Premises Liability Lawyer & Slip and Fall Attorney

Robert J. Hartigan is the founding attorney of Lionhart Injury Law, with offices in Boston and Atlanta. Recognized as a Super Lawyers Rising Star in 2021, 2022, and 2026 and holding an Avvo Rating of 10.0 (Superb), Robert has recovered millions for clients injured on unsafe properties. His case results include a $1,100,000 recovery for a client injured in a defective railing collapse, a $1,000,000 recovery for a staircase disrepair injury, and a $520,000 recovery for a retail store injury. Robert is licensed in Massachusetts, Georgia, and New Hampshire, and he brings the same relentless advocacy to every premises liability case regardless of where it is filed or which property owner he is up against.

A serious fall or injury on someone else’s property is not automatically an accident that no one could have prevented. A grocery store may have left a spill on the floor without inspecting the aisle. An apartment complex may have ignored a broken stair or handrail. A business may have allowed ice, debris, poor lighting, or another dangerous condition to remain where customers were expected to walk.

When a property owner or occupier knew about a dangerous condition, or should have discovered it through reasonable care, and someone is seriously injured as a result, the law may provide a right to compensation.

My name is Robert J. Hartigan, founding attorney of Lionhart Injury Law. For more than nine years, I have represented people injured because of unsafe property conditions in Massachusetts and Georgia. My premises liability results include a $1.1 million recovery involving a defective railing collapse, a $1 million recovery involving staircase disrepair, a $520,000 recovery for a retail store injury, and a $350,000 recovery for a client who suffered a serious shoulder injury in a slip and fall.

As a premises liability lawyer, I know that these cases are often won or lost through evidence that begins disappearing almost immediately. I investigate who controlled the property, what created the hazard, how long it existed, who knew about it, what inspections were performed, and whether the danger should have been corrected or visitors should have been warned.

If you or a loved one was severely injured on someone else’s property, I invite you to call 1-855-343-0997 to schedule a free consultation with an experienced slip and fall attorney.

What Is Premises Liability?

Premises liability is the area of personal injury law that addresses injuries caused by dangerous or inadequately maintained property. A successful claim generally requires more than proving that you were injured on someone else’s property. The specific elements depend on the state and circumstances, but the case ordinarily turns on whether the defendant owed you a legal duty, whether that duty was breached, and whether the dangerous condition caused your injuries. That can make a premises liability case much more complicated than it initially appears.

Types of Premises Liability Cases I Handle

As a property injury attorney with nearly a decade of legal practice, I handle claims involving dangerous conditions in stores, restaurants, apartment complexes, hotels, parking lots, sidewalks, stairwells, commercial properties, and other locations.

These cases can include:

• Slip and fall accidents involving spilled liquids, wet floors, ice, snow, grease, food, or other slippery substances
• Trip and fall accidents caused by broken pavement, uneven flooring, raised thresholds, torn carpeting, potholes, or other walking-surface defects
• Defective stairs and handrails, including loose railings, broken steps, inadequate handrails, and dangerous changes in elevation
• Retail store injuries involving falling merchandise, aisle hazards, displays, carts, or unsafe flooring
• Apartment complex injuries involving defective common areas, stairs, walkways, lighting, or other conditions for which an owner or manager may be legally responsible
• Elevator and escalator accidents
• Swimming pool accidents
• Inadequate lighting
• Snow and ice accidents
• Negligent security claims, when the requirements of applicable state law are satisfied

The legal theory can differ substantially depending on what caused the injury and who owned, occupied, managed, maintained, or controlled the area where it occurred. I investigate those relationships rather than assuming the property owner is necessarily the only potentially responsible party.

Georgia Premises Liability Law

Georgia’s primary premises liability statute for invitees is O.C.G.A. § 51-3-1.

The statute provides that when an owner or occupier expressly or impliedly invites someone onto the premises for a lawful purpose, the owner or occupier must exercise ordinary care in keeping the premises and approaches safe.

Georgia also continues to distinguish among invitees, licensees, and trespassers, and those classifications can significantly affect the duty owed.

Invitees in Georgia

Customers, shoppers, restaurant patrons, hotel guests, and many other people lawfully entering property for purposes connected with the owner or occupier generally qualify as invitees.

An owner or occupier must exercise ordinary care to keep the premises and approaches safe for invitees. Depending on the circumstances, that can require reasonable inspection procedures designed to discover hazards that might not otherwise come to the owner’s attention. This is why a store cannot necessarily escape liability simply by saying, “No employee knew the floor was wet.”

The question may also be whether the business should have discovered the condition through the exercise of ordinary care.

Licensees and Trespassers in Georgia

Under O.C.G.A. § 51-3-2, a licensee is generally someone permitted to enter for their own interests, convenience, or gratification and who does not fall into the other statutory categories. The statute provides that an owner is liable to a licensee only for willful or wanton injury.

