whether he or she is an invitee, a licensee, or a trespasser. This discussion has generally focused on properties where visitors are transient, such as places of business and the like. However, many people in the state actually reside in properties that they do not own. What happens when someone is injured on the premises of a rental property?

First, it should be recognized that it would seem that tenants would be the ultimate invitees. That is, they are present on the property for the mutual benefit of themselves and the owner. That won’t end the inquiry, however, because, as a rule, landlords don’t have exclusive control over the rental property, as the tenant lives there, and there may be laws preventing the landlord from simply coming in at any time. So some special rules may apply in these cases.

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 Posted on October 21, 2016 in Firm News

This space has previously taken up the issue of what the three basic statuses are of people who are present on property owned by someone else. To refresh, these statuses include: licensee, invitee and trespasser. The reason the status of a visitor is important is that it affects the duty owed by the property owner to that individual. This may have quite an effect on a civil suit if a visitor in injured on the property. We recently discussed the duties a property owner may owe to a trespasser, but what about the other two categories?

The first thing one must understand to determine what duties are owed to a visitor who is not trespassing is what distinguishes a licensee from an invitee. This can become complex, as simply the act of being "invited" is not necessarily dispositive of this question. Generally speaking, a licensee is someone who has permission from the owner to be on the property, whether technically invited or not. The important concept in these cases is that the owner consents to that person’s presence.

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 Posted on October 12, 2016 in Car Accidents

Previous posts here have discussed the aspects of negligence, as it is generally the most widely used cause of action in civil lawsuits in Connecticut when a person has been injured in a motor vehicle accident caused by someone else. Understanding the basics of such a claim and the elements is important, but so too is knowing the possible defenses a negligent driver might use to attempt to avoid liability.

One of these defenses is called "sudden emergency," and it is an attempt by a person who took an action that would have otherwise been negligent, and attempt to rationalize it by showing reasonable people would have acted in the same manner due to some particular circumstances. In normal circumstances, as we have seen, a plaintiff must show that the defendant had a legal duty, that duty was breached and that the breach was both a direct and proximate cause of a plaintiff’s injuries.

However, a fact finder, usually a jury, may consider evidence that some emergency situation occurred which excuses the otherwise negligent conduct, even if the above elements are present. In such situations, the person accused of negligence must have acted as a reasonable person would have given the same circumstances faced by the supposedly negligent party. It should be noted that this, like most considerations, is an "objective" standard, and is predicated on the behavior of a hypothetical "reasonable person" rather than the specific individual involved or the individuals making the determination.

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 Posted on September 16, 2016 in Personal Injury

In this post, we’ll look a little more closely at what duty an owner may have to someone on the property without permission, i.e., a "trespasser."

The first thing to note is that trespassing in this instance may or may not be the same as the criminal definition of trespassing. A person may be a "trespasser" for the purposes of premises liability even if the person is not chargeable with the crime of trespassing. In general, a property owner owes very few duties to someone who is on the property without permission. For example, if the owner does not expect a trespasser to be there, the owner does not need to keep the premises in any certain condition with regard to the trespasser. The owner also does not have any duty to warn the trespasser, in general, of dangerous hidden conditions that may exist.

However, this does not mean that a property owner can never be liable for damages to a trespasser in Connecticut. For instance, an owner cannot affirmatively set a trap to injure a trespasser. Setting up a "spring gun" attached to a door mechanism, for example, may trigger liability if someone is injured by it, even while trespassing. Also, once the possessor of the land is actually aware of the trespasser’s presence, the owner owes a duty of due care to the individual. Finally, if an owner should know that children might be on the property, the owner owes a duty to keep them away or repair a condition that may result in an unreasonable risk of death or serious bodily harm. Under Connecticut premises liability law, a property owner may not have many duties to people trespassing upon the land, but the owner is also not completely immune to liability, depending on the particular circumstances.

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 Posted on September 07, 2016 in Car Accidents

Previous posts here have discussed the concept of negligence. Our readers may remember that in many car accidents a person suffering property damage or injury may be able to recover monetary damages from another person who was behaving in a negligent manner. The basic elements of negligence include that the individual alleged to be at fault must have had a legal duty, that the duty was breached and that the breach of the duty caused the damages to the victim.

In Connecticut, as in many other states, there are some situations in which the law does not require the showing of all these elements by specific evidence. One of these situations is termed "statutory negligence." The idea behind statutory negligence is that certain actions by a driver, in the case of car accidents, may be considered to be automatically negligent if the individual broke another state law, usually a criminal or traffic law.

