Personal Injury Lawyer, Manasquan NJ

Yes. A landlord who rents a house for the season owes the tenants a property that is reasonably safe, which covers a stair, railing, deck or walkway the owner knew was failing or would have found on a reasonable inspection, and a repair the owner did badly. A clause in a residential lease that tries to excuse the landlord's own negligence is generally unenforceable in New Jersey, so do not assume the fine print ends the claim. What wins these cases is notice: the text or email you sent about the loose tread, the earlier tenant's complaint, the rental agent's inspection sheet. Save every message about the house, get treated, and bring us what you wrote to the owner.

Not PIP. The no-fault coverage in N.J.S.A. 39:6A-4 applies only when a vehicle was involved, so a fall on a rental stair, a beach-block sidewalk or the inlet walkway is billed to your own health insurance, and the property owner's insurer does not have to pay anything before the claim is resolved. Some homeowner's policies carry a small medical-payments benefit that pays regardless of fault, which is worth asking about. Use your health plan, keep every bill and explanation of benefits, and tell us who paid, because some plans, Medicare and Medicaid among them, have to be repaid out of a recovery, and that has to be sorted out before the case closes.

It depends on what you were hurt on, more than on where. The Tort Claims Act largely immunizes a public body for the condition of unimproved ground, N.J.S.A. 59:4-8, which reaches the sand and much of what is natural at the inlet, so a fall on the beach alone is a hard claim. The paved inlet walkway, its railings, lighting and steps are improved public property, and a claim under N.J.S.A. 59:4-2 exists where a dangerous condition existed, the entity knew or should have known of it, and its failure to act was palpably unreasonable. Either way the ninety-day notice of claim is due, so tell us exactly where you fell and we will say which rule applies.

Usually, yes. New Jersey does not bar a pedestrian's claim because the crossing was outside a crosswalk; it applies comparative fault under N.J.S.A. 2A:15-5.1, so your recovery is reduced by the share of blame assigned to you and lost only if that share is more than half, and a driver on a crowded beach street is still required to watch for the people obviously about to cross it. What decides the share is evidence: the crash report and its diagram, where the nearest marked crosswalk was, any summons the driver was given, and the account of the witnesses on the same curb. Get treated the same day, get the report number, and send us the driver's insurance information before that insurer calls you.

You pay nothing to start and nothing at all unless the case recovers money. The fee is a percentage of what we recover, we walk you through that percentage before you sign, and the consultation costs nothing. Cost should never be the reason someone with a real injury never asks the question, so send us a few lines about what happened and an attorney will answer the same day.