For trespassers, O.C.G.A. § 51-3-3 generally provides that a lawful possessor of land owes no duty of care except to refrain from causing a willful or wanton injury. The statute expressly preserves Georgia’s common-law attractive nuisance doctrine concerning children.

Actual and Constructive Knowledge in a Georgia Slip and Fall Claim

One of the central issues in many Georgia slip and fall claims is whether the defendant had actual or constructive knowledge of the hazard.

• Actual knowledge can exist when the owner, manager, or appropriate employee actually knew about the dangerous condition.
• Constructive knowledge does not necessarily require proof that someone admitted knowing about it. Depending on the circumstances, constructive knowledge may be established through evidence concerning matters such as whether an employee was in the immediate vicinity and could have seen and corrected the hazard or whether the hazard had existed long enough that a reasonable inspection should have discovered it.

That makes the property’s inspection procedures extremely important.

I may investigate:

• When the area was last inspected
• Who performed the inspection
• Whether the inspection was completed
• Whether written or electronic inspection records exist
• Whether employees were nearby
• How long the dangerous condition existed
• Whether surveillance video shows when the hazard developed
• Whether previous customers or employees reported the condition

What About an Open and Obvious Hazard in Georgia?

Property owners and insurance companies frequently argue that an injured person should have seen the hazard and avoided it. But the fact that a condition might have been visible does not automatically resolve every Georgia premises liability case.

Georgia courts consider the knowledge of both the defendant and the injured invitee, along with whether each exercised the degree of care required under the circumstances. Georgia case law also recognizes that a plaintiff’s failure to stare continuously at the walking surface does not automatically establish a lack of ordinary care.

That is why I investigate the entire environment rather than focusing on a photograph of the hazard taken after the accident. Lighting, distractions created by the premises, merchandise displays, traffic flow, the person’s direction of travel, prior familiarity with the location, and the visibility of the condition can all become relevant.

Georgia Negligent Security Law Changed in 2025

Negligent security deserves separate treatment because Georgia substantially changed this area of premises liability law in 2025. Senate Bill 68 became effective April 21, 2025 and established specific statutory requirements governing negligent-security claims against owners and occupiers.

Under the current statutory framework, a negligent-security claim involving criminal or wrongful conduct by a third person requires considerably more than simply proving that a crime happened on the property.

For an invitee claim, the statute addresses issues including the foreseeability of the third person’s wrongful conduct, prior substantially similar incidents or other qualifying knowledge, a specific physical condition of the premises that created a foreseeably greater risk, whether the owner or occupier exercised ordinary care to remedy or mitigate that condition, and causation. The statute establishes different requirements for licensees.

Because Georgia negligent-security law is now governed by this newer statutory framework, I investigate these cases separately from ordinary slip and fall or property-maintenance claims.

How Long Do You Have to File a Georgia Premises Liability Lawsuit?

A Georgia lawsuit for personal injuries is generally subject to the two-year limitations period in O.C.G.A. § 9-3-33. However, that does not mean every premises liability deadline is exactly two years. Tolling rules, government defendants, and other circumstances can create different or additional requirements.

More importantly, waiting can seriously damage the evidence needed to prove a slip and fall claim. A store may clean the floor within minutes. A broken step may be repaired. Surveillance footage may be overwritten. Employees leave jobs, and witnesses forget details. The investigation should begin long before the statute of limitations is close to expiring.

Massachusetts Premises Liability Law

Massachusetts takes a different approach to visitor classifications. Massachusetts generally imposes a duty of reasonable care toward lawful visitors rather than using the traditional invitee-versus-licensee distinction that remains important in Georgia. Massachusetts’ current model premises liability instructions state that an occupier of land owes reasonable care to all lawful visitors.

The central question is therefore whether the person who owned or controlled the property acted reasonably under the circumstances.

That can involve questions such as:

• Did the defendant create the dangerous condition?
• Did the defendant know about it?
• Should the defendant reasonably have discovered it?
• Was the property adequately inspected and maintained?
• Should the condition have been repaired?
• Was an adequate warning provided?
• Did the dangerous condition cause the plaintiff’s injury?

Open and Obvious Hazards in Massachusetts

Massachusetts also recognizes an open and obvious danger doctrine, but it should not be reduced to a rule that an obvious hazard automatically defeats the case.

A property owner generally does not have to warn lawful visitors about a danger that would be open and obvious to an ordinarily intelligent person. But Massachusetts law recognizes circumstances in which a landowner may still have a duty when the owner should anticipate that lawful visitors will encounter the danger despite its obviousness.

