Texas Slip & Fall / Premises Liability Lawyers
Property owners have a legal duty to keep visitors safe. When they fail and you fall, the law gives you a path to recovery.
Why Families Across Texas Trust Patterson Law Group
Slip-and-fall and premises liability cases are some of the most under-valued claims in Texas — both by victims and by insurance carriers who count on you not knowing your rights. A grocery store that spills oil and fails to clean it up. A landlord who lets a stairway rot. A bar that lets a known threat onto the property. Each one creates real legal liability when someone gets hurt.
Patterson Law Group has handled premises liability cases for more than 30 years. These cases are evidence-driven — surveillance footage, inspection logs, prior incident reports — and the evidence disappears fast. We move quickly, send preservation letters within days of being retained, and force property owners to produce what they'd rather hide.
The consultation is free. We work on a contingency fee. No recovery, no fee.
Offices in Fort Worth, Arlington, and San Antonio. Every case is taken on a contingency fee — no recovery, no fee.
Premises Liability Cases We Handle
Premises liability covers a wide range of incidents on someone else's property:
Texas Premises Liability Law
Texas premises liability law turns on the visitor's legal status: invitee, licensee, or trespasser. Invitees (paying customers and others on the property for the owner's benefit) are owed the highest duty — the property owner must inspect for and fix dangerous conditions or warn of them. Licensees (social guests) are owed a lower duty. Trespassers are owed only the duty not to be harmed intentionally or by gross negligence.
The standard invitee case requires proof that (1) a dangerous condition existed, (2) the property owner knew or should have known about it, (3) the owner failed to make it safe or warn, and (4) the condition caused the injury. The 'should have known' element — called 'constructive knowledge' — is where most cases are won or lost.
Statute of limitations is two years under CPRC §16.003. Surveillance footage at retail stores is typically overwritten in 7-30 days. Move quickly — call us before the evidence is gone.
How We Work With You
Our process is simple. You focus on your recovery. We handle everything else.
- 1 Call us. Tell us what happened. Free, confidential, no obligation. We'll give you an honest answer about whether you have a case.
- 2 We investigate. Police reports, surveillance footage, medical records, witness statements, expert consultations. We build the case the right way from day one.
- 3 You focus on healing. We handle every insurance call, every demand, every negotiation. If they refuse to pay fairly, we take them to trial.
Local Offices & City Pages
Patterson Law Group serves all injured Texans from our physical offices in Fort Worth, Arlington, and San Antonio. For city-specific information on this practice area:
Where Slip-and-Fall Accidents Happen in Texas — And Why
People picture a wet floor at a grocery store, and yes, that happens every day in Texas. But premises liability claims come out of nearly every kind of property, and the conditions that cause them are usually known to the owner long before anyone gets hurt.
Retail stores and big-box chains. Spilled liquids in produce and beverage aisles, leaks from refrigerator cases, freshly mopped floors with no warning cone, items fallen from overstocked shelves. National chains run on sweep and inspection schedules — and when they cut staffing, the logs go un-completed and the spills sit. We routinely subpoena those logs.
Restaurants and bars. Wet kitchen floors that bleed into dining areas, ice and condensation around drink stations, greasy tile near fryers, dimly lit steps between rooms. Bars on Sundance Square, in Deep Ellum, along the San Antonio River Walk, and across every Texas downtown produce a steady volume of these claims.
Apartment complexes and HOAs. Broken stair treads, missing handrails, unlit walkways, pool decks with no slip-resistant surface, ice on stairs after a North Texas freeze. Texas landlords owe tenants and their guests a duty to fix dangerous conditions they know about or should have discovered through reasonable inspection.
Hotels and parking areas. Polished lobby floors that turn into a skating rink in the rain, transition strips between carpet and tile, poorly marked steps. In parking lots: potholes, broken curbs, oil slicks, ice patches. Texas property owners cannot ignore obvious hazards just because they exist outside.
Construction and commercial sites. Open trenches, uncovered floor openings, exposed rebar, tools left on walking surfaces. Contractor-controlled work is governed in part by Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code Chapter 95.
The pattern is almost always the same: a hazard the property owner knew about, or should have known about, that they failed to fix or warn about in time.
Who Is Responsible Under Texas Premises Liability Law
Texas premises liability law sorts everyone who comes onto a property into one of three categories, and the duty the owner owes you depends entirely on which category you fall into. This is the single biggest variable in a slip-and-fall case, and it is the first thing the insurance company will try to use against you.
