Premises Liability Lawyer Baytown, TX
If you’ve been hurt on someone else’s property in or around Baytown, whether at a grocery store, a restaurant, an apartment complex, a hotel, a parking lot, a worksite, or a private home, you are facing a claims process that is narrower and harder than most people expect. Premises liability in Texas is not simply a matter of proving that a hazard existed. Whether you’re eligible for compensation depends on the status of the property, what the property owner actually knew or should have known, how long the hazard had been present, and whether the harm was foreseeable. You need a strong legal advocate to help ensure your rights are protected.
At Greenberg Streich Injury Lawyers, we’ve handled serious injury and death cases across Texas for more than a decade, including matters arising from dangerous property conditions, inadequate security, and catastrophic falls. We regularly secure seven and eight-figure outcomes in matters where a property owner’s conduct contributed to a catastrophic injury. Our firm represents injured people and their families, not property owners, managers, or their insurance carriers. Every case is on contingency. No retainer, no hourly billing, no fee unless we recover.
If you need a Baytown, TX premises liability lawyer whom people and families can trust with a serious case, we are ready to listen and move quickly. Call us today to get started.
Why Choose Greenberg Streich Injury Lawyers for Premises Liability Cases in Baytown, TX?
Trial Experience in Serious Premises Cases
Co-founder Matt Greenberg has practiced personal injury law for 12 years and has served as lead trial counsel in cases that produced record-setting verdicts and settlements in catastrophic injury matters across Texas. He earned his J.D. at Baylor Law School and has been recognized by Super Lawyers, Lawdragon, and the National Trial Lawyers.
Mike Streich has handled personal injury cases in Baytown, TX for 13 years. He graduated cum laude from the Houston Law Center and is a member of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association. Before moving to the plaintiff side, Mike spent close to a decade defending corporations and insurance syndicates, including members of Lloyd’s of London, in premises, commercial vehicle, and catastrophic injury claims. That background gives him a working knowledge of how large property owners and their carriers investigate incidents, assign contractor fault, and decide when to settle.
Results That Property Owners Recognize
Our attorneys have recovered over $375 million for clients across Texas. Alongside the outcomes noted above, our case results include a $37.5 million Dallas County wrongful death verdict against a utility operator whose property conditions contributed to a fatal incident, and a $7.75 million mid-trial settlement in an industrial amputation matter tied to dangerous machinery on a worksite.
Contingency Fee Representation
Injured visitors and tenants should not be paying retainer checks while managing surgery and rehabilitation. Our firm advances investigation costs, scene preservation, surveillance footage subpoenas, maintenance record retrieval, and, where appropriate, crime grid and foreseeability analysis in inadequate security cases. Our attorney fees come out of the recovery only if we win.
Client Feedback
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “From the first phone call, Matt Greenberg and his team made me feel like I was their only client. They listened, they explained every step, and they fought hard against a well-funded defense. The outcome changed my family’s life.”
Maxine Dickey
Read more reviews on our Google Business Profile.
Types of Premises Liability Cases We Handle in Baytown
Premises liability in Baytown reaches a wide range of properties and events. Our firm handles the most serious categories of claims.
- Slip, trip, and fall cases. Wet floors, broken tile, uneven pavement, unmarked transitions, and inadequate lighting regularly produce fractures, head injuries, and lasting impairment.
- Inadequate security and negligent security. Apartment complexes, hotels, parking lots, and retail properties with a known history of violent crime have a duty to take reasonable steps to protect invitees. Assaults, robberies, and shootings on inadequately secured premises can support claims against the property owner and manager.
- Dangerous stairs, railings, and walkways. Failures of guardrails, steps, handrails, and code-required protections produce catastrophic fall injuries, including serious traumatic brain injury.
- Swimming pool and drowning cases. Inadequate fencing, broken gates, unsecured pool covers, and missing safety equipment produce drowning and near-drowning events, particularly involving children.
- Apartment complex injuries. Broken balconies, defective locks, mold, carbon monoxide, gas leaks, and fire-protection failures produce significant cases, including wrongful death claims.
- Retail, restaurant, and grocery store injuries. High-foot-traffic spills, falling merchandise, and dangerous fixtures cause some of the highest-volume premises claims.
- Parking lot injuries. Unmarked wheel stops, inadequate lighting, uneven surfaces, and pedestrian strikes lead to serious injuries. Many of these overlap with car accident claims.
- Hotel and short-term rental injuries. Defective bathtubs, broken fixtures, bedbug exposure, and negligent security incidents in hotels and rental properties result in significant claims.