Depending on the circumstances, an open and obvious condition can therefore affect the nature of the defendant’s duty without necessarily ending the entire premises liability analysis.

Massachusetts Slip and Falls Involving Snow and Ice

Massachusetts snow-and-ice cases deserve particular attention because the law changed significantly with Papadopoulos v. Target Corp. Massachusetts no longer applies the old distinction between “natural” and “unnatural” accumulations of snow and ice. Property owners are instead evaluated under ordinary negligence principles and the duty to act reasonably under the circumstances.

There is also a deadline that can be much shorter than the ordinary three-year statute of limitations. For certain injuries involving snow or ice on private property, Massachusetts law requires written notice to the property owner within 30 days.

That is exactly why someone injured in a snow or ice fall should not assume they have three years before anything needs to be done.

Comparative Negligence in Massachusetts

Massachusetts follows modified comparative negligence under M.G.L. c. 231, § 85.

The statute allows recovery when the plaintiff’s negligence is not greater than the total negligence attributable to the person or persons from whom recovery is sought. The plaintiff’s damages are then reduced in proportion to the plaintiff’s negligence.

In practical terms, a plaintiff who is 50% responsible can still recover, subject to the reduction. A plaintiff who is 51% responsible generally cannot.

Massachusetts premises liability actions are generally subject to a three-year statute of limitations under M.G.L. c. 260, § 2A, although exceptions and shorter notice requirements may apply.

Evidence That Can Make or Break a Premises Liability Case

A slip and fall attorney cannot reconstruct a case months later if the most important evidence has already disappeared.

That is why I focus on preservation immediately.

Surveillance Video

Video can show much more than the moment someone fell. In a retail case, footage from the period before the accident may be even more important.

It may show:

• When a spill first appeared
• Whether an employee created the condition
• How long the hazard remained
• Employees walking past without correcting it
• Whether inspections occurred
• Other customers encountering the same hazard
• Exactly how the accident happened

When appropriate, I send a preservation letter promptly demanding preservation of relevant surveillance footage and other evidence.

Incident Reports and Inspection Records

I also seek evidence such as:

• Incident or accident reports
• Inspection logs
• Cleaning records
• Maintenance records
• Repair requests and work orders
• Employee schedules
• Photographs
• Witness information
• Prior complaints
• Prior incidents involving the same condition
• Relevant policies and procedures
• Contracts identifying who was responsible for inspection, cleaning, repair, or maintenance

These records can help answer one of the most important questions in a premises liability case: what did the responsible party know, and when should they have known it?

Does a Missing Wet Floor Sign Prove Negligence?

Not by itself.

The real questions include why the floor was wet, who created the condition, whether the defendant knew or should have known about it, whether a warning was reasonably necessary, whether any warning given was adequate, and whether the condition caused the fall.

Likewise, putting out a yellow warning cone does not automatically protect a business from liability. The adequacy of a warning depends on the circumstances.

Common Injuries in Slip and Fall and Premises Liability Cases

A fall can produce far more serious injuries than people sometimes assume, particularly when someone falls on concrete, down stairs, or from an elevated surface.

Injuries I see in premises liability cases include:

• Shoulder injuries, including rotator cuff tears, labral injuries, dislocations, and fractures
• Knee injuries, including meniscus and ligament damage
• Hip and pelvic fractures, particularly in older adults
• Traumatic brain injuries and concussions from striking the head
• Spinal and back injuries, including disc and nerve injuries
• Wrist and arm fractures caused by trying to break a fall
• Ankle injuries and fractures
• Leg fractures
• Lacerations and scarring
• Permanent mobility limitations

A serious premises liability claim should account for more than the first emergency-room bill. I evaluate future medical treatment, surgery, rehabilitation, lost wages, diminished earning capacity, pain and suffering, permanent impairment, and the effect the injury has on everyday life.

What Compensation Can I Recover in a Premises Liability Case?

When a property owner’s negligence causes an injury, recoverable damages depend on the applicable law and facts of the case.

Potential compensation may include:

• Past and future medical expenses
• Lost wages
• Loss of future earning capacity
• Physical therapy and rehabilitation
• Pain and suffering
• Emotional distress
• Permanent impairment
• Scarring or disfigurement
• Other damages recognized under applicable law

The value of a slip and fall settlement or premises liability claim depends on the strength of the liability evidence, severity and permanence of the injuries, available insurance, comparative fault, future damages, and many other factors. There is no responsible way to value a case solely from the type of accident.

Premises Liability Lawyer Serving Massachusetts and Georgia

Lionhart Injury Law represents people injured because of dangerous property conditions throughout Massachusetts and Georgia, including Boston, Atlanta, Decatur, and surrounding communities.

The law governing a Massachusetts premises liability case differs substantially from Georgia law, so I build each case around the standards that actually apply where the injury occurred.