Invitees. If you are on the property for the mutual benefit of yourself and the owner — a customer in a store, a guest at a hotel, a tenant in a leased apartment — you are an invitee. Owners owe invitees the highest duty of care: reasonable care to keep the premises safe, inspect for hidden dangers, and either fix or warn about hazards they knew about or should have discovered through reasonable inspection.
Licensees. A licensee is on the property with permission but for their own purposes — a social guest, a door-to-door visitor. The owner's duty is narrower: not to injure the licensee through willful, wanton, or grossly negligent conduct, and to warn about dangerous conditions the owner actually knows about. They are not required to inspect.
Trespassers. A trespasser is on the property without permission. The owner owes only a duty not to injure them intentionally or through gross negligence. Narrow exceptions exist, including the attractive-nuisance doctrine for child trespassers around hazards like unfenced pools.
Most slip-and-fall clients who call us are invitees. The defense will sometimes argue otherwise ("you were in an employee-only area"), and that argument matters because it can collapse the duty owed from "must inspect and fix" down to "only had to warn about what we already knew." Our job is to lock in the correct legal status with photographs, signage, and witness testimony before the defense can muddy it.
Texas Slip-and-Fall Laws, Fault Rules, and Deadlines
A premises liability case in Texas is built on a stack of statutes and Texas Supreme Court decisions. Three pieces of the framework matter most.
The statute of limitations is two years. Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code §16.003 gives you two years from the date of the fall to file suit. Miss that deadline and the case is gone, with very limited exceptions for minors and individuals of unsound mind. Cases against governmental entities — a fall at a city park, county building, or transit station — require formal written notice within a much shorter window under the Texas Tort Claims Act, often six months or less, and Fort Worth, Arlington, and San Antonio each have their own charter notice provisions. Do not wait.
The notice requirement is what most slip-and-fall cases turn on. An invitee plaintiff has to prove (1) the owner had actual or constructive knowledge of the dangerous condition, (2) the condition posed an unreasonable risk of harm, (3) the owner failed to exercise reasonable care, and (4) that failure caused the injury. Sweep logs, surveillance video, and prior-incident records are how we answer the defense's predictable argument that the hazard was too fresh to have been spotted.
Modified comparative fault applies. Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code §33.001 says you can recover as long as you are 50% or less at fault, with recovery reduced by your percentage of fault. At 51% or more, you recover nothing. Section 41.0105 also limits recoverable medical expenses to what was actually paid or incurred — not the full billed amount.
Landowner-specific statutes. Chapter 75 (recreational use), Chapter 95 (contractor work on improvements), and Chapter 92 (residential landlord-tenant duties) carve out specialized rules for particular categories of property. Which one applies can change the analysis significantly. Our attorneys read every case for the right statutory framework on day one.
Injuries and Recoverable Damages in a Texas Slip-and-Fall
People underestimate slip-and-falls because they sound minor. They are not. A fall from a standing position can produce injuries every bit as severe as a low-speed car crash, and in older adults the consequences are often worse.
Traumatic brain injury. When the head strikes a hard surface, the brain accelerates and decelerates inside the skull, producing a concussion, contusion, or in serious cases a subdural or epidural hematoma. TBI symptoms can take hours or days to fully appear. Mild TBI claims get attacked hard by adjusters; we document them with neurology, neuropsych testing, and treating-physician testimony.
Hip fractures. In adults over sixty, a hip fracture from a fall frequently requires surgery — ORIF or full hip arthroplasty — followed by months of physical therapy and well-documented loss of independence.
Back, neck, and spinal injuries. Herniated discs, compression fractures, sacral fractures from landing on the tailbone. These can require injections, RFAs, fusion surgery, or a lifetime of pain management.
Wrist, shoulder, and arm fractures. The instinct to brace a fall produces distal radius fractures, scaphoid fractures, rotator cuff tears, and shoulder dislocations. Knee and ankle injuries — torn meniscus, ACL tears, ankle fractures from twisting on the way down — round out the list.
Damages. You can recover economic damages (past and future medical bills, lost wages, lost earning capacity, household services) and non-economic damages (pain, mental anguish, disfigurement, physical impairment, loss of enjoyment of life). There is no cap on non-economic damages in standard premises cases. Exemplary damages are available under §41.008 when conduct rises to gross negligence — for example, an owner who knew about a hazard for weeks and did nothing.
How Slip-and-Fall Accidents Impact Children and Older Adults
The same fall produces very different outcomes depending on who falls. Children and older adults are the two populations most vulnerable to serious harm, and the law treats them differently in important ways.
