SLIP, TRIP & FALL — PREMISES LIABILITY
Slip and fall lawyer for Illinois and Indiana.
Attorney Jeffrey Kooi has handled premises injury claims alongside motor vehicle cases since 2000, licensed in every county in both states. Falls on wet store floors, unnatural ice, broken stairs, unlit stairwells, and neglected parking lots — worked by one attorney from the first call to the final check.
No fee unless you recover. Evenings and weekends available.
CASE TYPES
What actually counts as a slip and fall case.
“Slip and fall” is what people call it. The legal category is premises liability: the duty a property owner or occupier owes to the people it invites onto its property. The label matters less than the mechanism — whether the floor, the walkway, the stairs, the lighting, or the maintenance of the place caused a fall that reasonable care would have prevented.
These are the conditions these claims most often come from. A fall does not have to appear on this list to be a case, and appearing on it does not make one automatic.
Dog bites, negligent security, and injuries to a family member on someone else's property are handled here as well — they run on the same property-owner duty analysis.
WHERE FALLS HAPPEN
The places these claims come from — and what each one changes.
The kind of property matters as much as the hazard, because it determines who the defendant is, what records exist, how long the video is kept, and whether a government notice deadline just started running. These are the settings these cases keep coming out of.
The highest-volume fall setting in both states. Corporate retailers have sweep logs, inspection schedules, spill procedures, and floor-care contracts — documents that either prove the store followed its own policy or prove it did not. They also have the best cameras and the shortest retention. Claims are usually handled by a national third-party administrator rather than a local adjuster.
Kitchen grease tracked into dining areas, drink spills in high-traffic lanes, single unmarked steps between levels, and dark restroom hallways. Where alcohol contributed, Illinois dram shop law and Indiana's furnishing statute can put the establishment in play on a separate theory with its own shorter deadline.
Common-area duties stay with the landlord, and the evidence tends to be a paper trail: maintenance requests, work orders, prior tenant complaints, code inspections, and a history of the same stairwell light being out. That documentation is the difference between arguing about notice and proving it.
Lobby and pool-deck floors, bathtubs and showers without slip surfacing, dimly lit corridors, banquet cabling, and stadium and arena stair geometry. Out-of-state visitors fall here often, which raises which state's law governs and where suit belongs.
Ownership is frequently split among a landowner, an anchor tenant, a management company, a snow-removal contractor, and a paving contractor, each with its own policy. The snow-removal contract itself often decides who is responsible for an ice fall, so pulling it early matters.
Falls during transfers, in wet bathrooms, and in poorly lit rooms. Where the injured person was a patient, the claim can cross from ordinary premises liability into medical malpractice or nursing-home negligence, which carry different proof requirements and, in Indiana, different procedural steps.
A city sidewalk, a park district building, a school hallway, a courthouse, a library, or a transit platform puts a governmental entity on the other side — which means a much shorter deadline, potential immunities, a damages cap in Indiana, and in Illinois a duty owed only to intended and permitted users of the property.
Loading docks, dock plates, mezzanine stairs, hoses and cords, and hydraulic leaks. If you were hurt on someone else's site as a delivery driver, a vendor, or a subcontractor's employee, a third-party premises claim can exist alongside a workers' compensation claim, and coordinating the two protects the net recovery.
Falls at a friend's, relative's, or neighbor's home are awkward and are usually misunderstood: the claim runs against the homeowner's insurance policy, which exists precisely for this, not against the homeowner's savings. Steps, decks, railings, and unlit entryways are the common mechanisms.
THE CENTRAL ISSUE
Fall cases are won and lost on notice.
In a rear-end collision, fault is usually obvious from the first page of the crash report. In a fall case it is almost never obvious, and the fight is over a single question: did the property owner know, or should it have known, about the hazard in time to do something about it?
There are three ways that question gets answered, and which one applies shapes the entire investigation:
- The owner created the condition. An employee mopped without a cone, overfilled a display, left a hose across an aisle, or plowed snow into a pile that drained across the walkway. Notice is not an issue here because the defendant made the hazard. Proof usually comes from video, employee statements, and the work schedule showing who was doing what.
- The owner had actual notice. Somebody told them. A customer complaint, a prior fall in the same spot, a maintenance request, a work order, an inspection citation, or an email about the leak that never got fixed. This is the strongest version of a fall case and the reason prior-incident history is requested in every file.
