Not whether you fell, and not how badly you were hurt. Whether the property owner knew about the hazard, or should have known about it and had time to do something. That question is called notice, and it is where these cases are won and lost.
Updated September 2026
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Slip and fall claims have a reputation for being easy. They are not. A property owner in Missouri is not automatically responsible because someone was injured on the property, and proving a hazard existed is not the same as proving the owner was responsible for it.
The deciding question is almost always notice. This article explains the difference between actual and constructive notice, what evidence establishes each, and why the answer usually depends on records the property owner controls.
Both are ways of showing the owner should have dealt with the hazard. They are proved very differently.
Actual notice means the owner or its employees in fact knew about the condition. An employee saw the spill, a customer reported it, a prior incident occurred in the same spot, or a maintenance request had already been submitted. It is the stronger form because it removes the argument about what a reasonable owner would have discovered, and it usually surfaces in incident reports, internal messages, or a witness who told someone.
Constructive notice means the condition existed long enough that the owner, acting with reasonable care, would have discovered and addressed it. Nobody has to have seen it. The argument is about time and reasonable diligence: a hazard present long enough to be found should have been found. This is the form most cases turn on, because owners rarely admit to actual knowledge.
Because constructive notice is an argument about duration, the evidence is whatever shows how long the condition was there. Surveillance video is the most direct and the most perishable. Beyond it: the physical state of the substance, whether it had been tracked through or dried at the edges, cart tracks or footprints through it, witness accounts of having seen it earlier, and the sequence of customers who passed the spot.
Many retailers document floor inspections on a schedule. Those logs are frequently the centre of the case. A gap between the last documented inspection and the fall supports constructive notice. A log showing inspections that demonstrably did not happen, or that were recorded after the fact, supports considerably more than that. These records are held by the property owner and have retention limits, which is why timing matters.
An unguarded pallet in a national grocery retailer fractured our client's femur. A previous firm had already turned the case down. The retailer offered $125,000.
It settled for $2.5 million.
An unguarded pallet left in a customer aisle is a different evidentiary problem from a spill, because the hazard was placed there by the store rather than found by it. That distinction is worth understanding, and it is the sort of thing that separates a case worth $125,000 from the same case worth considerably more.
Past results do not guarantee a future outcome, and every case depends on its own facts. These are public-record results that show what trial-prepared representation can produce.
A national grocery retailer offered $125,000 for an unguarded pallet that fractured our client's femur. A previous firm had declined the case. Read full story →
A produce vendor suffered life-changing injuries after being struck by an uncertified, untrained forklift driver. Read full story →
The insurance company said the wrist fracture had healed. A unanimous jury disagreed in 15 minutes, at more than 10 times the last offer. Read full story →
An incident report creates a dated record that the fall happened and where. Ask for a copy or the report number. A fall that was never reported invites an argument that it never happened on the property at all.
Photograph the substance or object, close up and from a distance that shows the surroundings, and anything indicating how long it had been there: dried edges, tracked-through marks, cart tracks, footprints. Within minutes of a fall this evidence is usually cleaned up and gone forever.
Anyone who saw the hazard before you fell is a constructive notice witness, which makes them the most valuable witness in the case. Employees who had walked the aisle matter for the same reason.
Video is the most direct proof of how long a hazard was present and the fastest to disappear, often on retention cycles measured in days or a few weeks. A written preservation demand sent early is the single most effective step; a request made months later frequently documents only that the footage is already gone.
Say what happened and what struck what. Gaps in treatment and vague early records are used later to argue the injury came from something else.
It means the dangerous condition existed long enough that the property owner, exercising reasonable care, should have discovered it and dealt with it. Nobody has to prove an employee actually saw the hazard. The argument is about time and reasonable diligence, so the evidence tends to be whatever shows duration: surveillance video, the physical state of the substance, tracks through it, and the property owner's own inspection records.
No. Missouri does not make a property owner liable simply because an injury happened on the premises. A claim generally requires showing that a dangerous condition existed, that the owner knew about it or should have known about it and had a reasonable opportunity to address it, that the owner failed to do so, and that the condition caused the injury. Notice is usually the element that is actually in dispute.
Most directly with surveillance video, which is also the evidence most likely to be overwritten before anyone asks for it. Where video is unavailable, duration is established circumstantially: whether the substance had dried at the edges or been tracked through, cart tracks or footprints, witnesses who saw it earlier, and gaps in the store's own documented inspection schedule between the last sweep and the fall.
The absence of a warning is relevant but it is not the whole case. If the owner knew or should have known about the hazard, failing to warn about it or to clean it up is part of the breach. Conversely, a cone that was present can support the owner's argument that it acted reasonably, or your argument that the hazard was known about and left in place anyway. It depends what the rest of the evidence shows.
It can, because owners routinely argue the condition was open and obvious or that the injured person was not watching where they were going. Missouri applies pure comparative fault, so being assigned a share of responsibility reduces a recovery by that percentage rather than defeating the claim. Insurers tend to assert a larger share of fault than the evidence supports.
Missouri generally allows five years from the date of injury to file a personal injury claim, including most premises cases. That is the legal deadline, not the practical one. The notice evidence these cases depend on, particularly surveillance video and inspection logs, is subject to retention periods measured in days or months, so waiting is how a provable case becomes an unprovable one.
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