How a Slip-and-Fall Claim Reaches You
A person falls in a parking lot in February. They engage a lawyer in April. The lawyer sues the property owner, and the property owner's contract with you says you indemnify them for anything arising from snow and ice. Now it is your claim, defended by your carrier, on a set of facts nobody wrote down at the time.
General liability is what responds. What decides the outcome is whether you can reconstruct that night: when you arrived, what you cleared, what material you applied, what the temperature was doing, and what the site looked like when you left.
The Records That Win These Cases
Contractors who keep the following rarely lose these claims outright. Contractors who keep none of it settle, and their renewal reflects it.
- Timestamped service logs — arrival and departure per site, per event, captured automatically rather than written up later
- Photographs on departure — the cleared surface, dated, from a consistent angle so a jury can compare seasons
- Material records — how much salt or brine went down, on which surfaces, at what time
- Weather data for the site — freezing rain after you left is a defence, but only if you can show it happened
- The signed contract and scope — what you agreed to service, at what trigger depth, and what you explicitly did not
Trigger depth is a legal document, not a preference
A contract that says you service at two inches means a one-inch event is not your obligation. Contractors who plow at one inch anyway, informally and for free, quietly assume a duty they were never paid for — and a plaintiff's lawyer will present that pattern as evidence of the standard you set for yourself.
Contract Language That Shifts Risk Onto You
Most snow contracts contain an indemnity clause. Its exact wording decides whether you pay for your own negligence, or for everyone's.
| Clause type | What you take on | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Limited / comparative | Your own negligence only | Reasonable — sign it |
| Intermediate | Yours and shared fault | Negotiable, price it in |
| Broad form | Everything, including the owner's own negligence | Push back hard; often uninsurable |
We read these clauses before you sign. A broad-form indemnity in a snow contract can exceed what any policy will pay, and finding that out during litigation is the worst possible time.