Texas Premises Liability Attorneys

Every Kind of Unsafe-Property Case

• Slip and fall — wet floors, broken steps, poor lighting
• Dog bites — serious animal-attack injuries
• Dram shop — bars and restaurants that overserve drunk drivers
• Drowning accidents — unsecured or unsafe pools
• Hotel injuries — negligent security and maintenance

These cases turn on evidence that disappears quickly: surveillance footage gets overwritten, hazards get repaired, witnesses scatter. Our Rapid Response Investigation Team documents the scene before the property owner's insurance company controls the story.

"They worked very diligently and efficiently to ensure I got the maximum amount coming to me."Trinity Zook · Google Review

What Property Owners Owe You Under Texas Law

Your legal status on the property sets the owner's duty. Business visitors — customers in a store, guests at a hotel — are invitees, owed the highest duty: the owner must inspect for hidden dangers and either fix them or warn about them. Social guests are licensees, owed a warning about dangers the owner actually knows of. Even trespassers can't be intentionally harmed, and Texas's attractive nuisance doctrine protects children drawn to hazards like unfenced pools. Most injury cases turn on proving the owner knew — or should have known through reasonable inspection — about the dangerous condition. Sweep logs, maintenance records, prior incident reports, and surveillance video make or break these cases, and all of them are controlled by the defendant. We move immediately to preserve them.

Where Texans Get Hurt on Unsafe Property

Grocery store spills left unmarked, apartment stairwells with rotted supports — like the collapse that produced our $950,000 recovery — parking lots with no lighting and no security, hotel pools without barriers or supervision, and businesses that keep serving visibly intoxicated patrons who then get behind the wheel. Whether the injury happened at a big-box store in Dallas, a hotel in Tyler, or an apartment complex in Sulphur Springs, the question is the same: did the owner do what a reasonable property owner should have done?

Slip, Trip, and Fall Cases: How They're Really Won

Falls sound simple and are anything but. To win, we typically must prove the property owner had actual or constructive knowledge of the hazard — that they created the spill, knew about it, or that it existed long enough that reasonable inspection would have found it. That's why we move immediately for sweep logs and inspection schedules, surveillance footage showing how long the hazard sat there, prior incident reports proving the owner knew the area was dangerous, and employee statements before stories harden. Falls cause serious injuries — hip fractures, herniated discs, TBIs from striking the floor — and Texas juries award full value when the negligence is proven, as our $950,000 stairwell-collapse and $155,000 slip-and-fall recoveries show.

Negligent Security: When Crime Is the Landowner's Fault

Property owners who profit from inviting the public — apartment complexes, hotels, bars, parking facilities — must take reasonable steps against foreseeable crime. When an assault happens where lighting was broken, gates stood open, cameras were props, and prior crimes on the property put the owner on notice, Texas law can hold the owner liable alongside the criminal. These cases turn on foreseeability: police call logs for the address, prior incident records, and the gap between known risk and actual security. Our hotel injury and hotel assault practice handles exactly these claims.

Dog Bites and Drowning: Texas's Special Rules

Texas follows the "one bite rule" — an owner is strictly liable if they knew their dog had bitten or shown aggression before — but that's not the only path: negligent handling, leash-law violations, and letting a dangerous dog roam all support recovery even for a first bite. Homeowner's and renter's insurance typically pays these claims. Drowning cases, tragically often involving children, invoke the attractive nuisance doctrine: pool owners must fence, gate, and secure water that draws children in, and apartment and hotel pools carry heightened duties for barriers, depth markings, and supervision where promised.

Comparative Fault and the Defense Playbook

Every premises defendant argues the same things: the danger was "open and obvious," you weren't watching where you were going, your shoes were the problem, you were somewhere you shouldn't have been. Under Texas proportionate responsibility, each percentage point they pin on you cuts your recovery — and at 51%, eliminates it. We counter with the physical evidence: lighting measurements, friction testing of the floor surface, code violations, and the owner's own inspection failures. The question we put in front of every adjuster and jury is simple: what would a reasonable property owner have done, and why didn't this one do it?

