Slip & Fall Accidents
Property owners are required to take reasonable steps to keep their premises safe for visitors. If a property owner's negligence caused your injury, you may be entitled to compensation.
Property owners are required to take reasonable steps to keep their premises safe for visitors. If a property owner's negligence caused your injury, you may be entitled to compensation.
An owner of an establishment such as a restaurant, store, or hotel has a duty to maintain their property in good condition and to warn visitors of any known hazards. In such cases, you must prove the property owner knew or should have known about the dangerous condition and failed to warn you for them to be responsible for your injuries.
If a property owner negligently maintained their premises and you were injured due to an unsafe condition, contact Sher Law Group to ensure you are fairly compensated for your injuries.
A slip and fall is not automatically the property owner's fault, and this is where most claims are won or lost. Falling on someone's floor is not itself proof of negligence — the hazard had to be one the owner knew about, or should have known about, and failed to fix or warn you of.
Actual notice means the owner knew: an employee saw the spill, a prior customer reported it, the leak had been logged in a maintenance file. Constructive notice means they should have known — the hazard existed long enough that reasonable inspection would have caught it. A puddle that appeared thirty seconds before you walked through it generally will not support a claim. The same puddle with a dried edge, cart tracks running through it, and no inspection logged for three hours is a very different case.
There is a third route that avoids the notice question entirely: where the hazard was created by the business itself — a freshly mopped floor without signage, a leaking display cooler, merchandise stacked so it falls. An owner does not need notice of a danger it produced.
Nearly everything that proves notice is in the property owner's possession: surveillance video, incident reports, sweep and inspection logs, prior complaints about the same area. Video is routinely overwritten on a 14 to 30 day cycle, and sweep logs have a way of becoming unavailable once a claim is filed. A preservation letter sent early is often what makes the difference, and it is one of the first things we do.
If you are able at the scene: photograph the hazard before it is cleaned up, photograph the surrounding area including any missing warning signs, report the fall and ask for a copy of the incident report, and get the names of employees and witnesses.
Arizona calibrates the duty owed to the visitor's status. An invitee — a customer in a store, a guest at a hotel — is owed the most protection, including reasonable inspection for hazards. A licensee, such as a social guest, is generally owed a warning of known dangers. A trespasser is owed the least, though special rules apply to children drawn onto property by something hazardous and attractive, such as an unfenced pool.
Property owners argue that the hazard was open and obvious, that you were distracted by your phone, or that your footwear was inappropriate. Under Arizona's pure comparative negligence rule (A.R.S. § 12-2505), fault is divided rather than used as a cutoff — a person found 30% responsible still recovers 70% of their damages. Unlike many states, Arizona has no threshold beyond which recovery disappears.
In Arizona you generally must bring a premises liability claim within two years of the date of the fall (A.R.S. § 12-542). If legal action is not sought within this time you forfeit your right to recover.
Falls on government property carry a much shorter deadline. If you were injured at a city or county building, a public school, a transit facility, or on a public sidewalk, a notice of claim must generally be served within 180 days (A.R.S. § 12-821.01), with suit filed within one year. Given how quickly surveillance footage is overwritten, the practical deadline for getting advice is far shorter than either.
If you or a loved one have been injured as a result of a slip or trip and fall, contact Sher Law Group for a free case review. If we take your case, we will not only help you navigate through the legal process but also help you find medical providers that will await compensation for their services until your claim is resolved. We are here to protect your rights and ensure you receive the maximum settlement to help make you whole.
No. You generally must show the owner knew about the hazard, or should have known because it existed long enough that reasonable inspection would have found it, and failed to fix it or warn you. The exception is where the business created the hazard itself — a freshly mopped floor with no sign, or a leaking cooler — in which case notice is not required.
Not on its own. Arizona uses pure comparative negligence under A.R.S. § 12-2505, so being partly at fault reduces your recovery by your share rather than eliminating it. A person found 30% responsible still recovers 70% of their damages, and there is no cutoff beyond which recovery disappears.
Surveillance video, the incident report, and the property's sweep or inspection logs — all of which are held by the owner and much of which is overwritten within 14 to 30 days. Photographs of the hazard before cleanup, and the names of employees and witnesses, are the most useful things you can gather yourself.
Generally two years from the date of the fall under A.R.S. § 12-542. If you fell on government property, including a public sidewalk or a city building, a notice of claim is generally due within 180 days under A.R.S. § 12-821.01 and suit within one year.
Not necessarily, but stop there and speak with an attorney. Early recorded statements are taken before the full extent of an injury is known and are frequently used later to argue that symptoms appeared too late to be related to the fall.
Nothing up front. We work on contingency — there is no fee unless we win your case, and the initial consultation is free.
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