Slip and Fall Settlement Calculator, with the same math attorneys use.

To succeed in a slip and fall claim, you generally must prove four things: the property owner owed you a duty of care, a dangerous condition existed on the property, the owner knew or should have known about it and failed to fix it or warn you, and you suffered injuries as a direct result. Simply falling on someone's property is not enough. You have to establish the owner's negligence.

How long the hazard was there, and whether anyone can prove it. A wet floor from a spill two minutes earlier is a different case from a cracked step that generated three maintenance tickets. Photographs, incident reports, prior complaints, and surveillance footage are what turn a fall into a claim, and surveillance in particular is often overwritten within days.

It depends on your state. Across the 51 jurisdictions in our state-law data, premises liability deadlines run from 1 to 6 years, and 25 of them use 2 years. Select your state in the calculator above and it will show you the deadline we hold. Claims against a government entity run on a separate and much shorter notice deadline that we do not publish a number for, so ask an attorney about that one specifically.

Retail and grocery chains are frequent defendants and most have experienced claims teams. They often dispute how long the hazard was present or argue warning signs were in place. Report the incident to a manager before you leave, ask for a copy of the incident report, photograph the scene and your shoes, and get witness contact details. Stores usually have cameras, and asking that the footage be preserved in writing is what stops it being overwritten.

Yes, more than most people expect. Premises liability sorts visitors by their legal status. A customer in a store is an invitee and is owed the highest duty of care. A social guest is a licensee and is owed less. A trespasser is generally owed only a duty to avoid willful or wanton harm, with an exception for child trespassers under the attractive nuisance doctrine. Which category you fall into shapes what the owner had to do for you.

In most states, yes. Your recovery is reduced by your share of fault, so being 30% at fault in a pure comparative state costs you 30%. In the 34 jurisdictions with modified comparative negligence, recovery stops once you reach the state threshold, which is 50% in 10 of them and 51% in 24. In 6 jurisdictions that still apply contributory negligence, any share of fault at all can bar recovery. The calculator applies your own state's rule.