Commercial Defendants, Insurance, and Why Premises Cases Pay Differently

Premises claims almost always run against insured commercial defendants: national retailers with risk-management departments, apartment REITs, hotel franchises, and their commercial general liability carriers. That changes the fight in both directions. The coverage exists to pay serious claims — CGL policies commonly carry $1 million per-occurrence limits with umbrella layers above — but the defense is professionalized: incident-report scripts designed to capture admissions, corporate representatives trained for deposition, and store-level evidence that conveniently goes missing. We litigate against these defendants constantly, and the discovery fight — corporate safety policies versus store-level reality, national incident databases showing the company knew this hazard hurts people — is where these cases are won. When the gap between written policy and actual practice is wide enough, gross negligence and exemplary damages come into play.

What to Do After an Injury on Someone Else's Property

Photograph the hazard immediately — the spill, the broken step, the dark stairwell — because it will be mopped, repaired, or relit within hours. Report the injury to management so a record exists, but give facts only: where, when, what happened, not "I should have been watching." Get names and numbers for witnesses, including employees. Seek medical care the same day and tell providers exactly how the injury occurred, because those first records anchor causation. Preserve the shoes and clothing you wore. Then contact us before the property's insurer contacts you — and before their surveillance footage, which typically overwrites on a 7-to-30-day cycle, disappears. Our preservation letter goes out the day you hire us, and in premises cases that letter is frequently the whole case.

Why Choose McKay Law for a Texas Premises Liability Claim

Premises cases are evidence races, and we're built to win them: same-day preservation letters that freeze surveillance footage before it overwrites, investigators who photograph and measure hazards before repairs erase them, and a discovery practice that pulls corporate safety policies into the light next to the store-level failures that hurt you. Our results — the $950,000 stairwell-collapse recovery for Mildred C., the $155,000 slip-and-fall recovery for Katina M., policy-limits premises recoveries like Jerry S.'s — came from exactly that work. Clients get the full McKay Law standard: free 24/7 consultation, se habla español, a staff nurse coordinating medical care, direct access to your legal team, and no fee unless we win. Whether you were hurt at a national retailer in Dallas, a hotel in Tyler, or an apartment complex in Sulphur Springs, the property owner has insurance and lawyers already working. You should too.

Children Injured on Unsafe Property

Texas law recognizes what every parent knows: children can't assess danger the way adults can. The attractive nuisance doctrine holds property owners responsible when a hazardous condition likely to draw children in — an unfenced pool, accessible construction equipment, an abandoned structure — injures a child, even though the child technically entered without permission. Apartment complexes, daycare facilities, schools, and businesses that serve families carry heightened practical duties, and cases involving injured children involve special procedural protections too: any settlement requires court approval, and recoveries are safeguarded for the child through the registry of the court or structured arrangements that mature when they do. We handle these cases with the care they demand, and we've stood with East Texas families through the hardest versions of them, including drowning losses.

Dram Shop Claims: The Bar Behind the Drunk Driver

Texas Alcoholic Beverage Code §2.02 makes a licensed establishment liable when it serves alcohol to a customer who was obviously intoxicated to the point of presenting a clear danger — and that customer then hurts or kills someone. These are premises-rooted cases we prosecute aggressively, and they matter for two reasons. Accountability: the driver made a choice, but so did the business that kept pouring. Recovery: personal auto policies rarely cover what a drunk-driving catastrophe costs, while bars and restaurants carry commercial liability coverage. Building the case means moving fast — point-of-sale receipts showing the tab, security footage of the patron's condition, server and bartender statements, TABC violation histories — before records cycle out and stories align. Our dual-defendant approach in drunk-driving injury and death cases pursues the driver and the establishment together, which is how full compensation gets reached.

Your Questions, Answered