People assume a fall in a store is a claim because the fall happened in the store. Maryland does not work that way, and being told so plainly at the start is more useful than finding out two years in.
What makes a fall actionable is fault: a hazard the owner created, knew about, or should have found and fixed. And Maryland then applies two defenses — contributory negligence and assumption of risk — that make these among the hardest ordinary injury claims to win anywhere in the country. The cases that succeed are the ones built properly from the first week.
Your reason for being there sets the duty
Maryland still sorts visitors into categories, and the category decides how much the owner owed you:
- Invitee — you were there for the owner’s business, like a customer in a shop. The highest duty: reasonable care, including inspecting for hazards you would not spot yourself.
- Licensee — a social guest, or someone there with permission but not for business. The owner must warn of known dangers, but has no general duty to go looking for them.
- Trespasser — no permission. The duty is minimal: essentially not to injure you willfully. Maryland has not adopted the attractive nuisance doctrine that some states use for trespassing children, so a child trespasser is generally owed the same limited duty.
This is why "I was just cutting through" and "I was shopping" produce different cases from identical falls.
Notice: the element these cases turn on
For an invitee, it is not enough that a hazard existed. You generally have to show the owner created it, actually knew about it, or should have known because it had been there long enough that reasonable inspection would have found it.
That last one — constructive notice — is where most claims live and die, and it is a question about time. A spill thirty seconds old is usually nobody’s fault. The same spill an hour old, tracked through by other customers, with no inspection logged, is a different case entirely.
So the evidence that matters is rarely a photograph of the floor. It is the inspection and cleaning logs, the staffing that day, prior complaints about the same spot, and the surveillance footage showing how long the hazard sat there.
The two defenses that end Maryland claims
- Contributory negligence. Under Maryland’s rule, if you were even slightly careless — looking at your phone, wearing unsuitable shoes, not using a handrail — the claim can be defeated outright rather than reduced.
- Assumption of risk. If you knew about the hazard and walked into it anyway, the claim can fail even where the owner was plainly negligent. Deliberately crossing a visibly icy patch is the classic example.
Owners also argue that a hazard was open and obvious, meaning you should have seen and avoided it. That argument has limits, particularly where something distracted your attention, where lighting was poor, or where the hazard was not actually visible from the direction you approached.
The falls we see most
- Wet floors in stores and lobbies, especially in rain and snow with no mats or warning
- Ice and snow left on walkways and lots, where the timing of the storm matters to the analysis
- Uneven and broken surfaces: sidewalks, thresholds, cracked parking lots, loose treads
- Poor lighting, particularly in stairwells and garages
- Stairs and handrails that were missing, loose or out of code
- Falls in apartment common areas, which are the landlord’s responsibility rather than the tenant’s
- [Elevator and escalator incidents](/personal-injury-lawyer/elevator-escalator-accident-lawyer/), which follow inspection and maintenance records
Where a fall happened because a property was left unsecured or unlit and someone was attacked, that is negligent security rather than an ordinary premises claim, and it is proven differently.
What to do in the first week
- Report it and ask for an incident report. Then ask for a copy. A fall with no report is a fall the owner will later say never happened.
- Photograph the hazard immediately, along with the surrounding area, the lighting and your shoes.
- Get the names of witnesses and any staff present.
- Get medical attention promptly, which ties the injury to the date.
- Ask us to send a preservation letter fast. Surveillance footage is routinely overwritten within days or weeks, and once it is gone the notice question often becomes unprovable.
Falls on public property
A fall on a county sidewalk, in a public building, at a school or on transit property is a claim against a government body, and those require written notice far sooner than an ordinary lawsuit deadline. Miss the notice and the claim can be lost no matter how strong it was.
If you fell on public property, treat it as urgent rather than assuming you have three years.
