The short answer

An Illinois slip and fall claim is a negligence claim. You are not compensated because you fell; you are compensated because someone who owed you reasonable care failed to exercise it, and that failure caused your injury.

In practice that breaks into six things you have to establish. Miss any one and the claim fails, however serious the injury.

The six elements

Element 1: the duty, and why your status no longer matters

Illinois used to sort visitors into invitees and licensees and give them different protection. The Premises Liability Act ended that. Under 740 ILCS 130/2, “The distinction under the common law between invitees and licensees as to the duty owed by an owner or occupier of any premises to such entrants is abolished. The duty owed to such entrants is that of reasonable care under the circumstances regarding the state of the premises or acts done or omitted on them.”

The Act took effect on September 12, 1984 and it is not retroactive. It did not change the separate rules for trespassers. So a shopper, a dinner guest and a delivery driver are all owed the same standard, and any argument that sorts you into a lesser category is arguing from law Illinois discarded four decades ago.

What that duty contains comes from Genaust v. Illinois Power Co., 62 Ill. 2d 456 (1976), which adopted section 343 of the Restatement (Second) of Torts. A possessor of land is liable for a condition only if they know of it or would discover it with reasonable care and should realize it involves an unreasonable risk, should expect that visitors will not discover or realize the danger or will fail to protect themselves, and then fail to exercise reasonable care to protect them.

Element 3: notice, and the exception worth knowing

Notice is the battleground. Illinois requires actual or constructive notice of the dangerous condition, a requirement recognized in Sparling v. Peabody Coal Co., 59 Ill. 2d 491 (1974) and Perminas v. Montgomery Ward & Co., 60 Ill. 2d 469 (1975). Without evidence that the owner knew, or would have discovered the condition had they exercised ordinary care, liability cannot be imposed.

• Actual notice: someone told them, or an employee saw it.
• Constructive notice: it was there long enough that reasonable inspection would have found it. This is why the length of time a spill sat on the floor matters so much.

The exception changes many cases. Illinois departs from the notice requirement where the plaintiff shows, by direct or circumstantial evidence, that the dangerous condition arose from the defendant’s own acts or as part of the business’s operation. That is Reed v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 298 Ill. App. 3d 712 (4th Dist. 1998), where the court also confirmed that “plaintiffs are masters of their complaint and are entitled to proceed under whichever theory they decide, so long as the evidence supports such a theory.”

So a leaking display case, a freshly mopped aisle without a sign, or produce that routinely ends up on the floor can support a claim on ordinary negligence without proving how long the hazard sat there.

Elements 5 and 6: causation and damages

These two get least attention and decide plenty of cases. Causation means the breach was a proximate cause of the fall and of the injury you are claiming. Insurers attack it in two places: whether the hazard is really what made you fall, and whether the fall is really what caused the condition you are treating. A gap of weeks between the fall and the first medical visit is the most common opening they get.

Damages have to be proved rather than asserted. Medical records and bills, wage records, and evidence of how the injury changed daily life all carry weight. Treating consistently and following through matters as much to the claim as it does to the recovery.

The defenses you should expect

“It was open and obvious”

As a general rule, a landowner has no duty to warn of open and obvious conditions. But Illinois rejected treating that as an automatic bar. In Ward v. Kmart Corp., 136 Ill. 2d 132 (1990), the Supreme Court rejected a per se rule and adopted the exceptions in Restatement section 343A:

• Distraction. Where the owner has reason to expect that a visitor’s attention may be drawn away, the duty of reasonable care survives. In Ward the plaintiff was carrying a large mirror out of a store and did not see a concrete post by the door.
• Deliberate encounter. Where the owner may reasonably expect someone to face the danger anyway because the advantages of proceeding outweigh the apparent risk. In LaFever v. Kemlite Co., 185 Ill. 2d 380 (1998), the plaintiff’s job required him to walk through the debris he slipped on.

Whether a condition really was open and obvious can itself be a question of fact for the jury, which is why this defense is argued far more often than it wins outright.

“You were partly to blame”

Illinois uses modified comparative negligence. Under 735 ILCS 5/2-1116, your damages are reduced in proportion to your share of the fault, and you are barred entirely only if that share is more than 50%. At exactly 50% you still recover, at half. We go through the arithmetic in our post on what comparative negligence means for fall claims.

“It was snow, and that is nobody’s fault”

For winter falls this defense is strong, because Illinois owners owe no duty to remove natural accumulations of snow and ice. The claim then depends on the accumulation being unnatural, from drainage, defective pavement or negligent plowing. We cover that separately in who is liable when you slip on ice.

What proof actually looks like

Elements two and three are proved with documents, not memory:

• Photographs from the day, showing the hazard and the surrounding area before anything is cleaned or repaired.
• The incident report, and a written request that video be preserved. Most systems overwrite within one to two weeks.
• Inspection and maintenance logs, which establish either a reasonable system or the absence of one.
• Prior complaints about the same condition, which go straight to notice.
• Prompt medical records tying the injury to the fall before an insurer blames something else.

Serious falls produce serious injuries, including brain injuries and other catastrophic injuries. If you fell at work, a workers’ compensation claim may run alongside a claim against the property owner.

Your deadline, and the shorter one

A personal injury claim in Illinois generally carries a two-year deadline under 735 ILCS 5/13-202.

If you fell on property belonging to a local public entity, you have one year under 745 ILCS 10/8-101(a). Village sidewalks, school grounds, park district paths and public buildings are all in that category, and it is the single most common way a good fall claim is lost.

Поширені запитання

Talk to an Elmwood Park slip and fall lawyer

Fall claims are won on notice and on evidence that has a short life. Inspection logs, incident reports and video are all easier to obtain in the first weeks than in the first year.

If you were hurt in a fall in Elmwood Park, Oak Lawn, Skokie, Niles, Orland Park or anywhere in Cook County, Lawyer Furqan will tell you honestly which of the six elements your case is strong on and which it is not. We handle the full range of premises liability claims.

Call 847-800-8978 or contact us online. The consultation is free, there is nothing upfront, and you owe no attorney’s fee unless we win.

Sources and authorities cited

• IPI Civil 120.00, Premises · the duty, the Restatement section 343 test, notice, and the open and obvious exceptions
• 740 ILCS 130/2 · invitee and licensee distinction abolished, duty is reasonable care under the circumstances
• Genaust v. Illinois Power Co., 62 Ill. 2d 456 (1976) · adopting Restatement (Second) of Torts section 343
• Sparling v. Peabody Coal Co., 59 Ill. 2d 491 (1974) and Perminas v. Montgomery Ward & Co., 60 Ill. 2d 469 (1975) · the notice requirement
• Reed v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 298 Ill. App. 3d 712 (4th Dist. 1998) · no notice needed where the condition arose from the defendant’s acts or business
• Ward v. Kmart Corp., 136 Ill. 2d 132 (1990) and LaFever v. Kemlite Co., 185 Ill. 2d 380 (1998) · distraction and deliberate encounter exceptions
• 735 ILCS 5/2-1116 · comparative negligence, barred above 50%; 735 ILCS 5/13-202 · two years; 745 ILCS 10/8-101(a) · one year, local public entities

This article is general legal information about Illinois law, not legal advice, and creates no attorney-client relationship. Every fall claim depends on its own facts, and nothing here predicts a result.