Legal Question in Personal Injury in Pennsylvania

Re: property liability

In my opinion, your first concern is to make sure the property is adequately insured. If it is, you protect your assets regardless of what happens on the property.

But by placing the sign, you are helping yourself in any potential claim by making clear that entrants to the land are trespassers. However, believe it or not, land owners still have some duties to trespassers. Below is a short summary of those duties:

Trespassers

A trespasser is someone who is not authorized to be on the property or enters the land without the owner's permission. Landowners and occupiers have no duty to undiscovered trespassers. If a property owner discovers a trespasser on the property, he or she has a duty to use ordinary care to warn the trespasser or, to make safe, artificial conditions that the property owner knows involve a risk of death or serious bodily injury that the trespasser is not likely to discover. Also, if an owner knows, or should know, that there are frequent trespassers on his or her property, he or she will be liable for their injuries caused by an unsafe condition on the property if: (1) the condition is one the owner created or maintained; (2) the condition was likely to cause death or serious bodily harm; (3) the condition was such that the owner had reason to believe trespassers would not discover it; and, (4) the owner failed to exercise reasonable care to warn trespassers of the condition and the risk presented.