We’ve all seen videos of fist fights that break out in bars or on the street, often at late hours and with alcohol involved. You may feel like you are safe from getting into a fight if it’s not your personality, but you never know when a drunk person is going to pick a fight with you, straight up attack you, or accidentally injure you as a bystander.
Hitting someone is physical assault, and you can file a lawsuit for this. However, you may assume that the defendant in your lawsuit will be the person that hit you, but a Sherman Oaks injury lawyer will tell you that this isn’t always the case.
It’s often easier to get financial compensation from a bar fight if you sue the bar itself. This is because of premises liability laws and the duty to protect those on a property. Owners of bars have a legal obligation to take a reasonable amount of care to monitor for hazards.
When you think of premises liability, you probably imagine slip and fall lawsuits, but you can also sue a bar for over-serving patrons if that drunk person assaulted and injured you. Over-serving someone means that the bartender gave them too many drinks until they were visibly intoxicated and belligerent. Whether the bartender kept giving them drinks or if security failed to remove them from the premises, they were negligent by allowing someone so intoxicated to stay in their bar and bother other patrons.
Both of the above situations mean that the bar or nightclub were negligent and that you can sue them for your damages. As a patron of a business, you are legally considered an invitee, which means you have the highest level of protection when it comes to getting injured on someone else’s property in Sherman Oaks.
In order to win a negligence lawsuit against the bar, restaurant, or nightclub, your attorney will have to prove that:
- The establishment failed to meet a legal duty of care to keep customers safe from hazards and risks
- This failure caused your injuries
- Your damages are reflective of the injuries you sustained during this incident
If you were in a bar fight and need to sue the owner of the bar, contact our premises liability attorneys at 424-285-5419.