For information specific to Decatur, visit my Decatur Premises Liability Lawyer page.

Frequently Asked Questions About Premises Liability

What is the difference between a slip and fall and premises liability?

A slip and fall is one type of premises liability case. Premises liability is the broader area of law involving injuries caused by dangerous property conditions. It can include slip and falls, trip and falls, defective stairs or railings, falling merchandise, snow and ice accidents, inadequate maintenance, and qualifying negligent-security claims.

What do I have to prove in a Georgia slip and fall case?

The precise requirements depend on the circumstances, but an invitee claim generally requires evidence establishing a dangerous condition, the defendant’s actual or constructive knowledge of that condition, causation and damages, while also addressing whether the injured person knew or reasonably should have known about the hazard.

Georgia’s premises liability statute, O.C.G.A. § 51-3-1 requires owners and occupiers to exercise ordinary care in keeping their premises and approaches safe.

What is constructive notice in a slip and fall case?

Constructive notice allows knowledge to be established even without proof that the property owner actually knew about the specific hazard. Depending on the jurisdiction and facts, evidence about how long the condition existed, employee proximity, inspection procedures, maintenance practices, and whether a reasonable inspection would have discovered it can become important.

There is no universal amount of time that automatically establishes constructive notice.

Does Georgia distinguish between customers and other property visitors?

Yes. Georgia continues to distinguish among invitees, licensees, and trespassers.

Invitees receive the protection of the ordinary-care standard in O.C.G.A. § 51-3-1. Georgia’s statutes impose substantially different standards for licensees and trespassers, which is why determining the injured person’s legal status can be important.

Does Massachusetts distinguish between invitees and licensees?

Not in the same way Georgia does. Massachusetts generally applies a reasonable-care standard to lawful visitors rather than the traditional invitee-licensee distinction. The circumstances of the visitor’s presence and the property owner’s conduct can still matter, but Massachusetts premises liability analysis is structured differently from Georgia’s.

What evidence is important in a slip and fall claim?

Important evidence may include surveillance footage, photographs, incident reports, witness statements, inspection logs, cleaning records, maintenance records, repair requests, prior complaints, and evidence showing when the dangerous condition developed.

Because some of this evidence can disappear quickly, contacting a slip and fall attorney promptly can be important even when the statute of limitations is still years away.

Can I recover if I was partially responsible for my fall?

Possibly.

Both Georgia and Massachusetts apply comparative-fault principles, but the precise rules differ. In Georgia, a plaintiff who is 50% or more responsible generally cannot recover. In Massachusetts, recovery is generally barred when the plaintiff’s negligence is greater than the combined negligence of the person or persons from whom recovery is sought, meaning a plaintiff at 50% can still potentially recover, while 51% generally bars recovery.

Does the absence of a wet floor sign mean the store is automatically liable?

No. A missing warning sign can be relevant, but it does not automatically establish store owner liability.

The case still requires an analysis of the dangerous condition, the store’s knowledge or constructive knowledge, whether a warning or corrective action was reasonably required, causation, and the injured person’s conduct.

What if the property owner says the hazard was open and obvious?

An open and obvious hazard can be an important defense, but it does not necessarily end every premises liability claim.

The effect of the condition’s visibility depends on the applicable state law and circumstances. Massachusetts, for example, recognizes circumstances in which a landowner may still have obligations concerning an open and obvious condition when the owner should anticipate that lawful visitors will nevertheless encounter the danger.

Can I sue an apartment complex for an injury?

Potentially. Apartment complex negligence can involve dangerous common areas, defective stairs or railings, inadequate maintenance, lighting problems, snow or ice, or other conditions for which an owner, manager, maintenance company, or another party may be legally responsible.

Liability depends on issues such as control over the area, notice of the condition, applicable lease provisions and statutes, the nature of the hazard, and the circumstances of the injury.

How long do I have to file a premises liability lawsuit?

Georgia personal injury actions are generally subject to a two-year limitations period under O.C.G.A. § 9-3-33. Massachusetts tort actions are generally subject to a three-year limitations period under M.G.L. c. 260, § 2A.

However, exceptions and shorter notice requirements can apply. Massachusetts snow-and-ice cases involving private property, for example, can trigger a 30-day written-notice requirement.

What should I do after a slip and fall accident?

Get medical attention and report the accident to the property owner, manager, or business as soon as reasonably possible. If you can do so safely, photograph or video the exact condition that caused the fall before it is cleaned, repaired, or changed. Get contact information from witnesses and preserve the shoes and clothing you were wearing.

Do not assume the business will preserve its surveillance footage simply because an incident report was completed. Contact a premises liability lawyer promptly so potentially important evidence can be identified and preservation requests can be sent.

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