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One of the key components of your homeowners insurance policy is your premises liability coverage.
Premises liability involves your responsibility as a property owner to maintain safe conditions for people while on your property. As a homeowner, you can be held liable for injuries which occur in or around your home. (or in this case on your roof). If a person slips, trips, or falls as a result of a dangerous or hazardous condition, you might be considered to be fully responsible. Property owners are generally held responsible for falls as a result of ice, snow or wet surfaces. Any abrupt changes in flooring, holes, protrusions, sharp corners, debris, poor lighting, or a hidden hazard. How much responsibility you have often depends on the nature of the visitor who is injured.

Invitees

Where a homeowner, by express or implied invitation, induces or leads others to come upon the premises for any lawful purpose, a duty to exercise ordinary care arises to keep the premises safe. The invitation may be express, implied from known and customary use of portions of the premises, or inferred from conduct actually known to the homeowner. Workers or contractors are typically considered invitees.
Licensees

A licensee is a person who has no contractual relation with the owner of the premises but is permitted, expressly or implicitly, to go on the premises. A social guest at a residence is normally considered a licensee. The homeowner is liable to a licensee only for willful or wanton injury. It is usually willful or wanton not to exercise ordinary care to prevent injuring a licensee who is actually known to be, or is reasonably expected to be, within the range of a dangerous act or condition.
Trespassers

Surprising to many homeowners is the fact that a duty is also owed to those without permission to be on the premises. A trespasser is a person who enters the premises of another without express or implied permission of the owner, for the trespasser’s own benefit or amusement. The duty of the owner to a trespasser is not to prepare pitfalls or traps for the trespasser nor to injure the trespasser purposely. Once the owner is aware of the trespasser’s presence or can reasonably anticipate such presence from the circumstances, (EVIDENCE of skateboarders in an unfinished swimming pool would fall into this category) then the owner has a duty to exercise ordinary care to avoid injuring the trespasser.

Homeowner’s Insurance policies cover this form of legal liability in the event that anyone suffers an injury while on the insured property. The extent of your liability, and the extent of your coverage will have a lot to do with what category Santa falls into. Since he is bringing you presents for your kids, and is clearly on your property for your benefit rather than his own, he is clearly not a trespasser. If you are Jewish, Muslim or staunchly secular and don’t believe in Santa, you might have a clearer shot at having your carrier classify him as a trespasser.

If Santa is like a meter reader, he is welcome to come onto your property for his own benefit and on his own schedule. He’s not there because you invited him, but because it comes with the job. He’s the guy regulating the whole naughty/nice thing and you don’t really have much of a say. In that case, you just can’t show wanton disregard for his safety or willfully harm him. Lighting a fire in the fireplace is probably a no no. But if he trips over your rooftop inflatable reindeer and takes a tumble it probably isn’t your responsibility.

But if you put out a plate of cookies and milk, watch out. You’ve probably made Santa an invitee and you need to exercise reasonable care to provide him with a safe environment. No black ice on the roof, no hard to see cables or satellite dishes that might catch up the sleigh or the reindeer. Its up to you to make sure that he can enter and leave safely.

Generally, even if you do have liability for an injury to a visitor, if you have reasonable homeowner’s insurance your are going to be covered under your premises liability coverage. If you aren’t sure about your coverage, check out our homeowners insurance quote system here.

And remember, even if you do get sued by Santa Claus, your insurance carrier probably has a responsibility to defend you in courth. Its one of the Clauses in your policy.

Read more about premises liability coverage here

Or Track Santa here.

Categories: Features, Humor, Insurance
Tags: homeowner insurance, personal liability insurance, personal property insurance, premises coverage, premises liability insurance, santa claus