You walked into a store, restaurant, parking lot, or office building, and the next thing you knew, you were on the ground. Maybe it was a wet floor with no sign. Maybe a cracked surface that had been that way for months. Maybe ice that built up overnight and no one had treated.
The question you are asking now is whether this counts.
Falling on a business’s property does not by itself make the business responsible. What decides it is what caused the fall, whether the business knew or should have known about the danger, what it did about it, and whether the condition is what hurt you. Those four questions are the heart of a Maine premises liability claim. Understand them before you decide anything.
What Maine law asks of a business
In Maine, a property owner — or a business in control of the premises — must use reasonable care to keep the property safe for people who are lawfully there. A customer walking in during business hours is someone the business should expect.
The duty is reasonable care, not a guarantee that no one will ever be hurt. A puddle that no one at the business caused, and that appeared seconds before you reached it, is a very different case from one an employee made or one that sat there long enough that someone should have found it.
What reasonable care is required on the day you fell depends on the situation. It may mean:
- Inspecting the property for hazards on a sensible schedule
- Correcting a known danger within a reasonable time
- Warning customers when a danger cannot be fixed promptly
- Responding sensibly to weather, which in Maine means snow and ice for much of the year
How often a business must look, and how fast it must act, changes with the kind of business, the kind of hazard, the weather, and how many people are walking through.
What you need to show
Having a case is not the same as having fallen. Four things generally have to line up.
The business created the danger, knew about it, or should have found it. This is usually the fight. Evidence might show that an employee made the mess, that someone reported it, that the same thing happens in that spot every week, or that it sat there long enough that a reasonable inspection would have caught it. A floor wet for five minutes is a different case from a floor wet for three hours because a ceiling tile was leaking.
The business did not respond reasonably. Was there a wet floor sign? Was there an inspection routine, and was anyone following it? Had employees walked past the hazard? These details matter.
The condition caused your fall and your injury. You have to connect the two; falling on business property is not enough on its own. Photographs, what you said at the time, witnesses, surveillance footage, and your medical records all help establish what happened. Expect the business to argue that something else caused it: that you were distracted, that your shoes had no grip, that the hazard was obvious.
The fall caused real losses. Medical expenses, lost wages, pain and suffering, and the other consequences that followed from the injury.
If the business says it was partly your fault
This is the most common argument you will hear. You were looking at your phone. You were wearing the wrong shoes. You walked past a caution sign.
It matters, and it does not end the claim. Under Maine law, sharing some of the responsibility does not automatically defeat a case. You can recover unless a jury finds you equally at fault, and if you can recover, the jury reduces the award by what it considers fair in light of your share. (We explain how that rule works, and how it differs from what most people assume, in our guide to what people get wrong about Maine injury law.)
Evidence that you were distracted, ignored a warning, or went ahead anyway is worth taking seriously. It is not the end of the conversation.
What to do after a fall at a Maine business
What you do in the first hour matters more than almost anything that follows.
- Report it before you leave. Ask for a manager. Ask whether they will prepare an incident report, and request a copy. If they will not give you one, write down the manager’s name, the time you reported it, and what you told them.
- Photograph the hazard. Do it as soon as you safely can. The spill gets mopped, the sign gets moved, the ice melts. Get the surrounding area too: lighting, signage, what the floor looked like on either side.
- Get witness information. If anyone saw you fall, get a name and a phone number before they leave. Eyewitnesses are hard to find later.
- Get medical attention. Go if you are injured, if you hit your head, or if symptoms appear over the next few days. Tell the provider accurately how you fell and when the symptoms started. That description goes into the record, and the record is what connects the fall to the injury.
- Do not give a recorded statement to the business’s insurer. They often call within a day or two, before you know the extent of your injuries. You are not required to give one, and doing it without advice can hurt the claim.
How serious does the injury have to be?
Maine has no minimum injury threshold for a premises liability claim. Practically, the size of a claim tracks the size of the harm.
A sprained wrist and a few uncomfortable days is a very different matter from a broken hip, surgery, three months out of work, and a year of physical therapy. Both can support a claim. What each is worth, and what it costs to pursue, are not the same.
Falls are also deceptive. A rib that seems like a temporary nuisance. A head impact that seems fine until cognitive symptoms become obvious weeks later. A knee that is stiff at first and needs surgery six months on. Symptoms shift, further imaging produces a more specific diagnosis, and more treatment becomes necessary.
That is why the timing of a settlement matters. Once you accept a settlement and sign a release, you generally cannot go back for more if the injury turns out to be worse than anyone thought. Do not sign until you reasonably understand what is wrong and what treatment is still ahead.
Frequently asked questions
What if the business says I should have seen the hazard?
Visibility matters, and it does not decide the case by itself. The analysis can include the lighting, how much the hazard stood out, where it was, whether there was any warning, whether you had a reasonable way around it, and whether the business should have expected customers to encounter the danger even after seeing it. The same facts may also bear on comparative fault.
The business told me they have cameras. Can that footage help?
Yes, and it needs to be preserved quickly. Surveillance footage is overwritten or deleted under a business’s ordinary retention practices, sometimes within days. If cameras may have captured your fall or the condition that caused it, send a written preservation request right away. Ask for footage from before the fall as well; that is often what shows how the hazard got there and how long it sat. An attorney can identify the time window, the camera locations, and the categories of footage to preserve.
What if I signed a liability waiver?
A waiver may affect your claim, and it is not automatically enforceable. Maine courts read waivers narrowly, and a business generally must use clear, specific language to release claims based on its own negligence. The wording, the activity it covered, and how you were injured all matter. Do not assume the waiver ends it, and do not assume it can be ignored.
How long do I have to file?
You have six years to file most personal injury claims in Maine. The catch in a premises case is that you often do not know who you are dealing with. A parking lot can belong to a municipality, a school district, or a state agency, and a claim against any of those requires written notice within 365 days and suit within two years. First, find out who owns and maintains the property. Your deadline follows from that answer, not from the general rule.
A quick self-check
- Was something there that should not have been: water, ice, a broken surface, an obstruction?
- Is there any reason to think it had been there a while, or that an employee caused it?
- Did you tell anyone at the business, and did anyone write it down?
- Do you have photographs, witnesses, or camera footage?
- Did you get medical care, and how soon after?
If you are answering yes to most of these, it is worth a conversation.
If you slipped and fell at a Maine business and are not sure whether you have a case, Hardy, Wolf & Downing can give you a clear answer. We have handled premises liability cases in Maine since 1976 and have offices in Portland and Lewiston. Consultations are free, and you pay nothing unless we recover for you.