- The owner had constructive notice. The condition existed long enough that reasonable inspection would have caught it. This is where time stamps decide cases — dirty, tracked-through liquid with cart tracks in it tells a different story than a fresh spill, and sweep logs showing a two-hour gap tell a different story than logs showing a fifteen-minute cycle.
All three depend on records the property controls and on footage that erases itself. That is why the first week after a fall does more for a premises claim than the following year does.
What gets requested in the first days of a fall case. Surveillance video for the hours before and after the fall, not just the fall itself; the incident report and any photographs the property took; sweep, inspection and maintenance logs; floor-care and snow-removal contracts; work orders and tenant complaints for the same area; prior incident reports at the same location; employee schedules; and for ice cases, the certified weather history. A preservation letter has to go out before any of it is gone — and nothing about hiring an attorney later undoes footage already overwritten.
ILLINOIS LAW
The Illinois rules that decide a fall claim.
Illinois premises law is more favorable to injured visitors than Indiana's in one respect and less favorable in another: it abolished the old visitor categories, but it kept a broad rule about snow and ice. Both points come up in nearly every case.
One standard for lawful visitors
Illinois abolished the common-law distinction between invitees and licensees. A property owner owes the same duty of reasonable care to a customer, a social guest, and a delivery driver alike — so the defense cannot win by re-labeling why you were there.
740 ILCS 130/2Two years to file suit
Most Illinois injury claims from a fall must be on file in court within two years. Reporting the fall to the store or negotiating with its administrator does not stop that clock — only a filing does.
735 ILCS 5/13-202One year against a public body
A fall on city sidewalk, at a school or park district facility, in a public building, or at a transit facility generally must be filed within one year, and some agencies require written notice within months. This is the deadline that quietly ends strong claims.
745 ILCS 10/8-101Public property: intended and permitted users only
A local public entity's duty runs to people using the property in the way it was intended and permitted to be used. Crossing a parkway strip instead of the crosswalk, or cutting through a lot, is where these claims most often fail — the condition has to have injured a user the property was meant for.
745 ILCS 10/3-102The natural accumulation rule
Illinois property owners generally have no duty to remove snow or ice that accumulated naturally. Liability turns on an unnatural accumulation or an aggravated natural one: gutter and downspout runoff, a graded low spot that refreezes, plow piles melting across a walkway, or a partial clearing that leaves polished ice. Where the ice came from is the case.
Illinois common lawResidential snow removal immunity
Illinois shields residential property owners from liability arising out of their efforts to clear snow and ice from sidewalks, absent willful or wanton conduct. It is a narrower shield than insurers suggest — it addresses the removal effort, not every icy condition on a residential property.
745 ILCS 75/2Open and obvious, with exceptions
A landowner's duty is reduced for conditions a visitor should reasonably discover and avoid, but Illinois recognizes a distraction exception where the surroundings draw attention away, and a deliberate-encounter exception where the person had no real choice but to cross the hazard. Visible is not the same as excused.
Illinois common lawThe 51% fault bar
Illinois reduces recovery by your share of the blame and bars it entirely once your fault passes 50%. On fall cases the defense spends most of its energy here — footwear, phone use, where you were looking — which is exactly why the notice evidence has to be developed rather than argued.
735 ILCS 5/2-1116Recreational property takes willful and wanton
Injuries on public property intended for recreational use — parks, trails, playgrounds, ball fields — generally require proof of willful and wanton conduct rather than ordinary negligence. It is a high bar, and it has to be evaluated before anyone spends two years on the claim.
745 ILCS 10/3-106Provider liens are capped at 40%
Illinois limits what health care providers can collectively claim out of a settlement or verdict to 40% of the recovery. Fall injuries generate surgical bills and unreviewed hospital liens routinely overstate what is owed; reducing them can change your net recovery as much as the settlement number does.
770 ILCS 23/10INDIANA LAW
The Indiana rules that decide a fall claim.
Indiana analyzes fall cases differently than Illinois. It kept the old visitor classifications, so why you were on the property is a live question — and its rules for falls on government property are unusually harsh.
Your visitor status matters
Indiana still sorts visitors into invitees, licensees, and trespassers, and the duty owed changes with the category. A customer, tenant, or delivery driver is an invitee and gets the highest duty; a social guest historically received less, though Indiana treats many guests as invitees. Getting the classification right shapes the whole claim.