Older adults. A person over sixty-five who falls is at meaningful risk of hip fracture, TBI, and complications from prolonged immobilization. Apartment complexes, assisted-living facilities, hotels, and grocery stores all serve older Texans every day, and the duty of reasonable care includes anticipating that some invitees are not as steady as a thirty-year-old. Pre-existing conditions do not bar recovery — Texas follows the "eggshell plaintiff" rule: the defendant takes the injured person as they find them. The adjuster will still try to blame prior arthritis, prior back surgery, prior balance issues. Treating-physician testimony is what answers that, not the records alone.
Children. A small child cannot appreciate dangers an adult would see. Texas recognizes the attractive-nuisance doctrine for child trespassers around hazards like unfenced pools, and applies a child-specific reasonableness standard for premises owners who know children are likely on the property. Falls from playground equipment, broken stair treads at apartment complexes, unmarked level changes in restaurants, and pool-deck slips are common patterns. When a child is hurt, Texas law allows a parent or guardian to bring suit; settlements involving a minor typically require court approval through a friendly suit or guardian ad litem.
For both populations, future care matters more than bills already paid. Our attorneys work with life-care planners, economists, and treating physicians to put real numbers on what the rest of life looks like after the injury.
Evidence and Complex Situations
Slip-and-fall cases live and die on evidence, and most of the evidence that matters belongs to the defendant. Surveillance video gets overwritten on a thirty- or sixty-day loop. Sweep logs get re-used or discarded. Prior-incident reports sit in a risk-management database the public never sees. The single most important thing that happens in the first weeks of a case is preservation.
Spoliation letters. As soon as we open a case, we send a formal letter to the property owner and their corporate counsel demanding preservation of every category of relevant evidence: surveillance video for the day of the fall and the surrounding hours, sweep and inspection logs, cleaning schedules, work orders, incident reports, prior-incident reports for similar conditions, employee statements, and training materials. If the property owner destroys evidence after notice, Texas courts can sanction them — up to instructing the jury to presume the destroyed evidence was unfavorable.
Surveillance video. Most commercial properties have cameras, and most adjusters will tell you "the camera didn't catch it." More often, they only preserved the few seconds of the fall itself, not the hours before — which are the hours that matter. We demand the full preservation window so we can see how long the hazard was on the floor.
Experts. In complex cases — a fall from a defective stair, a slip on a floor that fails coefficient-of-friction testing — we bring in human factors experts, safety engineers, and code consultants who test the surface, measure the slope, document the lighting, and tell the jury whether the property met industry standards.
Prior-incident logs. If five other people slipped on the same wet entry mat in the prior six months, the owner had constructive notice. National retailers track this in central databases. Getting access requires aggressive discovery — but it is one of the most powerful tools in the premises lawyer's kit.
How Insurance Companies Handle Slip-and-Fall Claims
Premises liability insurers play a different game than auto adjusters. They know Texas's notice requirement and modified comparative fault rule give them more defensive leverage than in a car-crash case. Their playbook is consistent.
"It was open and obvious." The single most common defense. The owner argues the hazard was visible to anyone paying attention and that you should have avoided it. Under Texas law the open-and-obvious doctrine is not an automatic bar to recovery — it intersects with the necessary-use exception and other narrow doctrines, and the analysis is more nuanced than the defense often pretends. Our job is to frame the condition correctly: lighting, foot traffic patterns, customer attention, and whether the plaintiff had a practical alternative.
"There's no proof we knew about it." The notice argument. They will claim the spill was there for thirty seconds and nobody reported it. The answer is in their own records — sweep logs that show inspections were skipped, surveillance video that shows the hazard sitting untouched for an hour, prior-incident reports. The defendant controls those records; the plaintiff has to subpoena and pursue them.
"You caused the fall." Comparative-fault arguments under §33.001. They will pick apart your footwear, your distraction, your familiarity with the property — anything to push your fault share toward the 51% bar where recovery ends.
The fast lowball. A modest settlement offer in the first weeks, before you know whether you need surgery. Once you sign the release, the case is over forever. We do not let clients settle until the medical picture is clear.
Records fishing expeditions. A blanket authorization request for every medical record going back ten years, hunting for any prior complaint they can use to blame your injuries on something else. We provide what is relevant, not a fishing license.
Delay. Some adjusters stop returning calls. The way we get a phone call returned is to file suit.
Steps to Take After a Slip-and-Fall in Texas
What you do in the first hours and days affects the case more than almost anything that happens later.
