A fall claim is not won by showing the hazard. It is won by showing how long it had been there and who should have dealt with it — and that evidence belongs to the property owner. Answer a few questions and a claim specialist will call you back, then match you with a premises liability attorney in your state.
Free and confidential. Submitting this does not create an attorney-client relationship.
A claim specialist will review your answers and call the number you gave us, then introduce you to a premises liability lawyer licensed in your state. If there were cameras where you fell, say so on the call — that footage is usually gone within weeks.
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A slip and fall lawyer handles premises liability claims — injuries caused by an unsafe condition on someone else’s property. Shops, restaurants, hotels, offices, apartment buildings, car parks, construction sites, sidewalks and private homes are all covered by the same basic principle: whoever controls a space has to take reasonable care to keep it safe for the people they let into it.
The trap is that people think the photograph of the spill is the case. It is not. Almost every fall claim turns on notice — did the owner know about the hazard, or should they have known about it if they had been inspecting the way a reasonable business inspects? A puddle that appeared ninety seconds before you walked into it is usually nobody’s fault. The same puddle three hours into a shift with no inspection logged is a claim.
Proving notice means getting hold of things the property owner controls: inspection and cleaning logs, staff rosters, maintenance requests, prior incident reports for the same location, and CCTV. Retail and hospitality camera systems commonly overwrite within one to four weeks, and nobody preserves a clip unless someone asks in writing. That request is the most time-sensitive thing in a fall claim.
People search for this in a dozen ways and they all land in the same place. Slip and fall attorney, trip and fall lawyer, premises liability lawyer, fall injury attorney, store accident lawyer and supermarket injury lawyer all describe the same work.
Where the words matter is the kind of property and the kind of hazard. A fall in a grocery store is a notice case about inspection routines. A fall in an apartment building is usually about a landlord’s duty over common areas and whether the hazard was reported. A fall on a construction site brings in contractor duties and sometimes workers’ compensation alongside the injury claim. A fall on a public sidewalk is a claim against a municipality, on a much shorter deadline. Say which on the form.
Premises liability covers far more than wet floors. These are the claims our network takes on most often — the common thread is a hazard somebody had the power to fix.
Spills, tracked-in water, produce debris, freshly mopped floors without signage, and cluttered or obstructed aisles.
See If You Qualify 02Uneven or worn treads, missing or loose handrails, poor lighting in stairwells and corridors, and code violations.
See If You Qualify 03Common areas, walkways, parking, and repairs the landlord or management company was told about and did not make.
See If You Qualify 04Potholes, raised paving, drainage failures, ice and snow, and unlit surfaces — including claims against municipalities on short deadlines.
See If You Qualify 05Assaults enabled by inadequate lighting, broken locks, absent security or ignored warnings in car parks, hotels and apartment complexes.
See If You Qualify 06Attacks on a property where the owner or occupier failed to restrain or contain an animal.
See If You QualifyNot sure which one is yours? Many fall claims sit in more than one category — a fall on an unlit apartment stairwell is a landlord case and potentially a building-code case. Pick whichever is closest and the specialist will sort it out on the call.
Start my free reviewBroadly, you have a claim worth taking to a premises liability attorney if most of these are true.
A spill, a defect, an obstruction, ice, poor lighting, a missing handrail. Falls happen without anyone being at fault, and the law does not make a property owner an insurer of everyone who walks in.
Either they created it, they were told about it, or it had been there long enough that a business inspecting reasonably would have found it. This is the heart of the case.
No cone, no sign, no barrier, no repair. A warning that was there but useless — a cone behind a display, a sign facing the wrong way — still counts as a failure.
Medical treatment, missed work, ongoing care. Fractures, head injuries and shoulder and hip damage are the common ones, and older claimants are frequently hurt far worse than the fall looks.
Often two or three years, as little as one in some states, and a matter of months against a public body. Check your deadline →
Two kinds of loss, and people routinely forget the second.
Punitive damages. Rare in fall claims, but they come up where a property knowingly left a dangerous condition after repeated incidents or deliberately destroyed evidence. Where footage is destroyed after a preservation request, some states also allow an adverse-inference instruction, which can be worth as much.
Ask why fall claims get denied and the answer is almost never “there was no hazard.” It is “there is no evidence we knew about it.” That is a deliberate position, and it works because the records that would answer it are the property owner’s own.
