It is incumbent upon claim professionals to thoroughly investigate and uniformly adjudicate all claims and obtain specific evidence supporting all of the allegations. When handling premises liability claims, this will involve discerning whether a land owner or the party contracted to provide services to a land owner is liable for the losses being presented. Although obtaining specific substantiating evidence is crucial when processing all claims, it is arguably more important when handling premises liability claims. Because it is relatively easy for a party to make this type of claim, it requires extra vigilance on the part of the claim professional.

The duty or the standard of care owed to business invitees is higher than that owed to licensees and trespassers. Thus, land owners must exercise reasonable care in maintaining their properties. Black's Law Dictionary defines an invitee as one who is “on land of another if 1) he enters by invitation, express or implied; 2) his entry is connected with the owner's business or with an activity the owner conducts or permits to be conducted on his land; and 3) there is mutuality of benefit or benefit to the owner.” In every negligence-based or civil tort claim, determining whether a party is negligent hinges on the answers to four basic questions:

• Is a legal duty owed to the injured party?
• Was there a breach of the duty owed?
• Did an injury occur?
• If an injury occurred, is there a causal connection between a breach of duty and the injury?

If the answer to these questions is “yes,” then the land owner may indeed be negligent. However, determining a breach of duty requires careful evaluation. In making a determination as to whether there was a breach of the duty owed, the examiner must decide if the land owner's conduct was reasonable and if the lookout maintained by the claimant was reasonable as well. These factors must be weighed in order to gauge the extent of one's negligence or the degree to which one's claim may be barred or diminished by the degree of comparative fault.