Get medical attention immediately. Even if you "feel okay." Adrenaline masks pain, and head injuries and certain fractures do not present for hours. Gaps in your medical record become the insurance company's favorite argument.
Report the fall and ask for a written incident report. Get the name and title of the person you spoke with. Ask for a copy. If they refuse, note that they refused.
Photograph and video everything before you leave. The hazard, the surrounding area, the lighting, signs (or absence of signs), your footwear, and your injuries. The hazard is often cleaned up within minutes — once gone, your photographs may be the only evidence it ever existed.
Get names and phone numbers of witnesses. Anyone who saw the fall, saw the hazard before the fall, or heard an employee comment about it.
Do not give a recorded statement to the property owner's insurer. They will call within days, sounding friendly. The recording will be combed for any phrase the defense can later use against you. You are not required to give one — politely decline and refer them to your attorney.
Do not sign anything. No medical authorizations, no releases, no statements. Not until you have spoken to a lawyer.
Keep what you were wearing. Especially shoes — the defense often attacks plaintiff footwear, and preserving the actual shoes lets us answer that attack.
Call Patterson Law Group. The consultation is free, and the contingency fee means you owe nothing unless we recover for you. We serve all injured Texans from our physical offices in Fort Worth, Arlington, and San Antonio. Se Habla Español. Reachable at (817) 784-2000 from anywhere in Texas.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I have a slip-and-fall case if there was no 'Wet Floor' sign?
Possibly. The absence of a warning is a key fact — Texas premises liability requires the owner to either make the property safe or warn invitees of known dangers. No warning plus a dangerous condition that the owner knew or should have known about is the textbook case.
How do I prove the property owner knew about the hazard?
Surveillance footage, inspection logs, sweep sheets, prior incident reports, witness testimony, and the duration of the condition (a puddle that's been there for an hour creates 'constructive knowledge' even if no employee actually saw it). We send preservation letters immediately to lock down evidence.
What if I was partially at fault — like I didn't see the spill?
Texas comparative fault (CPRC §33.001) lets you recover as long as you were 50% or less at fault. Property owners and their insurers routinely try to over-assign fault to the injured visitor. We push back hard.
How long do I have to file a Texas premises liability case?
Two years from the date of the fall under CPRC §16.003. Claims involving government property (city sidewalks, county buildings, state facilities) have shorter notice deadlines — sometimes 60 to 180 days. Don't wait.
What damages can I recover in a slip-and-fall case?
Past and future medical bills, lost wages, lost earning capacity, pain and suffering, mental anguish, physical impairment, and disfigurement. In cases involving gross negligence — say, a landlord ignoring a known hazard for months — exemplary damages may also apply.
What does Texas premises-liability law require a slip-and-fall plaintiff to prove?
Texas premises-liability law requires proof that the property owner knew (actual knowledge) or should have known (constructive knowledge) of the dangerous condition and failed to fix or warn about it. Cases turn on how long the hazard was present — proven through incident-report logs, surveillance footage, employee statements, or maintenance records. Transitory conditions (a spill that occurred moments before the fall, with no chance for the property owner to discover it) generally do not support liability.
Why does it matter whether I was an invitee or licensee on the property?
Texas premises-liability duties differ by visitor status. An invitee (customer at a store, patient at a hospital) is owed a duty to inspect and warn or fix. A licensee (social guest) is owed only a duty to warn of known dangers. A trespasser is owed almost no duty except not to willfully injure. This classification often becomes a fight in cases involving apartment-complex commons, contractor work areas, and similar mixed-use spaces.
What evidence in a Texas slip-and-fall case can be lost if a client waits to call a lawyer?
Surveillance footage at most Texas stores is overwritten within 30 days, often as little as 7 to 14 days at smaller retailers. Incident reports get filed and buried in claims-management systems. Employees rotate or leave. A preservation letter sent early in the case is the standard tool to lock down this evidence; the longer a case waits, the more evidence is likely to be gone.
How do Texas hospital liens affect a slip-and-fall settlement?
Texas hospitals can attach a lien to your settlement under the Texas Hospital and Emergency Services Lien Act, which means the gross settlement number is not what you take home. The lien amount is often negotiable — defenses include the §41.0105 'paid or incurred' limits (which cap medical damages to what was actually paid or contractually written off) and the reasonableness of the charges. Hospital lien negotiation is a meaningful part of net recovery and a standard part of case work-up.
Get a Free Consultation
No fees unless we win. Available 24/7.
Talk to an experienced Texas injury lawyer about your case today.