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Premises Liability Attorneys for Tarrant County
Holding property owners to what the law requires
Injured on Someone Else’s Property in Fort Worth?
Before anyone argues about a wet floor or a broken stair, Texas law asks a quieter question that decides your whole case: why were you on the property?
Your legal status at that moment, customer or guest or uninvited visitor, sets the exact duty the owner owed you, and a Fort Worth premises liability lawyer starts there because the insurer certainly will.
Property owners and their insurers know this rule cold. If they can label you a mere guest instead of a customer, the duty they owed shrinks and so does your claim. Slip and fall gets all the attention, yet premises cases cover far more, from apartment stairwells to parking lot assaults to a pool a child should never have reached.
The consultation is free, and you pay nothing unless we win. Call (512) 254-4424 at any hour to talk it through.
Our Fort Worth Premises Liability Lawyer
Legally reviewed by Matthew Kotzen
A former insurance-defense trial attorney, Matthew Kotzen spent the early part of his career representing insurance companies before switching sides to fight for injured people. He earned his J.D. from the Walter F. George School of Law at Mercer University, is a Lifetime Member of Best Attorneys of America, and is admitted to the State Bar of Texas.
“I spent years building cases for insurance companies. Now I use that same playbook to make sure they pay what they actually owe.”
Goldberg & Loren Fights for Maximum Compensation
Pay Nothing, Unless We Win
Texas Injury Law at a Glance
| Deadline to file a lawsuit | Two years from the date of the injury. Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003 |
| Fault rule | Modified comparative responsibility ("51% bar"): you recover only if you are 50% or less at fault, and your award is reduced by your share. §§ 33.001, 33.012 |
| What the property owner owed you | Depends on your visitor status (invitee, licensee, or trespasser); on government property the duty is usually the one owed a licensee. Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 101.022 |
| Bar / alcohol-provider liability | A provider can share liability for serving someone who was obviously intoxicated. Tex. Alco. Bev. Code § 2.02 |
Your Legal Status on the Property Drives the Claim
Every premises case runs through one gate first. Texas sorts visitors into categories, each with a different level of protection, and the attorneys at Goldberg & Loren pin down your status early because a claim built on the wrong category is a claim built to fail.
This is where insurers do their quiet work, nudging the story so you sound like a social guest rather than a paying customer the business had a duty to protect.
Invitee, Licensee, and Trespasser and the Duty Each Is Owed
An invitee is someone on the property for the owner’s business benefit, like a shopper or a tenant paying rent, and gets the highest protection, including a duty to inspect for hidden dangers and either fix them or warn about them.
A licensee is a social guest present with permission but not for the owner’s business, owed a lesser duty mainly to warn about known dangers. A trespasser gets the least, usually only a duty not to be injured willfully, wantonly, or by gross negligence. On government property the duty is usually the lower one owed a licensee (§ 101.022).
The gap between these categories is wide, so the first question in any case is which hat you were wearing when you got hurt.
Why Stores and Landlords Argue You Were Only a Licensee
A defense insurer may argue a customer who slips had wandered into a staff-only area, or was there to use the restroom rather than shop, anything to knock you down from invitee to licensee, because the lower your status, the less the owner had to do to keep you safe.
We answer with proof of why you were really there: a receipt, a loyalty scan, or the store’s own security video showing you browsing aisles can lock in invitee status and keep the full duty to inspect and warn on the table.
The Notice Rule That Decides Slip and Fall Cases
Slip and fall claims rarely turn on whether you fell. They turn on whether the owner knew, or should have known, about the hazard in time to fix it. Texas calls this the notice requirement, and it is where most grocery and retail cases are won or lost.
A puddle that appeared thirty seconds before you stepped in it is a very different case from a puddle that sat for an hour while employees walked past.
Actual Versus Constructive Knowledge of the Hazard
Actual knowledge means the owner truly knew about the danger, like an employee who saw the spill and left it. Constructive knowledge means the hazard existed long enough that a reasonable owner should have found it, and an employee simply being nearby is not enough (Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Reece, 81 S.W.3d 812 (Tex. 2002)).
