When people think about who is responsible for their slip and fall, they usually think of one person or one company. The store where they fell. The landlord who owns the building. But in many cases, there are multiple parties who share liability, and identifying all of them is critical to maximizing your recovery. More defendants means more insurance policies, which means a better chance of full recovery on a serious injury.
When I take a slip and fall case, one of the first things I do is identify every potentially liable party. Below are the categories I work through on every fall case in Illinois.
The property owner is the most obvious defendant and is the starting point on every fall case. Under Illinois law, the owner of a property has a non-delegable duty to keep their property reasonably safe. They cannot escape liability by farming the maintenance out to a management company or a contractor. But the property owner is not always the party who controls the day-to-day maintenance, which is why the analysis does not stop here.
In commercial real estate, the property owner often hires a property management company to handle maintenance, repairs, tenant relations, and routine inspections. On many commercial buildings, the property manager is the party with actual control over how the premises are maintained. If the management company failed to address a known hazard, failed to implement adequate inspection protocols, or failed to maintain the premises, they share liability with the property owner. Their management contract and maintenance logs become key evidence.
Tenants can be responsible for hazards within their leased space. If you slipped on a wet floor inside a restaurant, the restaurant is responsible for maintaining safe conditions within its space regardless of who owns the building. The lease agreement may allocate maintenance responsibilities between the landlord and the tenant, and both may be liable depending on where the hazard was located and who was responsible for addressing it.
Snow and ice removal contractors are a common additional defendant in winter slip and fall cases. The property owner hires a contractor to plow and salt the lot. The contractor does a poor job, misses an area, or fails to return after a refreeze. The injured person has a claim against both the property owner, who has a non-delegable duty to maintain safe premises, and the contractor, who performed the work negligently. The contractor's service agreement, dispatch records, and GPS data from their equipment can prove exactly when they were on site and what they did. A negligent snow removal job can also create an unnatural accumulation, which is the key exception to the natural accumulation rule that otherwise protects property owners in Illinois winter cases.
Construction contractors and subcontractors can be liable when the hazard was created by construction activity. A torn-up sidewalk, a temporary walkway that was not properly marked, debris left in a walking path, inadequate barriers around a work zone. If a construction project created the condition that caused your fall, the general contractor and the relevant subcontractor are potentially liable parties. Construction zone falls often involve multiple contractors on the same project, and untangling the chain of responsibility is part of the investigation.
Sometimes the condition that caused the fall was not created by the owner, manager, or tenant - but by an outside business that was moving materials through the area, spilled something on the floor, was doing work nearby, or failed to guard an opening or defect they created. Any third party whose conduct contributed to the dangerous condition is a potential defendant.
Illinois joint and several liability rules under 735 ILCS 5/2-1117 mean that if a defendant is found 25 percent or more at fault, that defendant can be held liable for the full amount of compensatory damages, regardless of the percentage allocated to the other defendants. This is important because it protects the injured person against the risk of an under-insured primary defendant. If the property manager has limited insurance but the property owner has substantial coverage, joint and several liability allows the full judgment to be collected from the owner. It is one of the strongest tools in plaintiff personal injury practice and one of the reasons identifying every responsible party at the outset of the case is so important.
Call me at 312-500-4500 and let me investigate who is responsible for your fall. The investigation is free, and there is no fee unless we win.
The store owner or operator is responsible if they knew or should have known about the hazardous condition - a wet floor, a spill, merchandise in the aisle - and failed to clean it up or warn customers within a reasonable time. Under Illinois premises liability law, businesses owe their customers a duty to maintain reasonably safe conditions and to conduct regular inspections.
A landlord can be responsible for falls in common areas they control - lobbies, stairways, hallways, parking lots, and sidewalks. If the landlord knew about a dangerous condition (broken stairs, torn carpet, icy walkways) and failed to repair it, they can be held liable. Tenants are generally responsible for conditions inside their own units.
Yes, but there are special rules. You must provide written notice to the municipality within one year of the fall. The city must have had actual or constructive notice of the dangerous condition. And certain immunities under the Tort Immunity Act (745 ILCS 10/) may apply. These cases are viable but require an attorney who understands government liability.
Illinois follows modified comparative negligence (735 ILCS 5/2-1116). You can still recover compensation as long as you were less than 50% at fault. Your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault. For example, if a jury finds you 25% at fault and your damages are $100,000, you'd recover $75,000.
You need evidence showing the hazardous condition existed, the property owner knew or should have known about it, and they failed to fix it or warn you. Key evidence includes photos of the hazard, surveillance footage, incident reports, maintenance logs, witness statements, and weather records (for ice and snow cases).
The open and obvious doctrine is one of the most common defenses raised in Illinois slip and fall cases. The argument is that the hazard was so apparent that a reasonable person would have noticed and avoided it - and therefore the property owner had no duty to warn or correct. The doctrine has two important exceptions: the 'distraction exception' (where the claimant's attention was reasonably diverted in a foreseeable way, such as a customer looking at displayed merchandise) and the 'deliberate encounter exception' (where the claimant had no reasonable alternative but to confront the danger, such as needing to reach a building entrance over a snow-covered walkway). Many cases that defendants try to dismiss under open and obvious survive on one of the exceptions.
Illinois follows a long-standing rule that property owners are generally not liable for falls on natural accumulations of ice and snow - fresh snowfall, frost, freezing rain. The Illinois Snow and Ice Removal Act (745 ILCS 75/) reinforces this protection for residential property owners. The exception is unnatural accumulation: ice or snow that exists or was made worse because of the property owner's actions. Examples include a downspout that drains onto a walkway and freezes; a plowed snow pile that melts and refreezes across a sidewalk; a poorly drained surface that collects water and ices over; a roof that drips onto an entrance area. Winter slip and fall cases are won and lost on the natural-versus-unnatural distinction. When a contractor is hired to remove snow, that contractor's negligence can also create an unnatural accumulation - which is one of the reasons identifying the snow and ice removal contractor as a defendant is so important.
Two years from the date of the fall under 735 ILCS 5/13-202 for claims against private property owners, property managers, tenants, snow and ice removal contractors, construction contractors, and other private defendants. If the fall happened on government property (city, county, state, park district), the Illinois Local Governmental and Governmental Employees Tort Immunity Act applies a one-year statute of limitations under 745 ILCS 10/8-101 - plus written notice requirements that can be even shorter. Claims against the CTA have a six-month notice deadline and a one-year filing deadline under 70 ILCS 3605/41. The exact deadline depends on who owns the property where the fall occurred, which is sometimes not obvious. Missing the deadline by one day is fatal to the case. Call as soon as possible after a fall on any property.
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Scott DeSalvo founded DeSalvo Law to help injured people throughout Chicago and surrounding suburbs. Licensed to practice law in Illinois since 1998, IARDC #6244452, Scott has represented over 3,000 clients in personal injury, workers compensation, and accident cases.
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