Burrell v. Meads (Ind. 1991)The three-part invitee test
For an invitee, the owner is liable where it knew of the condition or would have discovered it with reasonable care, should have expected the visitor would not notice or protect against it, and then failed to take reasonable steps to protect or warn. Each element is proven with records, not adjectives.
Restatement (Second) of Torts § 343Two years to file suit
Most Indiana injury actions must be commenced within two years of the fall. As in Illinois, a claim reported to the property's insurer is not a filed case, and the clock does not pause while an adjuster evaluates it.
Ind. Code § 34-11-2-4Tort claim notice: 180 or 270 days
A fall at a city or county property, a school, a public library, or a housing authority generally requires written notice to the right officials in roughly 180 days; a State property runs about 270 days. This is the most common way a valid Indiana fall claim is lost, and it expires long before the two-year statute.
Ind. Code § 34-13-3-8, § 34-13-3-10Contributory negligence against the government
Indiana's Comparative Fault Act does not apply to governmental defendants, so the old common-law rule governs: any contributory negligence by the injured person — even a small share — can bar recovery entirely. A fall on public property has to be built with that standard in mind from day one.
Ind. Code § 34-51-2-2Damages caps against the government
Claims against Indiana governmental entities are capped at $700,000 per person and $5,000,000 per occurrence, regardless of what the injury is actually worth. Where the cap applies, identifying any additional non-government defendant — a contractor, a lessee, a maintenance company — can be the most valuable work in the file.
Ind. Code § 34-13-3-4No blanket natural accumulation rule
Indiana has not adopted Illinois's broad no-duty rule for naturally accumulating snow and ice. An Indiana ice fall in a store lot is generally analyzed under the ordinary invitee duty: what the business knew about the conditions and what a reasonable business would have done about them.
Indiana common lawKnown or obvious conditions
Indiana follows the rule that a landowner is generally not liable for harm from conditions known or obvious to the visitor — unless it should have anticipated the harm anyway. Distraction, a necessary route, and a hazard the owner knew people kept encountering all fall into that exception.
Restatement (Second) of Torts § 343AThe 51% fault bar
Against private defendants, Indiana reduces recovery by the injured person's percentage of fault and bars recovery entirely above 50%. Fault can also be allocated to non-parties, which is why a fall claim has to account for every entity that touched the property — owner, tenant, and contractors.
Ind. Code § 34-51-2-6Hospital liens come off the top
Indiana hospitals can assert a lien against a settlement, and health plans and Medicare or Medicaid can claim reimbursement. Those claims are frequently overstated on surgical fall cases; auditing and negotiating them is part of the work rather than an afterthought.
Ind. Code § 32-33-4If you fell on government property, assume the clock is already running. A city sidewalk, a school, a park, a library, a transit station, a courthouse, or a public housing property can cut a two-year deadline to one year in Illinois or to a roughly 180-day written notice in Indiana — and Indiana's contributory negligence rule means even minor blame can end the claim. These cases have to be reviewed in days, not months.
FIRST STEPS
What to do after a fall.
- Photograph the hazard before it is cleaned up
This is the step that cannot be recovered later. Within minutes of a reported fall, the spill gets mopped, the cone goes out, the ice gets salted, and the broken step gets taped off. Photograph the condition itself, wide shots showing where it was and what the lighting was like, the absence of any warning sign, and the shoes you were wearing.
- Report it to someone in charge, and get their name
Ask for a manager, report the fall, and ask for a copy of the incident report. Keep the description factual and short. Do not guess at fault, do not say you are fine, and do not sign anything that looks like a release or a medical authorization at the scene.
- Get the names of anyone who saw it
Other customers leave and are effectively unfindable within the hour. A name and a phone number in your own phone is worth more than any later attempt to identify a witness from a store's records.
- Assume the video is on a short loop
Most systems overwrite in roughly seven to thirty days. A written preservation demand should reach the property owner, the management company, and the insurer within days — requesting the hours before the fall as well, since that footage is what proves how long the hazard sat there.
- Be examined even if you feel functional
Adrenaline masks a great deal, and falls produce injuries that present late: wrist and hip fractures, rotator cuff and meniscus tears, and concussions from an unbraced landing. A gap between the fall date and the first medical record is the most common argument used to discount a premises claim.
