Violent incidents take place very often in parking lots. Actually the number of aggressive incidents occurred in parking lots is, unfortunately increasing from one year to another. Parking services have been put in the position of being held liable for many of the incidents occurring in their premises. They have recently realised that everything has a price (including the life of a human being) especially when it comes to insurance or liability purposes. When it comes to a violent incident, everything is being reduced to your parking lot’s security system. Your parking security system will save you from being held liable or not for an aggressive incident.

Oddly enough, it seems that parking services aren’t as safe as one would think; the security budget is no bigger than 10-15 percent. In this situation there is no wonder that parking lots are the locations where most of the crimes committed on a property lead to lawsuits.

It seems that the parking services most often sued in security liability cases are the multi-unit residential parking lots. Commercial services come in second place, while restaurants industries are in third place. But the good thing about all this huge amount of lawsuits is the fact that parking services have improved their security measures. Consequently, most of the latest verdicts in liability cases were defence verdicts and the number or awards have been reduced.

Another reason for this increase of defence verdicts is the fact that parking owners or managers have decided to be more proactive when it comes to crime prevention activities.

But, despite parking services’ efforts to reduce the number of criminal incidents, assault and battery were the most frequent type of crimes that have lead to security liability claims on behalf of the victims.

It seems that larger parking lots like those belonging to shopping malls, medical centres or college campuses are facing much more security problems than smaller facilities. More problems mean more liability lawsuits. A simple explanation for this situation is the fact that security measures are less powerful in larger parking lots.

Consequently, if you are thinking of opening your own parking lot, think thoroughly about the security measures or you’ll be soon buried in lawsuits. And, in order to keep things under control, limit yourself to a smaller facility. You won’t regret it later.