- School, church, and daycare injuries. Unsafe playground equipment, inadequate supervision, and hazardous grounds lead to injuries that carry lifelong consequences for children.
- Construction and worksite injuries. Construction accident and workplace injury claims frequently include a parallel premises claim against a non-employer property owner.
- Industrial and plant injuries. Refinery accidents, explosion accidents, and oilfield accidents often include a premises liability component against a non-employer operator.
- Dog bite and animal attack injuries. Texas applies a one-bite-plus-negligence rule, and property owners may also be liable for failure to maintain secure enclosures.
- Defective product interactions. Dangerous fixtures, HVAC systems, elevators, and escalators on a property can give rise to both premises and product claims.
- Fire, burn, and explosion events. Fires in apartments, hotels, and commercial buildings often result in burn injuries due to fire code, smoke detector, and egress failures.
Texas Legal Requirements for Premises Liability Claims
Premises liability cases apply a specific Texas framework on top of the general personal injury rules. A handful of doctrines frame most files.
Visitor status. Texas premises liability turns on the plaintiff’s status. An invitee (a customer or paying guest on property open to the public) is owed the highest duty, including inspection and warning of hazards the owner knew or should have known about. A licensee (a social guest) is owed a more limited duty to warn of known hazards. A trespasser is generally owed only a duty to refrain from causing willful injury, with narrow exceptions. Your status on the property often drives the entire case.
Notice of the hazard. For invitee cases, the plaintiff typically must show that the property owner actually knew or should have known of the hazard. Evidence of how long the hazard was present, prior similar incidents, and maintenance practices are central.
Statute of limitations. Under Section 16.003 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, most personal injury and wrongful death claims must be filed within two years. The steps taken after a serious accident often determine how strong a premises case becomes, because surveillance footage and maintenance records are frequently overwritten within days.
Modified comparative negligence. Texas uses a 51 percent bar rule under CPRC Chapter 33. If a jury finds the injured person more than 50 percent at fault, the injured person recovers nothing. At 50 percent or less, the recovery is reduced by the assigned share. Defendants routinely argue that a visible hazard was open and obvious.
Recreational Use Statute. Under Chapter 75 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code, landowners who make property available for recreational use enjoy limited liability unless the plaintiff can show gross negligence, malicious intent, or bad faith.
Texas Tort Claims Act. When the property belongs to a governmental unit, claims are subject to the notice and caps under Chapter 101, with notice windows often as short as 30 to 90 days under city charters.
Injury data context. CDC injury data and CDC fall prevention resources identify falls as a leading cause of unintentional injury across all age groups, and BLS occupational injury data confirms falls and struck-by events are among the top sources of workplace injury.
What Damages Are Recoverable in a Baytown Premises Liability Case?
Texas law allows injured people and their families to pursue three broad categories of damages in a premises liability case. The appropriate mix depends on the severity of the injury, the defendant’s conduct, and whether the property owner is a private or governmental entity.
Economic damages. These include past and future medical bills, surgery, rehabilitation, assistive devices, home and vehicle modifications, lost wages, lost earning capacity, and, in fatal cases, funeral and burial costs. People who have been catastrophically injured frequently require a life care planner, a vocational analyst, and a forensic economist to accurately project future costs.
Non-economic damages. Texas law permits recovery for physical pain, mental anguish, disfigurement, physical impairment, and loss of enjoyment of life. In fatal cases, surviving spouses, children, and parents may recover for loss of companionship, consortium, and household services under Texas’s wrongful death and survival statutes.
Exemplary (punitive) damages. Under CPRC Chapter 41, a jury may award exemplary damages when the evidence shows gross negligence, fraud, or malice by clear and convincing evidence. In premises cases, gross negligence could be a documented history of identical hazards, a pattern of ignoring tenant complaints, a knowing decision to defer critical maintenance, or indifference to reported violent crime on the property. Exemplary damages are generally not available against governmental defendants, and statutory caps apply.
Contact Greenberg Streich Injury Lawyers
A serious premises injury can end a career, upend a family’s finances, and reshape what independence looks like for years to come. You deserve a firm that takes the case as seriously as you do. Our attorneys will listen carefully, review the evidence, and give you an honest assessment of your options, including whether a lawsuit is the right next step.
Consultations about your case with Greenberg Streich Injury Lawyers are free. You pay nothing unless we recover money for you. We respond to calls and form submissions promptly, and we can meet in person, by phone, or by video, whichever works best for you.
Contact us today to speak with a premises liability lawyer about what happened and what comes next.