- Keep the shoes and the clothing
Do not clean them. Footwear is the defense's favorite exhibit in a fall case, and the tread, the wear pattern, and any residue on the sole can just as easily support your account of what you slipped on.
- Identify every entity involved in the property
The owner, the tenant, the property manager, the janitorial service, the snow-removal contractor, and the paving contractor may all carry separate insurance, and the contracts between them often decide who is responsible. Sorting that out early prevents a late, deadline-pressured scramble.
- Check immediately whether a government body is involved
A public sidewalk, school, park, library, transit facility, courthouse, or housing authority puts a short notice deadline in play right away — about 180 days in Indiana, and one year to file in Illinois. If there is any chance a public body owns or maintains the property, treat it as urgent.
- Decline the recorded statement for now
A third-party claims administrator will call early and ask to record you while you are still hurting and still missing facts. You are not required to give that statement, and it is rarely in your interest to give it before anyone knows the extent of the injuries.
- Do not sign a release for a quick check
Early offers on fall cases arrive before anyone knows whether the shoulder or the wrist needs surgery. A signed release closes the claim permanently, including for the procedure nobody has recommended yet.
INJURIES
What a fall actually does to people.
Insurers like to treat falls as minor because there is no vehicle damage photograph to argue with. In practice, a fall loads the entire body weight onto whatever hits first, and there is no seat belt, no crumple zone, and usually no time to brace. These are the injuries these cases are built around.
A pre-existing condition is not a defense — it is a valuation question. If a fall aggravated arthritis, a prior back injury, or a joint that was already worn, the aggravation is compensable. What that requires is medical records on both sides of the fall and a treating physician who will address the change, rather than an adjuster's assertion that everything was degenerative.
COMMON QUESTIONS
Slip and fall questions.
No — and this is the single biggest difference between a fall case and a car crash. A property owner is not responsible for every injury that happens on the property. The claim has to show that an unreasonably dangerous condition existed, that the owner or occupier either created it or knew about it (or should have found it with reasonable inspection), and that they failed to fix or warn about it in time. A puddle that appeared ninety seconds before you walked through it usually is not a case. The same puddle, tracked across a store entrance all morning with no mat and no cone, usually is.
It depends on where the ice came from. Illinois follows the natural accumulation rule: a property owner generally has no duty to remove snow or ice that fell there naturally. What creates liability is an unnatural accumulation or an aggravated natural one — a downspout or gutter draining across a walkway, a low spot that collects runoff and refreezes, plow piles stacked so meltwater crosses the lot and freezes overnight, or a partial shoveling job that leaves a slick, polished path. Indiana does not apply the same blanket rule; an Indiana ice fall is generally analyzed under the ordinary duty a business owes its customers. Either way, the facts that decide it — the weather history, the drainage, where the snow was pushed — are provable, but they have to be documented quickly.
Most injury suits in both states must be on file within two years of the fall — 735 ILCS 5/13-202 in Illinois, Ind. Code § 34-11-2-4 in Indiana. The exceptions cut that short, and on fall cases they come up constantly because so much property is publicly owned:
- Government property. A city sidewalk, a school, a park district building, public housing, a courthouse, a library, or a transit station may cut the Illinois deadline to one year (745 ILCS 10/8-101), and in Indiana generally requires written tort claim notice in roughly 180 days for a local unit and 270 days for a State entity (Ind. Code § 34-13-3-8, § 34-13-3-10). Miss the notice and the two-year statute will not rescue the claim.
- Minors. Both states pause the clock for children, though a parent's separate claim for the child's medical expenses can run on the ordinary schedule.
- Legal incapacity. Where the injured person cannot manage their own affairs — after a brain injury, for instance — the period may be tolled until that disability is removed.
- Wrongful death. Where a fall proves fatal, the clock runs from the date of death and the case must be brought by the estate's personal representative, which means opening an estate first.
- Workers' compensation overlap. If you fell while working on someone else's property, the compensation claim and the third-party premises claim have separate deadlines and separate notice requirements.
In practice the statute is rarely the real constraint. Surveillance video is gone in days, the hazard is repaired within hours, and witnesses scatter immediately. If you are anywhere near a deadline, call and we will pin down the date before it costs you the claim.
