Washington still sorts everyone who steps onto someone else’s property into one of three categories. The one you’re in decides what the owner owed you. Most people don’t find out which category they were in until after they’ve been injured.
A grocery store owes you a larger duty of care than a neighbor does. But a neighbor owes you more than they’d owe someone just cutting through their yard. Of course, the grocery store’s insurance company knows exactly where those lines fall even when you don’t. By the time you’re wondering whether to call a Seattle slip and fall lawyer, the surveillance video might already have recorded over itself.
Here’s what Washington premises liability law actually requires of property owners, and what must be true before one of them pays for what happened to you.
Who You Were When You Walked In
Washington kept the old common-law categories even after other states dropped them. There are currently three levels of a ‘guest’ and therefore three different duties of care.
Invitees are there for the owner’s benefit or on property held open to the public. Examples include customers, patients in a waiting room, and tenants in a lobby. This is the group with the highest level of legal protection. The reason is a duty the other two levels don’t get: the owner has to look. Reasonable care here means always being on the lookout for dangerous conditions, not just fixing the ones somebody already pointed out.
Licensees have permission to be there but come for their own reasons. Your friend’s dinner party is a classic example. The owner has a duty to warn you about known hazards you’re unlikely to notice: A loose step on the porch, an aggressive dog, a slippery area near the refrigerator. However, the owner does not have to constantly be hunting for problems to fix.
Trespassers get the least protection. The owner basically has to avoid injuring them on purpose. Children are the exception, because a hazard that attracts kids carries its own set of rules.
There is one Seattle wrinkle to consider: The sidewalk in front of a building usually isn’t the city’s problem. Under Seattle’s rules, the adjacent property owner is generally responsible for maintaining that sidewalk. The cracked panel that caught your foot has an owner, but don’t assume you can take that up with the city. Take it up with the adjacent business.
The Owner Doesn’t Have to Know
It’s not enough to just get hurt by a dangerous condition. In most cases you also have to show the owner knew about the hazard or should have.
Actual notice is the easy version. Somebody reported the leak on Tuesday morning, but nobody mopped it, and then you slipped on it Tuesday afternoon. Constructive notice is where it can get complicated. The leak was there on Tuesday morning, but nobody reported it in the four or five hours before you slipped on it. Still, you could argue that the condition existed long enough that a reasonable inspection should have caught it.
Constructive notice can kill claims. A spill that’s only four minutes old is likely just an accident. The same spill two hours old is negligence. But how old was the leak when you slipped on it? That information is probably buried in records you don’t have.
Washington gives shoppers one break here. In self-service areas, where the whole business model puts customers in direct contact with the merchandise, the notice requirement can be lifted entirely. This is called the Pimentel exception. If the way the store operates makes that kind of hazard foreseeable in that spot, you don’t have to prove anyone knew about the specific mess or spill.
It has limits, though. Courts have held the hazard must connect to the self-service operation itself, so spilled shampoo in the coffee aisle wouldn’t qualify if customers were handling shampoo there.
What Actually Proves It
Was it actual or constructive notice? The store’s paperwork can answer that question, but you can’t get your hands on it.
But you can still take steps to get a claim going.
- Photograph the condition before anyone comes to clean it up
- Photograph the surrounding area, the lighting, any place where a warning sign should have been placed but wasn’t
- Get an incident report and write down its number
- Take down the names of employees who saw the incident, not just the manager who showed up afterward
- Note the time the incident took place
A lawyer will go after the store’s paperwork later. This includes inspection and sweep logs, maintenance requests, prior complaints about that same stretch of floor, and the surveillance footage. Speed is important, especially when getting video footage. Surveillance systems tend to write over old footage every few days at some businesses. A preservation letter sent early is often the only thing standing between having a case and not having one.
Your Share of the Blame Doesn’t End It
People talk themselves out of good claims all the time. Don’t dismiss your own claim just because you were looking at your phone when you got hurt.
Washington uses pure comparative fault, so your share of responsibility reduces what you can recover but doesn’t erase it. Thirty percent at fault on a $100,000 case still leaves you with $70,000.
The insurance company will work that percentage number hard. They know every point they assign to you is money they get to keep. They can move that number easily when nobody is pushing back.
Law Offices of Justin R. Boland do the pushing back. Our firm handles premises liability claims across Seattle, and we know how fast these records disappear and which ones an owner would rather not produce. Let us do the arguing while you do the healing. If you’re not sure what you’re owed, speak with an attorney about your options.
