Picture leaving a restaurant in Greenville after dinner when your foot caught on a poorly lit step. The next thing you remember is waking up in the hospital with a serious head injury, leaving you with months of recovery, mounting medical bills, and uncertainty about your future.
Property owners in South Carolina have a legal responsibility to maintain reasonably safe conditions for visitors. When dangerous stair conditions cause injuries, the property owner may be liable for damages. Our Anderson premises liability lawyers will evaluate your situation and help you understand whether you have grounds to pursue compensation.
What Makes a Stairway Dangerous?
Falling down stairs doesn’t necessarily result in legal liability. The property owner must have created or allowed a hazardous situation to exist. Common dangerous conditions include:
- Poor lighting that makes it difficult to see steps clearly
- Missing or broken handrails that provide stability
- Worn or damaged steps with crumbling concrete or torn carpeting
- Wet or slippery surfaces from rain or spills
- Missing warning signs about known hazards
Evidence that stairs violated building codes can be persuasive, but in South Carolina, it's not negligence per se. Rather, it's admissible as evidence of negligence. OSHA standards mainly regulate employers and employees and don't create a private lawsuit, though cited violations can sometimes support the showing of negligence in workplace contexts.
Types of Visitors in South Carolina Premises Liability Law
South Carolina law requires property owners to maintain reasonably safe conditions, but the specific duty owed depends on why you were on the property.
Invitees
Invitees receive the highest level of protection. They are invited onto property for business purposes, such as customers, clients, or restaurant patrons. Property owners must use reasonable care to keep premises safe for invitees and must warn them about dangers that aren't obvious.
Licensees
Licensees are social guests who enter property for their own purposes rather than for the property owner's benefit. A friend visiting your apartment would be a licensee. Property owners must warn licensees about hidden dangers they actually know about.
Trespassers
Trespassers receive minimal protection. Property owners generally don't owe trespassers a duty of care. The main exception is that they cannot willfully injure trespassers or set traps.
How to Prove Property Owner Negligence
You must establish four key elements to succeed in a South Carolina premises liability claim.
- The property owner must have owed you a duty of care based on your visitor status.
- The owner breached that duty by creating the dangerous condition, knowing about it and doing nothing, or failing to discover it through reasonable inspection.
- You must prove causation between the breach and your fall. Documentation is critical. Photos of the stairs, witness statements, incident reports, and medical records all help establish this connection.
- You must demonstrate actual damages.
South Carolina law allows recovery for medical expenses, lost wages, pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, and, in rare cases involving particularly reckless behavior by private defendants, punitive damages.
Injury Claims Against the Government
If your fall occurred on public property, different rules apply. Under South Carolina's Tort Claims Act, damages are capped at $300,000 per person or $600,000 per occurrence, and punitive damages aren't available against government entities.
The Notice Requirement in South Carolina
To prove liability, you must show the property owner knew or should have known about the dangerous condition. South Carolina law requires either actual notice or constructive notice.
Actual Notice
Actual notice means the owner had direct knowledge of the hazard. Perhaps multiple customers complained about a wobbly handrail, or an employee reported torn carpeting on the stairs.
Constructive Notice
Constructive notice means the hazard existed long enough or was so obvious that the owner should have discovered it through reasonable inspection. For example, water pooling on stairs for several hours with regular employee traffic creates constructive notice. The property owner can't claim ignorance when basic maintenance and inspection would have revealed the problem.
How Comparative Fault Affects Your Accident Claim
South Carolina follows a modified comparative negligence rule with the 51% bar standard. This means if you are found more than 50% at fault for your accident, you cannot recover any damages. If you're partially at fault but less than 51% responsible, your compensation is reduced by your percentage of fault.
For example, if a jury awards you $100,000 but finds you 30% responsible for the accident because you were texting while walking down the stairs, your recovery would be reduced to $70,000. However, if the jury determines you were 60% at fault, you would receive nothing.
Common factors that affect fault percentages in premises liability claims involving falling down stairs include:
- Running on stairs
- Being intoxicated
- Ignoring clearly posted warning signs
- Failing to use available handrails
The Open and Obvious Defense
Property owners often argue that hazards were so obvious that a reasonable person would have avoided them. South Carolina law recognizes this "open and obvious" defense, which can reduce or eliminate liability.
That said, South Carolina courts have sometimes held that property owners may still have a duty to anticipate harm even from obvious dangers, particularly when the property owner knows visitors are likely to encounter the hazard despite its visibility. The success of this defense depends on the specific circumstances of each case.
Filing Deadlines for Personal Injury Cases
Under Section 15-3-530 of the South Carolina Code of Laws, you generally have three years from the date of your injury to file a premises liability lawsuit against private defendants. Miss this statute of limitations, and you lose your right to compensation.
If your fall occurred on public property, different rules apply. Under South Carolina's Tort Claims Act, you generally have two years to sue. If you file a verified claim within one year of discovering the loss, the deadline extends to three years. There's also a 180-day waiting period after filing a verified claim before you can file suit.
The statute of limitations may be extended for minors or incapacitated persons through tolling provisions. Because these rules can be complicated and the deadlines strict, consulting with a South Carolina personal injury attorney promptly after your accident protects your rights.
Legal Representation Matters
Property owners rarely admit fault voluntarily. Their insurance companies employ teams of adjusters and attorneys whose job is to minimize payouts. They'll argue that you were at fault, that the condition wasn't dangerous, that they didn't have notice of the problem, or that your injuries aren't serious.
An experienced Anderson premises liability lawyer understands how to investigate stair accident cases thoroughly. We can identify code violations, gather evidence before it disappears, and prove notice requirements. We also understand the full value of your claim and won't let you settle for less than you deserve.
In one matter handled by Pracht Injury Lawyers, a client suffered a traumatic brain injury after falling down stairs while leaving a restaurant. The matter resolved for $1,150,000. This result depends heavily on that specific case's facts and does not guarantee similar outcomes in future claims. However, it demonstrates that South Carolina courts take premises liability seriously when property owners neglect their duty to maintain safe conditions.