If you have been victimized at a motel, shopping center, parking lot, apartment building, or office complex, it can be difficult to determine who is ultimately responsible. If your assault or accident occurred on public property, however, the business owner or landlord may be partly to blame for your injuries, especially if adequate security measures were not taken to prevent such an attack. Inadequate security invites criminal activity, such as robbery, assault, and rape and falls under New York’s premises liability laws.
The most common claims associated with inadequate security are:
- Inoperable or outdated locks on doors
- Lack of perimeter fencing
- Lack of video surveillance monitors
- Absence of security alarms
- Inadequate lighting in parking lots
- Inadequate security
- Poorly maintained landscaping
Property owners may also fail to provide adequate warnings about a known threat or prior criminal activity in the area. The security personnel may be non-existent, understaffed, poorly trained, unsupervised, unqualified, or flat out incompetent.