Premises liability attorney in Chicago

Premises cases carry an unfair stigma. Everyone has heard the joke about the slip and fall. Almost nobody making one of these claims finds it funny, because a broken hip at sixty-eight is not a punchline.

The property owner's first move is to make it your fault

The standard defence in a premises case is not that the floor was dry. It is that you should have been looking. That you were carrying too much, wearing the wrong shoes, moving too fast, distracted by your phone, or that the hazard was so obvious that noticing it was your job. The argument is familiar, and it works often enough that it gets used almost automatically, which is why what you can prove about the condition matters more than what you remember about it.

What the work actually is

The question is notice

An owner is not automatically responsible because something happened on their floor. Broadly, the argument turns on whether they created the hazard, knew about it, or should have known because it had been there long enough that a reasonably run business would have found it. That is why the boring details carry the case: how long the spill sat there, when the aisle was last inspected, whether anyone had complained before, and whether there was any system for checking at all.

Illinois and snow, which is its own subject

Winter cases have particular rules in Illinois, and they are not intuitive. Natural accumulations of snow and ice are treated differently from unnatural ones created by, for example, a downspout that discharges across a walkway and refreezes, or a partial clearing job that leaves a rut. Whether a given patch of ice falls on one side of that line or the other is a genuinely fact-specific question and a poor candidate for guessing from a web page.

It is not only floors

These claims also cover stair treads and missing handrails, lighting that was out in a garage or stairwell, falling merchandise in a warehouse-format store, badly maintained lifts and escalators, unsecured construction areas, dog bites, and negligent security where an assault occurred somewhere a foreseeable risk was ignored. The common thread is control: someone was responsible for that space and for keeping it reasonably safe.

Evidence has a short life here

The spill is mopped within the hour. The ice melts by lunchtime. The camera covering that aisle overwrites on a thirty-day loop, sometimes shorter. The employee who helped you up moves to another store. Photographs taken on the day with your own phone are often the single most valuable thing in the file, and an incident report you asked for at the time is worth a great deal more than a memory of asking.

What Julian does with it

He gets a preservation request out for footage and incident reports early, then works on the notice question: inspection logs, prior complaints, maintenance records and staffing. The medical side proceeds in parallel, because the injury still has to be documented regardless of how clear the liability looks.

How it runs

The same order every time, because most of the costly mistakes in injury work come from doing step four before step two.

01
Report it and keep proof
An incident report, and photographs of the actual condition before anyone cleans it up.
02
Footage gets requested
In writing, quickly, because retention periods are short and nobody is obliged to guess that you want it.
03
Notice gets investigated
Inspection routines, prior complaints and maintenance history, which is where these cases are usually won or lost.
04
The claim is presented
With the condition, the notice and the injury documented together rather than asserted.

Premises, answered plainly

I did not report it at the time. Is it over?

Not necessarily. It makes the case harder rather than impossible, and there are often other records. Worth a conversation before you assume the worst.

The store says I should have seen it. Is that a defence?

They will make that argument. How much weight it carries depends on the facts, and it is not the automatic answer they sometimes present it as.

Does it matter that I was in a shop rather than a friend's house?

It can matter. The relationship between you and the property, and how the space is used, are part of the analysis.

How long do I have?

Illinois deadlines vary with the claim and, importantly, with who owns the property, because claims involving public bodies can run on different tracks. Ask early rather than late.

Is a slip and fall case worth bringing?

It depends entirely on the injury and on what can be proved about the condition. A free review is a cheap way to find out rather than wonder.

What people usually pair this with

Car accidents

Most people who call about a car accident open with an apology. They are sorry to bother anyone, they are not sure it is serious enough, and they have already half-decided to handle it themselves. That instinct is the one the insurance industry is counting on.

Serious injury

If you are reading this page, something has already happened that a website cannot help with. What follows is written plainly, because in our experience families in this position are tired of being handled.

Workers' comp

Workers' compensation is about ten per cent of Julian's practice, and it is on this list for a specific reason: a serious workplace injury is quite often two cases wearing one coat, and people routinely bring only one of them.

The rest of the practice is on the practice areas index. If you would rather not take any of this on description alone, the admissions and memberships are all checkable, and how a claim actually works sets out the process before you speak to anyone.

Talk to an attorney about premises

The first conversation is free and puts you under no obligation. Bring the report, the photographs, the letter from the insurer, or nothing at all.

Free case review

Call (312) 701-0076

Contacting Julian E. Zito or Mark L. Karno & Associates, LLC does not create an attorney-client relationship, and nothing on this site is legal advice. Please do not send confidential information until a written engagement is in place. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.