Reporting the fall helps you — an incident report is often the only contemporaneous proof that the fall happened at all, and it puts the property on notice to preserve video. What can hurt is what gets written on it. Statements like “I wasn't looking” or “I'm fine” end up quoted back for the life of the claim, and a fall victim who declines treatment at the scene frequently discovers a fracture or a torn rotator cuff days later. Report the fall, ask for a copy, keep the description factual, and do not guess at fault or at how badly you are hurt.
In a modern fall case it is usually the whole case. Nearly every store, restaurant, warehouse, hotel, apartment lobby, and parking structure records, and the footage answers the questions that otherwise turn into a credibility fight: how long the hazard had been there, how many employees walked past it, whether a cone or mat was out, and what actually happened when you fell. It is also the most perishable evidence in the file — most systems overwrite on a loop of roughly seven to thirty days, and video routinely disappears while an injured person is still in physical therapy. A written preservation demand needs to reach the property owner and its insurer within days, not months.
It is a defense, not an automatic loss. Both states recognize that a landowner's duty is reduced for conditions a visitor should reasonably see and avoid — but both also recognize exceptions that swallow a great deal of that defense. If the surroundings were designed to distract you (product displays, checkout lanes, signage, a dark stairwell), or if you had no practical choice but to cross the hazard to reach the only entrance, your own parking space, or your apartment door, the condition being visible does not necessarily excuse the owner. Comparative fault still matters: both states reduce recovery by your share of the blame and bar it entirely above 50%, and against an Indiana governmental defendant even a small share of fault can bar the claim outright.
Often yes, particularly for common areas the landlord kept control of — stairwells, hallways, entryways, laundry rooms, sidewalks, parking lots, and exterior lighting. Broken or missing handrails, risers of uneven height, burned-out stairwell lights, and ice at the only entrance are recurring fact patterns. Prior complaints matter enormously here: a maintenance request, a text to the property manager, a code violation, or another tenant's earlier fall converts “we had no idea” into documented notice. Where the property is a housing authority or another public body, shorter government notice deadlines apply.
Possibly both. A fall on your own employer's premises is generally a workers' compensation matter, and compensation is usually the exclusive remedy against the employer. But if you fell while working on someone else's property — a delivery route, a service call, a job site owned by a general contractor, a client's building — a third-party premises claim against that property owner can proceed alongside the compensation claim. The two interact: the compensation carrier will assert a lien against any third-party recovery, and coordinating the claims is what protects the net result.
Anyone who quotes a number before reading the medical records and the incident file is selling something. Value tracks the injury and the proof: what was broken or torn, whether surgery was required, how much work was missed, what the permanent limitations are, what fault percentage a jury would assign, and how much insurance the property carries. Fall injuries skew toward the serious — hip and wrist fractures, ankle and knee injuries, shoulder tears, and head injuries from an unbraced landing — but the liability fight is harder than in a rear-end crash, and the two have to be weighed together. What is worth saying plainly is that early offers arrive before anyone knows whether the shoulder needs repair, and a signed release closes the claim permanently.
No. The review is free, and premises cases are handled on a contingency fee — no fee unless there is a recovery. If the honest answer is that the case cannot be proven, you will hear that instead of being signed up.
WHERE CASES ARE TAKEN
Fall claims from anywhere in Illinois or Indiana.
Premises cases come from the same two states as the crash work, on the same terms: licensed in every county in Illinois and every county in Indiana, with an office on each side of the state line and no requirement that you visit either one. A fall at a store in Hammond and a fall at a store in Chicago are both one attorney's case rather than a referral to a second firm.
FREE CASE REVIEW
Tell Jeff what happened.
Send the facts of your fall and they go directly to Jeff — the attorney who would work the file — whether it happened in a store aisle, on an icy lot, on an apartment stairwell, or on a public sidewalk anywhere in Illinois or Indiana.
What comes back is a straight answer: whether the notice evidence can be proven, what the deadline on it actually is, and what needs to be preserved this week. If the answer is that you do not need a lawyer, you will hear that too.
- Read by the attorney who would handle the case — not an intake service
- Free, with no obligation to hire anyone
- Most submissions get a call or text back the same day
- Video preservation letters go out immediately where they are needed
Talk to Jeff, not an intake line.
Free, no-obligation review of a slip, trip or fall claim anywhere in Illinois or Indiana. The video that decides these cases erases itself, so the sooner the better.