Personal Injury Lawyer, Long Beach Township NJ

Start with the owner, then look at who else had a hand in the house. An owner who rents out a house by the week owes the people staying in it reasonable care, and New Jersey courts have not limited a short-term vacation landlord's responsibility to the problems he happened to know of. A realty office that only booked the week usually did not take on maintenance, but one that managed the property, arranged repairs or did the pre-season walk-through may share responsibility, and so may a contractor who built or patched the stairs. The lease and the management agreement settle most of that. Send us the lease, the agency's emails and your photographs.

No, the repair by itself cannot be used to prove the owner was careless. New Jersey's evidence rule on later repairs, N.J.R.E. 407, keeps them away from the jury on the question of fault, so that owners are not discouraged from fixing hazards. The repair can still come in for other purposes, such as showing that the owner, and not the agency, controlled the stairs. What proves the danger is the step as it was: your photographs, earlier complaints from other renters, and the invoice describing what was replaced. If you took no pictures, tell us quickly, because the contractor who did the work can be asked what he found.

Usually not for what the ocean did, and sometimes for what people did. The Tort Claims Act says a public entity is not liable for an injury caused by the natural condition of an unimproved beach, and a breaking wave, a current or a sandbar is exactly that. A claim that can survive is about something else: a structure the township built and let decay, a township vehicle on the sand, or the conduct of its employees, and each of those meets its own defenses under the Act. All of them require written notice of claim within 90 days under N.J.S.A. 59:8-8. Write down the beach, the street, the time and the nearest lifeguard stand, and call us.

The driver who went around the stopped car is at fault in almost every version of that crash. N.J.S.A. 39:4-36 requires a driver to stop and stay stopped for a person in a marked crosswalk, and it separately forbids overtaking a vehicle that has stopped to let a pedestrian cross. The hospital bill is an insurance question: a pedestrian's treatment is paid through PIP, by your own household's New Jersey auto policy if there is one and otherwise by the policy on the car that struck her. The claim for her injury is then made against that driver's liability insurer. The driver who stopped is your best witness, so get that name, and call us.

Yes, in limited circumstances New Jersey allows a claim against a social host. Under N.J.S.A. 2A:15-5.6 the host must have knowingly provided alcohol to an adult guest who was visibly intoxicated in the host's presence, in circumstances that created a foreseeable risk of harm, and the injury must come from that guest's driving. It is a different law from the dram shop statute, N.J.S.A. 2A:22A-1 et seq., which covers licensed bars and restaurants. A host's homeowner's or renter's liability coverage is normally what answers the claim, alongside the driver's auto policy. These cases are proved through the other guests, so write down who was there and which house it was, and call us before memories fade.