For example, a person who has violated Connecticut’s reckless driving statute may be considered to have been negligent. Basically, if the jury concludes that the defendant’s behavior meets the definition of recklessness, as defined in the statute, they should consider the driver to have been negligent. The state reckless driving statute includes specific examples of reckless driving, which are travelling at a speed that creates a danger to the life of those who are not driving the motor vehicle in question and driving any vehicle on a public road at more than 85 miles per hour.

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 Posted on August 04, 2016 in Car Accidents

This blog has discussed various aspects of negligence, both when it comes to car accidents, and other personal injury lawsuits. The basic concepts in these cases are the same, though the facts are likely to differ widely. One concept that may be valuable to Connecticut residents who suffer damages in a motor vehicle accident is that of "comparative negligence."

Some readers may have heard another term — "contributory negligence" — before. This concept pertains to a person bringing a suit against another for damages when he or she was also partially at fault. With the traditional contributory negligence rule, if the person bringing the suit was at all at fault for the accident, even just a little, then he or she could not recover damages. This idea has been replaced in most modern jurisdictions, including Connecticut, by comparative negligence, which reduces the amount of damages a plaintiff may recover, but doesn’t necessarily bar them entirely.

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 Posted on July 07, 2016 in Firm News

This blog has been discussing the various elements of a negligence claim in Connecticut as they apply to premises liability cases over the past couple months. To review, to recover in negligence cases, a plaintiff generally must show that the defendant had a duty to the plaintiff, that the duty was breached, that there was an injury and that the breach was both the cause-in-fact and proximate cause of the injury. In this installment we will touch on the next, and probably most complex element of such cases: proximate cause.

A month ago we briefly talked about "direct cause" or "cause-in-fact." You may remember that this refers to whether the defendant’s act or failure to act actually caused the injury to the plaintiff. Proximate cause is similar but differs in one important way: proximate cause deals with what events are foreseeable. What this means is that the cause of an injury cannot be so remote from the defendant’s action or inaction that a reasonable person would not have foreseen the possibility.

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 Posted on July 05, 2016 in Firm News

Shelton, CT – A 53-year-old male massage therapist was arrested by Shelton police early Tuesday accused of sexually assaulting two female clients in May at the Coco Spa on Bridgeport Avenue in Shelton.

To read the full article, please click here

If this has happened to you or a loved one, we encourage you to contact our Bridgeport sexual abuse lawyers for a sensitive evaluation of your case. Please click here to read more about our attorneys and how we can help.

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 Posted on June 14, 2016 in Car Accidents

Once again, drivers in Connecticut rank among the most dangerous in the country. A study by NerdWallet shows that New Haven is the 8^th most dangerous city in the U.S. for driving and owning a car.

What does this mean for you? Read more to learn the risk factors and what you can do to protect yourself.

The study covers approximately 200 U.S. cities and considers the following factors:

• The number of car accidents
• The number of car accident deaths
• The average years a person has between car accidents
• The likelihood of having an accident relative to the U.S. average
• Auto insurance rates
• Auto theft

New Haven’s scores include an average of 6.3 years between car accidents, 8.4 fatalities per 100,000 people and an average insurance cost of $1,829. The city also ranks as "least safe" in the survey’s analysis of auto theft crimes.

As a driver in Connecticut, you may well be concerned about your safety. No one can control the behaviors of other drivers. You can, however, take precautions to protect yourself and your family in the car. In a dangerous driving environment, it is even more important that you ensure you are following the rules of the road. Consider these points:

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 Posted on June 10, 2016 in Firm News

This space has previously discussed what signs there may be that a loved one who is in a nursing home or assisted care facility is being abused or neglected. We have also touched on the fact that bedsores, which often are caused by failure of a patient to move, can become serious health problems. One possible cause of such effects is the use of physical or chemical restraints by a nursing facility.

The Connecticut Office of the Long-Term Care Ombudsman publishes an electronic brochure that summarizes some of the dangers of the use of restraints in nursing homes, and the reasons such facilities might use them. First, it defines both physical and chemical restraints. Physical restraints are relatively self-explanatory and include any physical contraption attached to a patient’s body to restrict his or her movement. Chemical restraints are defined as a drug that is used for the purposes of control or discipline and not to treat a patient’s medical symptoms.

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