For a business owner, legal liability can flow from any number of places.  The very act of opening a business and inviting in the public creates special duties for the property owner. 

•  A marina customer suffers burns after gas leaks into his boat during fueling.
•  A family is thrown to a rocky hillside when a deck collapses at a rental villa.
•  A customer at a grocery store slips on a forgotten chunk of food.

These cases – often referred to as Premises Liability cases – are filed everyday in the Territory’s Courts.  Some are get-rich-quick schemes and some are rock-solid-tragedies.  Most are somewhere in the middle.  People do slip and people do fall.  It has happened to every one of us.  That doesn’t mean, of course, that every fall is a lawsuit.  It is the job of the attorney to be able to assess the legal case; determine the rules that apply; and assess the possibility of prevailing within that matrix. 

Just like liability can flow from many different places, so can success.

• Sometimes victory comes from the Court: Judge grants summary judgment because it is convinced that the marina did not violate any legal duty to its customer.
•  Sometimes the victory comes from the Plaintiff:  Plaintiff’s attorney agrees to dismiss the travel agent who booked the stay at the house where the deck collapsed because he has sued the wrong person.
• Sometimes the victory comes from the Client:  The client agrees to settle a suit for a known amount rather than face the unknown prospect of an award from a very liberal Virgin Islands jury.

 It’s not the lawyer’s job to always go to trial.  It’s not even the litigator’s job to always go to trial.  It is the litigator’s job to assess the facts; advise the client; and achieve the result.