Premises liability: how slip-and-fall claims are handled

A slip-and-fall claim against a business is a negligence claim: the injured person says you knew, or should have known, about a hazard on your property and did not fix it or warn about it in reasonable time. Your general liability policy responds under Coverage A, with no-fault medical payments under Coverage C, and the insurer investigates, negotiates and defends. What you do in the first 48 hours, before the insurer is involved, often decides how the claim ends.

What the injured person has to prove

Premises liability is a branch of ordinary negligence law, and the elements are the same: a duty, a breach, causation and damages. Most disputes are about breach, and specifically about notice.

• Notice. The claimant usually must show you created the hazard, knew about it (actual notice), or should have found it (constructive notice) because it existed long enough or happened often enough. Florida's statute for slips on a transitory foreign substance in a business establishment, section 768.0755, puts it in those terms: actual or constructive knowledge, which can be shown by circumstantial evidence that the condition existed long enough that the business should have discovered it, or that it occurred with regularity and was foreseeable. A cleaning log with times on it is evidence of reasonable care. A blank log is evidence for the other side.
• Entrant status. Traditionally the duty depends on whether the visitor was an invitee (a customer or other person invited for your business purposes), a licensee or a trespasser. Some states, California among them, have replaced those categories with a general reasonable-care standard. Customers are invitees in nearly every state, so for a retailer or restaurant it rarely matters. It matters for a landlord with delivery drivers, a church or a vacant lot.
• Open and obvious hazards. A visible condition that a reasonable person would avoid, such as a marked step, can reduce or defeat a claim, but many courts still ask whether the owner should have anticipated that people would encounter it anyway.
• Comparative fault. If the visitor was also careless (looking at a phone, wearing unsuitable shoes), the rule differs by state. Under Cornell Law School's summary, Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia and the District of Columbia still use contributory negligence, which bars recovery for any fault by the plaintiff. Most states reduce damages by the plaintiff's share, and many bar a plaintiff who is more than 50 or 51 percent at fault. Florida, for instance, now bars a plaintiff found more than 50 percent at fault in most negligence actions under section 768.81(6).
• Time limits. The deadline to sue differs by state and has been shortened in some. Florida's statute for negligence actions, section 95.11, is now two years. Do not assume your claim is too old to matter.

These rules change. Several states have rewritten premises or negligence rules in recent years, so check the state guides for Florida, Texas and California, and ask counsel about the state where the injury happened.

Who can be liable

The injured person sues everyone who controlled the space. That means the owner, the tenant, the property manager, and contractors such as snow removal, janitorial or security companies. Leases and service contracts allocate the risk. A tenant usually agrees to indemnify the landlord for injuries inside the premises; a snow contractor agrees to indemnify the property owner for ice claims. The indemnity is only as good as the insurance behind it, which means additional insured endorsements explained and certificates that are checked. See contractual risk transfer: shifting liability by contract and insurance, Landlord insurance and Property manager insurance.

What the general liability policy pays

Under ISO form CG 00 01 (04 13 edition), a customer's injury is "bodily injury" caused by an accident on your premises during the policy period.

• Coverage A pays the damages you become legally obligated to pay, and the insurer has the right and duty to defend the suit. Defense costs are paid in addition to the limit. The insurer may investigate and settle at its discretion; the standard form does not require your consent to settle, unlike many professional liability policies.
• Coverage C, medical payments, pays reasonable medical expenses for an accident on your premises or ways next to them, regardless of fault, if the expenses are incurred and reported within one year. The limit is modest and shown on the declarations. It excludes any insured, people hired to do work for you, your tenants, anyone entitled to workers' compensation benefits, and a person injured on the part of the premises they normally occupy. Paying it is not an admission of liability and is often the fastest way to close a minor claim before a lawyer is involved.
• Limits. Each occurrence is the cap for one injury, and the general aggregate is shared with all other claims of the year. A serious injury can exceed $1 million; that is where an umbrella answers. See Inside the CGL policy: Coverages A, B and C.

The claim, step by step

If the insurer defends but disputes coverage, it sends a reservation of rights letter; see reservation of rights letters: what they mean and how to respond.

Evidence decides these claims

• Video. Preserve footage from before and after the fall, not just the fall. Destroying evidence after you reasonably anticipate a claim can lead to sanctions or an instruction that allows the jury to assume the footage was unfavorable.
• Inspection and cleaning logs, with times and initials, kept in a form that cannot be created after the fact.
• Incident report written by the person who saw it, with facts and no opinions on fault.
• Policies and training: wet-floor procedure, mat placement, footwear rules for staff, snow plans.
• Prior incidents and complaints at the same spot. A pattern shows foreseeability.

A hypothetical example

Say a 12-employee café in a strip center has a customer slip on spilled iced tea near the counter. She breaks her wrist. The facts and amounts below are invented.

On the day of the fall the manager photographs the spot, takes a witness name, writes the report and calls the broker. The insurer opens a claim, secures 90 minutes of video and sees that a staff member walked past the spill 6 minutes earlier. The floor log has no entry since opening. The claimant's medical bills reach $38,000 and her lawyer demands $150,000. The insurer pays $4,000 of her early medical bills under Coverage C. Mediation settles the claim for $65,000 under Coverage A, and both payments draw on the general aggregate. Defense counsel's fees are paid outside the limit.

The video and the missing log were the problem, not the spill. Because the lease required it and the café's policy carried an additional insured endorsement for the landlord, the landlord, who was also named in the suit, was defended too.

Prevention checklist

1. Walk the floor at set intervals and log it with time and initials.
2. Put mats at entrances, use wet-floor signs promptly and fix recurring leaks, not just mop them.
3. Light stairs, entrances and parking areas; repair cracked pavement and loose rails.
4. Write a snow and ice plan with a contractor, a written contract and a certificate naming you as additional insured.
5. Train staff to report and photograph incidents, and to say nothing about fault.
6. Keep an incident kit: forms, a camera or phone procedure, witness cards and your insurer's claim number.
7. Review limits against the largest realistic injury, including umbrella cover.

Where coverage gets complicated

• Claims by an injured employee of a contractor on your site, where the contractor's own policy and the indemnity clause decide who pays.
• Assault claims in parking lots or lobbies. A negligent-security suit can be cut off by an assault or battery exclusion; see assault and battery exclusions.
• Late notice or voluntary payments, which an insurer can raise as a defense.
• Judgments above the limits, which fall on you unless an umbrella applies.

Key takeaways

• A slip-and-fall claim turns on notice: whether you knew or should have known of the hazard and acted in time. Logs and video are the evidence.
• Coverage A defends and pays within limits, Coverage C pays modest no-fault medical bills, and the umbrella answers above the per-occurrence limit.
• Report the same day, preserve video, and promise nothing to the claimant.
• Negligence rules, comparative fault and filing deadlines differ by state; Florida's 2023 changes show how fast they can move.
• Leases and service contracts shift risk only when the other party's insurance and additional insured endorsements are real.