Can someone sue if they get hurt on your property?

Question

I was just wondering because i heard someone said this and i want to know if it is true. If someone is on someone's property riding a dirt bike or four wheeler and gets hurt. would that person who got hurt be able to sue the person who property it is?..........even if you have no trespassing signs up?.... And if they dont have any insurance on the property would it come out of there pocket?..

Answer 1

Didn't I already answer this?

Yes they can. People can sue for anything these days. Wether they win or not is a different story, but they still can sue.

Answer 2

I am not an attorney, but I investigated and supervised Insurance liability cases for twenty years. Your question is multi-part and, as laws differ, the ultimate answer would be based on the jurisdiction you live in.

With that caveat.
You may sue most anyone for anything, whether or not it will be successful is another question. That's why the courts are tied up with litigation; but you don't always have to sue to get money. If the owner has some liability and reports the claim to their insurance company, you may receive what most would call 'an out of court settlement.'

As to your case, the 'tresspassing' sign is a big problem-
Unless you are under the age of seven, most interpretations of liability are based on your 'status' on the property at the time. A property owner's duty is based on the status when the injury occured. For example, if you were in a store, a 'business invitee', the owners would owe you a high degree of care, making responsibility a little easier to establish. Conversely, your situation involves a tresspasser, who would be entitled to the lowest degree of care.

Besides the fact you were tresspassing, the property owner has some great defenes. You were participating in a somewhat dangerous activity and should have known the hazards involved. That would be 'assumption of risk' and could likely bar you from recovery.

If the owner knew nothing about the dirt-biking activities on his property, he could say there is no liability because of that.

If the property was so inviting that you just couldn't resist, you could plead it was an 'attractive nuisance,' which usually only flies when children or incompetent adults are involved.

Many property owners have insurance which may respond to the injuries merely because the incident occurred on the property. This 'Premses Medical Payments Coverage' is sort of like no-fault insurance for property. But as with all insurance, there are excluded exposures, most often those excluded exposures involve dangerous unanticipated activities.... like a tresspassing dirt bike rider.

The bottom line is, you could sue, but the burden of proof of the property owner's liability would fall to you, or the injured party. In a comparative liability state, which takes into account the liability of all parties and bars recovery if one person's negligence exceeds the others, the injured person would probably not recover. (This too has exceptions.)

If the owner has 'liability insurance' his company would possibly defend him, but based on what you've said, they would probably not make any voluntary payments and they would probably win in court after a number of years tied up in the litigation process.

Answer 3

Filing the lawsuit would be the easy part. There are a number of reasons why the person hurt may or may not recover any money. Generally speaking, a landowner is not responsible for the injuries of a trespasser. There are several exceptions which may apply in this case. For example, if the person riding the dirt bike or atv found the property to be especially appealing, there may be an issue of an attractive nuisance, which may lead to liability, or if the same person had been riding on the property many times before with the owners knowledge, but not express permission, there may be an issue of implied permission, making the issue of trespass questionable.

If there is no insurance, any judgment for damages would have to come out of the owner's pocket, or there may be a lien put on the property. The owner would also have to pay the costs of litigation and attorney's fees.

The best advice to protect against this kind of lawsuit is to carry plenty of liability insurance. If you have insurance, the insurance company will spend tons defending you so that they will not have to pay, then in the event there is a judgment, the insurance company will pay that.

Answer 4

In order to sue someone for being hurt on their property you would have to prove that they were negligent in some way - they are not automatically liable to you just because you are injured. WIth regard to tresspassers, "As a general rule no duty exists toward a trespasser except to refrain from willfully or wantonly injuring him, but this rule is subject to various limitations, and particular circumstances may give rise to additional duties of care." To answer your question, a trespasser can, in theory, sue a landowner for injury sustained while trespassing in certain circumstances. However, it is extrememly unlikley that a jury would award any money to a trespasser excepet for in the most unusual of circumstances (e.g. a child "tresspasses" on your land and falls into a giant pit that you negligently left on your lawn).

Answer 5

legally it is a grey area and each case has to be dealt with seperately . if someone is injured because something on your property was unsafe then they can sue, (there are plenty of cases of burglars hurting themselves and suing the home owner) however the onus is on the tresspasser to prove there was a dangerous item on the property that was not marked as such. e.g. if he fell down a hole that was not covered or fenced off or had a warning sign he could sue, but not if it was.

Answer 6

Well buddy the very short answer is yes. There was a case many many moons ago of a guy who broke into someones house. Consequently there big a** dog mulled the pi** out of him. He needed some ridiculous amounts of stitches. Well my friend guess who got sewed? Here is a hint it wasn't the burglar. That's right it was the homeowners. The ones that had there home broken into. If you think that's messed up you'll then really love the fact that that burglar won his case! How fair is that considering that if he never broke in he wouldn't of gotten attacked. I don't know about you but that sure pi**ed me off.

Answer 7

Yes they can sue. They can sue for anything. It does not mean that they have a legitimate case though. It depends on whether the person was there with permission or not, whether the owner engaged in something negligent, and what the extent of the injury was.

Answer 8

Oh yeah. I had a neighbor who had a toddler fall in their house and needed stitches because she fell into a cabinet. I guess the court decided there shouldn't be cabinets in a house because the childs parents got all the medical costs, eventhough they had insurance. Then another $10,000. $2000 for each stitch. A farmer I heard of on the net a few months back had to sell his farm because two kids used his pond as a swimminghole with out his permission. (The kids thought it was on their grandparents land) When one drowned his parents were awarded $200,000. The farmer didn't have insurance for the pond area so he had to sell the farm to pay off the rich a**hole who could not keep track of his own 10 year old. In short the rich didn't want to take care of his own responsibilities so when he screwed up and his kid died because of it, he sued the farmer who was barely getting bye for $200,000 and got it. Now the farmer is on public aide, there are townhouses on the land that used to furnish us with food, and a rich jacka** probley spent the money on another vacation to Europe or something like it.

Answer 9

They can sue the property owners, and if there was negligence involved then they might even win the law suit. If there is no homeowners insurance, then the owners would be liable for the damages awarded.

Answer 10

They can sue..now whether they win or not is another story. People sued Mcdonalds because they had large butts due to eating massive quantities of bigmacs so yeah they can sue.