I was injured on someone else’s property. Do I have a case in Texas?

Why you were there decides what you are owed

Texas sorts entrants into three classes. An invitee is there for the occupier’s benefit — a customer, a paying guest — and is owed the most: a duty to inspect for hazards and to make safe or warn of those the occupier knows about or reasonably should discover.

A licensee is there with permission but for their own purposes, such as a social guest. The occupier must not injure them wilfully and must warn of hazards it actually knows about, but owes no duty to go looking.

A trespasser is owed only a duty not to injure wilfully, wantonly or through gross negligence. Children are treated differently where an artificial condition is likely to attract them.

Notice is the fight, and time on the floor is the evidence

For the ordinary slip or trip, the case is not won by proving the hazard existed. It is won by proving the occupier knew, or that the condition had been there long enough that a reasonable inspection would have caught it.

The Texas Supreme Court has held that a hazard’s mere presence proves nothing about how long it was there. So the evidence becomes surveillance footage, inspection and sweep logs, employee accounts, and the state of the spill itself — tracked through, dried at the edges, cart marks across it.

All of that is on the occupier’s systems, and most retail video is overwritten within weeks. A preservation demand sent early is often what decides whether the notice question can be answered at all.

Open and obvious, and what survives it

An occupier generally owes no duty about a condition that is open and obvious, or that the entrant actually knew about. Insurers raise this in nearly every case, and it does real work.

It is not the end of the analysis. Where the hazard was concealed, where the layout gave you no reasonable alternative route, or where the occupier created the condition, the argument narrows considerably. And even where you bear some responsibility, Texas reduces rather than bars recovery up to the fifty-one percent line.

Beyond slips: security, dogs and swimming pools

Premises liability covers more than wet floors. A property owner can be liable for a criminal assault where violent crime was foreseeable and security was inadequate for the risk — a claim that turns on the property’s own incident history and on crime in the immediate area.

Inadequate lighting, unmarked level changes, broken stair rails, defective lifts, unfenced pools and falling merchandise all run on the same duty framework, with the class of entrant and the notice question doing the same work.

What to do now

Report it before you leave, and ask that an incident report be made. Get the name of the manager who takes it.

Photograph the hazard itself, from several angles, and the surrounding area showing what was and was not marked. That photograph is frequently the only record — the spill will be cleaned within minutes of your leaving.

Get the names of any employees who were nearby and of anyone who saw it.

Ask, in writing and quickly, that the video be preserved. Retail systems overwrite on a cycle measured in weeks.

Common questions