How Property Owners Get Sued for Injuries on Their Commercial Building
How does a property owner get drawn into a tenant's injury claim?
Quick answerWhen someone is injured on a leased commercial property, their lawyer typically identifies the registered owner from the title and adds them to the claim alongside the tenant. Being named in a claim is not the same as being found liable for it, but defending the claim costs real time and money either way. Two real Australian court cases show owners paying out years after they had leased the building to someone else.
You bought the building, leased it to a business, and got on with your life. You weren't there the day someone was hurt, you didn't create the day's hazard, and you may not have set foot on the site in years. None of that keeps your name off the claim. The most dangerous belief a commercial property owner can carry is that leasing out a building means leasing out the risk that comes with it. It doesn't, and this page explains exactly how a claim finds its way to an owner, so the first you hear of the mechanism isn't a solicitor's letter with your name on it.
Why does the property owner get named, not just the tenant?
Quick answerBecause identifying the registered owner of a property is a routine, public step that any competent injury lawyer runs as a matter of course. A title search takes minutes, and once the owner is identified, naming them in the claim is the ordinary first move, not an aggressive tactic.
A commercial lease creates two entities with an interest in the same building: the tenant, who runs the day-to-day business, and the owner, whose name sits on the title. When someone is hurt using that tenant's business, an injury lawyer's job is to work out who might be responsible and identify every one of them. A title search is a public, five-minute step that tells them exactly who owns the building. So the tenant gets named because they run the business, and the owner gets named because they own the asset the business operates from. That is not a loophole or an aggressive legal tactic. It is the ordinary, expected first move in almost any premises injury claim, which is exactly why "my tenant runs the place, it's their problem" is such a dangerous assumption for an owner to carry.
Getting served with a claim is not the same as losing one. Plenty of owners named in a claim are ultimately found to owe nothing. But "ultimately found to owe nothing" usually means months or years of lawyers, correspondence and stress before that finding arrives, and someone has to pay for the owner's side of that fight. That is what property owners liability cover actually buys: not a guarantee you were never at fault, but an insurer whose job is to stand in that fight on your behalf from the day the letter arrives.
This is general information about how Australian civil litigation identifies defendants. It is not legal advice about any specific claim or property.
What's the difference between an owner's duty and a tenant's (occupier's) duty?
Quick answerAs a rough guide, the owner's duty tends to sit with the bones of the building, the structure and the safety features that should have been built in before anyone leased it, while the occupier's duty tends to sit with running the place day to day. Common areas like car parks and stairwells usually stay the owner's responsibility either way.
Australian courts don't ask "who owns the building" and stop there. They ask who was actually in a position to prevent the specific thing that went wrong. As a rough, plain-English guide: if the problem was baked into the building itself, a missing handrail, a structural defect, a safety feature that was never installed properly, that tends to sit with the owner, because the owner controlled the building before anyone ever leased it. If the problem is about how the business is run day to day, a spill left unmopped, stock blocking a walkway, that tends to sit with the tenant, because the tenant is the one running the floor.
Shared spaces blur the line on purpose. A car park, a foyer, a shared stairwell: tenants and their customers use these every day, but it is usually the owner who is expected to maintain and light them properly, because the owner is the only party who controls the whole building rather than just their own leased space.
None of this makes an owner automatically liable for everything that happens on their property, and it doesn't make a tenant automatically liable for everything either. Australian courts have gone both ways on real cases with genuinely similar fact patterns. In one High Court case, a shopping centre owner sued over an attack in its car park was ultimately cleared, but only after years of litigation through three levels of court. Which is exactly the point: the outcome turns on the specific facts, not on a simple rule of thumb, and "who is actually liable" is a question for a court or a lawyer on the specific facts, never a general information page. What doesn't change is who has to pay to be in that fight in the first place, which is every named party, win or lose.
Doesn't my tenant already have insurance for this?
Quick answerA tenant's public liability policy is bought to protect the tenant's business, not the building owner, and being mentioned on someone else's policy as an interested party is a long way short of being covered by it.
It's a reasonable assumption, and it's wrong. A tenant's public liability policy is bought to protect the tenant's business, not the building owner, and simply being mentioned on someone else's policy as an "interested party" is a long way short of being covered by it. We go through exactly why relying on a tenant's policy is a gamble stacked against the owner, step by step, on our property owners liability page. This article is about how the claim reaches you in the first place; that one is about why someone else's policy won't be there to catch it.
Are some buildings more exposed to this than others?
