30 THE QUEENS COURIER • SEPTEMBER 7, 2017 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM
THE STRIP MALL
Q: My coworker and I got to the parking lot. It had been plowed, but
we needed to remove some leftover snow in order to open the gate to our
customer’s dumpster. After we had emptied and pushed it back, we started
walking out. After a couple of steps, I slipped and fell on black ice, in the area
that we had just shoveled.
This was at 11:00 p.m. There had been no precipitation since 4 a.m.
The property has two tenants. The other one has a separate dumpster area
next to our customer’s, with a common divider fence, but two separate gates.
Our customer would have its own contractor do the snow plowing.
A: It seems that the hazardous condition had been present for at least
nineteen hours. If the snow and ice would have been completely removed and
the parking lot surface would have been salted, the snow and ice condition
would not have been present.
Your attorney will argue that the landlord had a nondelegable duty
to provide the public with reasonably safe premises and a safe means of
ingress and egress. Your attorney also will argue that, like the owner, your
customer had a duty to keep the property in a reasonably safe condition: that
a tenant has a duty to remove dangerous or defective conditions, even though
the landlord may have explicitly agreed in the lease to maintain the premises
and keep them in good repair.