A spill with dried edges, cart tracks, or footprints tells a story about how long it sat, and we build that timeline because it turns a simple fall into a provable failure to inspect.
Sweep Logs, Camera Angles, and How Long the Spill Sat There
Sweep logs show when an aisle was last checked, and a log that should show a fifteen-minute cycle but shows a two-hour gap is powerful evidence, though it usually surfaces only when a lawyer demands it.
Retail camera systems overwrite themselves, often within days, so the clip showing a spill sitting untouched for forty minutes can be gone before an injured shopper even thinks about a lawyer.
A written preservation demand stops the overwrite; we send one immediately after taking a case, naming the cameras and the time window, so the best evidence survives.
Apartment Complex Injuries We Handle
Fort Worth has no shortage of large apartment communities, and tenants are invitees who paid for a safe place to live.
When a landlord lets common areas fall apart, the injuries that follow are the landlord’s responsibility, and stairwells, parking lots, laundry rooms, and gates serve every resident, so a single ignored hazard can injure many people over time.
Broken Gates, Dark Stairwells, and Balcony Failures
A broken security gate, a stairwell with burned-out lights, a loose handrail, or a rotting balcony can turn an ordinary evening into an emergency room visit, and landlords often know about these problems long before anyone gets hurt, through maintenance requests and tenant complaints.
Balcony and stair collapses deserve special attention because wood rot and rusted supports do not fail overnight, so a collapse usually reflects months or years of neglect that inspections would have caught. We pull work orders, inspection records, and tenant complaints to show the landlord knew and chose not to act.
How Negligent Security Claims Hold Venues Accountable
Some of the hardest premises cases involve a crime that a property could have prevented. When a business invites the public into a space it knows is dangerous and does nothing to protect them, it can share responsibility for an assault that follows. This is negligent security, and it turns on foreseeability.
The owner is not automatically liable; the crime must have been foreseeable. These are the signs a property should have known trouble was likely.
- Prior assaults, robberies, or shootings on the property or right next to it.
- A documented history of police calls to the same address.
- Broken or missing exterior lighting that left dark corners.
- Broken gates, locks, or fencing that let anyone wander in.
- Absent, undertrained, or understaffed security during high-risk hours.
- Ignored complaints from tenants, patrons, or employees about safety.
Each of those facts helps prove the danger was foreseeable and the response inadequate, and the remedy is often something the owner could have done cheaply: a working light, a locked gate, or one trained guard during the late hours can prevent an assault, and a jury notices when a business chose to skip the obvious fix.
Assaults in the Stockyards and West 7th Entertainment Districts
Fort Worth’s nightlife draws big crowds to the Stockyards, West 7th, and Sundance Square, and packed bars and parking lots create predictable risk. When a venue skimps on lighting or guards to save money, patrons pay the price. We move fast to get incident reports, staffing schedules, and camera footage from the venue and its neighbors.
The strongest cases show a pattern: police call histories and prior incident reports prove the same property saw violence before your attack, and a property with a long record of violence and a single unarmed guard has a foreseeability problem it cannot easily explain away.
Swimming Pool and Child Injury Claims
Children do not weigh risk the way adults do, and Texas law recognizes that reality. A property owner cannot leave an obvious lure for kids and then blame the child for being drawn to it, and Fort Worth’s long hot summers make pools a year-round concern.
The Attractive Nuisance Rule When Children Are Involved
The attractive nuisance doctrine can hold an owner responsible when a dangerous feature likely to attract children, like an unfenced pool, injures a child who wandered onto the property.
Even though the child was technically trespassing, the law asks whether the owner took reasonable steps to keep kids out, and a missing fence or an unlatched gate often answers that question.
Pools carry the highest stakes because a near-drowning can cause lifelong brain injury, and the cost of that care dwarfs the price of the fence or self-latching gate that would have prevented the tragedy. We examine whether the owner met fencing and barrier requirements and whether a simple safeguard would have stopped the harm.
Injuries on City and County Property
Getting hurt on public property changes the rules, and not in the injured person’s favor. A dangerous condition at a city park, a county building, or a public facility can support a claim, but government defendants get special protection, and the biggest catch is a short deadline most people never see coming.