Quick answerYes. Vacant buildings, buildings with common areas the owner controls, and strata lots where the owner assumes the body corporate's policy covers them all raise an owner's exposure, each through its own mechanism.
Three situations raise a property owner's exposure specifically, worth knowing whether or not any of them currently apply to you.
A vacant building can feel like a lower risk because fewer people are using it. In practice it often raises the risk instead, because a hazard that would normally be noticed and reported by staff or customers within a tenanted building can sit undetected for weeks in an empty one.
Common areas, car parks, foyers, shared stairwells and lifts, are usually the owner's to maintain and light properly no matter how many tenants are in the building, because the owner is the only party with authority over the whole site rather than one leased part of it.
And if you own a lot in a strata scheme, the body corporate's insurance is not your insurance. It protects the body corporate and the common property. Your own liability as the owner of your lot is a separate exposure the body corporate's policy was never built to carry, a gap we explain in full, including a real claim, on our property owners liability page.
What does getting this wrong actually cost?
Quick answerTwo real Australian court outcomes make the point: a former building owner personally ordered to contribute $216,720.79 to an injury payout five years after moving on, and an owners corporation fined $225,000 plus costs over a common-property hazard, entirely separate from the penalty on the business trading on site.
Two real numbers make the point better than any premium estimate could. In one NSW Court of Appeal case, a building owner who had left the property behind years earlier was ordered to contribute $216,720.79, half of an injured customer's payout, after the tenant gym that had been sued came back for them, because a defect from the owner's own pre-lease renovation created the hazard. In another, an owners corporation was fined $225,000 plus $40,000 in costs after a common-property hazard led to a contractor's death, a fine that sat entirely separate from, and on top of, whatever the business trading on site was separately made to pay.
Neither of those owners could have bought a policy to make themselves immune from ever being sued. What a property owners liability policy buys is an insurer whose job is to step in, run the defence, and where appropriate contribute to a settlement, instead of an owner personally funding lawyers for months or years to find out whether they're liable. We set out exactly why this is one of the cheapest problems in commercial insurance to fix on our property owners liability page.
Has this actually happened in Australia?
Quick answerYes, in published Australian court judgments. A NSW Court of Appeal case made a former building owner pay half a gym patron's injury payout, and a NSW District Court fined an owners corporation over a common-property death, separately from the business on site.
This isn't a hypothetical. In Loose Fit Pty Ltd v Marshbaum [2011] NSWCA 372, the NSW Court of Appeal made a building owner pay $216,720.79, half of a gym patron's injury payout, for a defect from a renovation the owner carried out before leasing the premises out. The patron had sued the tenant gym; the gym then successfully cross-claimed against the owner, five years after the owner had left the property. In SafeWork NSW v The Owners - Strata Plan No 93899 [2024] NSWDC 277, a NSW District Court fined an owners corporation $225,000 plus costs over a common-property hazard that led to a contractor's death, entirely separate from the penalty handed to the business operating on site. We walk through both of these in full, including what they mean for you, on our property owners liability page.
FAQ
Can I be sued for something that happens on my property even if I did nothing wrong?
You can be named in a claim even where you're ultimately found not liable. Being named means you have to respond and often pay for legal advice and representation, regardless of the outcome. That defence cost, not a finding of fault, is the real and constant exposure a property owner carries.
What's the difference between an owner's duty and a tenant's duty?
As a rough guide, an owner's duty tends to cover the structure and any pre-existing defects built into the property before it was leased out, while a tenant's (occupier's) duty tends to cover the day-to-day running of the business. Common areas like car parks and stairwells are usually the owner's responsibility either way.
Does it matter if the building was vacant when someone was injured?
Yes, and not in the direction most owners expect. A vacant building often raises an owner's exposure rather than lowering it, because with nobody occupying the space day to day, a developing hazard can go unnoticed for far longer than it would in a tenanted building.
Can a property owner be prosecuted separately from the business operating on their site?
Yes. Work health and safety prosecutions can be brought against a building owner (or an owners corporation) over a hazard on common property, completely separate from any penalty handed to the business trading on site. A public liability or property owners liability policy generally helps with defence costs, but a WHS fine itself is not something insurance pays.
Related content
- Property Owners Liability Insurance - the product this article supports: the full case retellings, the strata gap, the tenant-policy gamble and the recommended limit.
- For Commercial Property Owners - further reading for owners across one building or several.
- Commercial Strata Insurance - the fuller strata picture for lot owners and bodies corporate.
- Commercial Landlords Insurance - how liability cover sits within a landlord's wider policy structure.
- Commercial Building Insurance - where landlord liability sits as a section within a building policy.