If management do not repair site, can we sue?

• Thursday, 14 January 2010
• Kathleen Retourne
• 0 Comments

My wife and I are both in our 70s and are not as sure footed as we were. The management here supplied grit boxes around the park, which it seems down to us to put on the roads and drives.
We do not have a car so we do walk about a lot. What I am asking you is, if at any time we have an accident do we stand a chance of suing the park site’s management team?

Graham advises
No one can shirk responsibility for allowing defective premises to cause injury or death to users of their property. In my view, a park owner will be responsible if the common parts of the park are dangerous for whatever reason, whether that be a permanent feature or one of transient nature, such as icing on the sidewalks.
This is an issue that crops up again and again just before the winter.
All I can say is that the owner should be alert to potential claims against him for injuries sustained as a result of the park not being maintained in a safe and sound state. Where duties of care are involved, a court would not just look at any injuries sustained. They would consider the nature of the users when it came to considering risk and negligence.
If predominantly fragile or vulnerable people used the property and were subject to increased risk as a result of their age for example, the court would expect to see a higher level of owner awareness than that your park site owner appears to display. Whatever: the elderly cannot afford to sustain any injuries.
I am afraid it is like most things, no one does anything until there is an injury or death and then we will hear the usual mantra: ‘We must pay more attention to these issue