The Most Common Defenses in Slip, Trip and Fall Cases


If you are pursuing a slip and fall claim, it’s important to understand what defenses you may come up against in your case. Property owners who are being sued in a premises liability case will do anything they can to either reduce liability for the incident or avoid it completely. Since most businesses, cruise lines, and property owners will have legal teams on their side, it is important that you, too, have the best case possible prepared to receive compensation for your injuries and damages.


Statute of Limitations


A premises liability case may be dismissed from the very start if you filed it outside of the statute of limitations. These statutes are strictly followed by courts with very few exceptions allowed. All states have laws on the books which put a limit on when you can pursue a certain type of legal case, otherwise known as a statute of limitations. If you wait too long and fall outside of that period, you will be barred from pursuing a legal claim. In Florida, any person who is injured in a slip and fall must file a lawsuit against the property owner within four years from the date of the fall. This does not mean your case needs to be finalized within four years, but you should at least have filed a legal claim within that time to initiate the process.


Comparative Negligence


One of the more common defenses raised in a slip and fall case is the defense of comparative negligence. This defense involves arguing that the injured party is partly or completely at fault for causing the accident. The reason the injured party could be at fault could involve several issues. In situations where the hazard or danger that caused the injury was “open and obvious,” but you were distracted by something else, causing you to fail to notice it, you may be held partially liable for your injuries. Therefore, under the principle of comparative negligence, your award in an injury case would be reduced by the portion for which you were at fault.


Florida happens to operate under the principle of pure comparative negligence. What this means is that your award will be reduced by the percentage of blame you held in the accident, and you will always receive the remaining percentage back. You will receive some amount of your award, even if you are found to be more than 50 percent to blame for your accident. Even if you are 95 percent to blame for your accident, you can still receive five percent of the total award that would have been issued to you.


Lack of Notice of Hazard


Another commonly used defense in slip, trip, and fall cases involves the defendant claiming that they lacked sufficient knowledge of the hazard or danger on their property. One of the required elements for a negligence claim against a property owner in a slip and fall case is that the owner had actual or constructive notice, meaning the owner either knew about the hazard or should have known about the hazard. If it is unclear how long the danger was there and whether enough time passed where a reasonable property owner would have been made aware of it, the defense of lack of notice may be raised.


You may think the issue of notice should be pretty straightforward, but like so many things in the legal world, it is not always so black and white. Sometimes unforeseen circumstances can be to blame for a hazard, or something can cause a hazard and quickly lead to a fall before any reasonable property owner would have had a chance to be made aware of it. In these types of cases, courts will look at what types of protocols a business or property owner has in reporting and dealing with hazards, as well as periodically monitoring the property to look for hazards. The court will want to look at evidence, including photographs and surveillance videos to see how long the hazard existed and whether the property owner was or should have been made aware of the danger. If they were made aware of the danger, did they fix it or warn people of the hazard in a timely manner?


If your original claim does not provide a sufficient basis to show that the property owner had or should have had knowledge of this danger, the property owner may be able to file for summary judgment or get your case dismissed for failing to state a claim, which is why it is important you provide enough evidence to support all elements of your legal claim. Dismissal and/or summary judgment will end your case before it even has a chance to get before a jury.