Premise Defects Under the Tort Claims Act and the Notice Deadline
The Texas Tort Claims Act allows a claim against a government body for a dangerous premise defect, where the duty is usually the one owed a licensee (§ 101.022), and it comes with a tight notice requirement of six months (§ 101.101), which some cities shorten further through their own charters.
Miss that window and the claim is barred no matter how badly you were hurt. The Act also limits what the government pays, so the safest move after an injury on public property is to get advice quickly rather than waiting to see how you heal.
What a Premises Liability Claim Is Worth
Value depends on the injury, the available coverage, and how clearly the owner’s fault can be proven. A commercial property with strong liability coverage looks very different from a capped government claim, and an honest assessment names those limits.
Medical Costs, Lost Income, and Long-Term Impairment
A serious premises injury drives emergency care, surgery, and months of rehabilitation, and those bills belong in your claim. Lost wages stack on top, and a fall that shatters a hip or a wrist can end a career that depends on standing or lifting, so that lost future income is often the largest piece of the claim.
Texas uses modified comparative fault, so the insurer will try to assign part of the blame to you, capping your recovery only if your share exceeds 50% and otherwise reducing it by your percentage (§§ 33.001, 33.012). We track the two-year deadline (§ 16.003) so the claim never lapses.
Hold the Property Owner to Account With a Fort Worth Premises Liability Lawyer
If you were hurt on someone else’s property in Fort Worth, the evidence that proves your case is already starting to disappear. Camera footage loops over, sweep logs get filed away, and repairs erase the very hazard that injured you, so acting early is how you keep the proof that owners and insurers would rather see vanish.
Our firm brings decades of experience to premises cases, and you pay nothing unless we secure a recovery. We will establish your legal status, prove the owner knew about the danger, and demand the records before they are gone.
You do not need to know whether you were an invitee or a licensee before you call; sorting that out is our job. The free consultation carries no obligation, and a real person answers 24 hours a day. Reach a Fort Worth premises liability lawyer at (512) 254-4424, or send the details through our contact page.
Property Injury Questions We Get Asked
Property cases turn on details people rarely think to record at the time. These are the questions we field most from injured visitors, tenants, and shoppers around Tarrant County. Every consultation is free.
Did I Have to Tell My Landlord About the Hazard First?
For a repair claim against a landlord, usually yes. A residential landlord’s duty to fix a condition is triggered by notice from the tenant, and the tenant must not be behind on rent when the notice is given (Tex. Prop. Code § 92.052). A dated text message or emailed maintenance request is worth more later than any phone call nobody wrote down.
Who Pays My Medical Bills While a Property Case Is Pending?
Often nobody, until the case resolves, which surprises people. There is no automatic medical payment coverage on someone else’s property the way there can be after a car wreck. A hospital that admitted you within 72 hours can attach a lien to your claim instead (Tex. Prop. Code § 55.002), capped at half of what you eventually recover (§ 55.004).
Negotiating those liens down is part of the work
How Long Does a Premises Case Usually Take?
Often a year or more. Of 386,193 Texas civil cases disposed in fiscal year 2024, 96,182 had been pending longer than 18 months (Texas Office of Court Administration). Premises cases run long because the owner controls the evidence, and incident reports and camera footage have to be pried loose before anything else can happen.
Legal Sources & References
The Texas laws described on this page are cited to the official statutes published by the Texas Legislature and were last reviewed on August 15, 2026.
- Statute of limitations (2 years), Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003
- Comparative responsibility & reduction, Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code §§ 33.001, 33.012
- Premises-defect duty on government property, Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 101.022
- Dram Shop Act, Tex. Alco. Bev. Code § 2.02
- Texas crash data, Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT)
Goldberg & Loren
211 Ranch Rd 620 S, Suite #230
Lakeway, TX 78734
(512) 254-4424
A fall case turns on how long that hazard sat there and who walked past it, and I have tried enough of them to know it. Sweep logs, camera angles and incident reports answer that question far better than anyone’s memory.