Hello, my name is Robert Geller. I am the founding Attorney of The Law Offices of Robert M Geller PA. Our firm has been helping people with personal injury matters for over 30 years. If you ever need an attorney for a personal injury matter please contact our firm.
Today I want to speak with you about what you can do if you become a victim of a crime an assault or a battery of a business property or even at a residence. What is the law that provides you with the right to make a recovery? In Florida, a business owner/property owner has a duty to protect you from foreseeable criminal conduct.
Proving Foreseeable Criminal Conduct
How does an attorney prove that it is foreseeable criminal conduct? One of the best ways that we do is we look at fire police reports. We look at prior crimes that occurred in a location to show that there is foreseeability that another crime will occur other ways that we can prove that a business owner did not protect you from foreseeable criminal conduct, is we can show through experts that the business owner should provide you with security, armed security if necessary.
The business owner should provided proper lighting did not provide you with proper lighting. The business owner did not do all the necessary things to protect you from those foreseeable crimes that they should have known about from just knowing about the crimes that occurred on their property.
Example 1
Some of the examples of the cases that our firm has handled involve people who have been assaulted at a parking garage. We've had a case once where an individual was attacked and beaten at a parking garage. After our firm was contacted we pulled the police reports. We were able to pull police report after police report of people breaking into the cars in that parking garage. Through the litigation of that case, we found out that there was video surveillance in the parking garage but the problem was, that the video surveillance only showed that they were protecting their elevators.
When I got a chance to speak to the president of that company I asked him, "Why did you only have video surveillance of your elevators and not the rest of the parking garage"? His answer was, "Well we were trying to protect our property". They didn't care about protecting our clients from getting attacked in their parking garage. That's one example.
Examples 2
Another example of a case that our firm handled unfortunately for our client- she was attacked and raped in her apartment and we brought a case against the apartment complex for not protecting our client. We found out through discovery and through the litigation process that there were a lot of other crimes that occurred at that apartment complex. We ultimately found out that just the day before our client was attacked, the apartment complex failed to pay for the alarm system that my client was promised when she rented the apartment was canceled before. Had that alarm system worked, she might have been protected from this criminal attack.
Finally, we found out one of the things that proved that the place was so dangerous. Even the vending machines at the apartment complex were constantly being stolen. We found out that information from one of the employees of the apartment complex. Have you are ever a victim of any kind of criminal attack? Whether at a business location or in a residence, please contact The Law Offices of Robert M Geller. We'd like to help you. Thank you.
