While Thanksgiving is certainly a fun time to get together with family and enjoy a lovingly prepared holiday meal, the Black Friday creep continues to invade. The Black Friday craze grips the nation every year. leading to many injuries (and even deaths), but who is liable for Black Friday injuries? While some states have Blue Laws that still prevent most stores from being open on Thanksgiving, this isn’t the case for most of the country.
Especially during economically stressful times, the crowds for Black Friday sales could practically fill the very buildings they’re shopping at to the ceiling, which can actually put some stores in legal trouble.
The concept of “premises liability” mandates that stores should keep their premises reasonably safe or customers or else be liable for slip-and-falls, falling boxes, or inadequate security. The last one becomes hugely important during Black Friday, especially as the deals get bigger and start earlier. On top of the possible physical damages of a large crowd or things like skateboards being left on the ground, the Identity Theft Resource Center, informs us the that the months of November and December peak in the reported lost and stolen wallets.
Trip and falls aren’t the only liability that stores may be taking on during the Black Friday madness. We all see the evening news videos of crazed shoppers getting into fights over the last shopping cart or TV. People get slapped, hit, pushed, and punched. In some cases, stores may still be liable for Black Friday injuries like these, too. While retailers are not automatically liable for these kinds of assaults on their premises (that would be handled as an assault case by the victim of the fight), they can still be held liable if there were not sufficient safety measures in place or if the assault was foreseeable and lack of measure contributed to it.
Thank you for visiting the Gabriella Young blog, an Austin criminal defense lawyer. We write to inform locals about law changes, events and news.