Those records exist in most commercial premises: sweep and inspection logs with timestamps, cleaning schedules, staff rosters showing who was on the floor, maintenance tickets, and prior incident reports for the same aisle or the same doorway. A pattern of earlier falls at the same spot converts a one-off accident into a known hazard that was never dealt with.
CCTV is the other half, and the most perishable. Retail and hospitality systems commonly overwrite within one to four weeks, and footage is not preserved because an accident happened — it is preserved because a written request arrived before the loop came round. If your fall was recent, sending that request is the single most valuable thing that can happen this month, and it is the reason not to wait and see how you heal.
If it happened recently, in this order. Step one is the one people skip because they are embarrassed, and it costs them the claim.
Tell the manager, the landlord or whoever is in charge, and ask for a copy of the incident report or a reference number. A fall nobody wrote down is very hard to prove weeks later.
The spill, the defect, the ice, the lighting, the missing handrail — and the wider scene showing where any signage actually was. Spills get mopped within minutes of a fall.
Ceiling domes, entrance cameras, car park cameras, neighbouring businesses. Write down where they are. This list is the most useful thing you can hand a lawyer and it decays within weeks.
Hip, shoulder and head injuries routinely present later, and a gap between the fall and your first medical visit is the main thing insurers use to argue you weren’t hurt.
Other customers, other residents, staff who came over. They leave within minutes and are almost impossible to trace afterwards.
Insurers raise footwear in fall claims as a matter of routine. Keeping them unwashed usually helps you rather than them.
Four rules decide what a fall claim is actually worth, and all of them are set state by state. Premises law varies more between states than almost any other area of injury law.
Most states cut your recovery by your percentage of blame. Some bar recovery entirely once you pass a set threshold, and a small number still apply the old contributory-negligence rule where any fault at all can end the claim.
Commonly two or three years from the injury, as little as one in some states, and only a few months’ formal notice where a government body is involved. Once it passes the claim is gone, however strong it was.
Many states still apply the invitee, licensee and trespasser categories, each carrying a different duty, while others have replaced them with a general reasonable-care standard. States also differ on whether an obvious hazard reduces a claim or defeats it, and on liability for natural accumulations of ice and snow.
Some states cap non-economic damages, most often in claims against public bodies and in medical negligence. A cap can matter more to the outcome than anything about the injury itself.
These are general descriptions, not legal advice, and the rules change. Confirm anything that affects your claim with a lawyer licensed in the state where it happened — that is what the free review is for.
Searching for a “slip and fall lawyer near me” gets you whoever bought the biggest ad. What actually matters is that the attorney is licensed where you were hurt, because deadlines, fault rules and damage caps are all set state by state. Pick your state — or send the form and we’ll match you with a firm that handles your type of claim in your area.
Don’t see a page for your state yet? Selecting it takes you to the free case review with your state already filled in. We connect people with attorneys in all 50 states.
Every firm calls itself the best slip and fall lawyer in town, which makes the phrase useless. Here is what we actually check before a firm receives anyone from us — and what you should check yourself, on any firm, including ones we never mentioned.
Active bar licence in every state they claim to serve, plus a public discipline search. An open suspension is disqualifying.
Premises liability is a notice discipline, not a photograph discipline. Ask how quickly the firm sends preservation letters for CCTV, whether they routinely obtain inspection logs and prior incident reports, and how many fall cases they have taken past the denial stage.
We track how long each firm takes to call a new claimant back. Firms that leave people waiting stop receiving cases.
Percentage, case costs, and what happens if you lose — in writing, before you sign.
Use these on any firm, including one we didn’t send you. They are the same four questions we ask, and good firms answer all of them without hesitating. If a firm won’t put the fee terms in writing before you sign, that is your answer. Injury Case Claim is not a law firm and does not represent you — we connect you with the firms that do.
Nothing up front, and nothing at all if you don’t win.
Slip and fall lawyers almost always work on contingency: they take an agreed percentage of what they recover for you, typically in the region of a third, and if there is no recovery there is no attorney fee. You should never be asked for money up front, and the free consultation is standard across the industry.
Our service is free to you at every stage. We are not a law firm — the lawyers in our network pay us when they take on a case we refer. That does not change the fee you agree with the firm, and it does not oblige you to hire anyone.
Every attorney we refer works on contingency.
Your details go only to the firm we introduce.
Lawyers admitted where you were actually hurt.
