Slip and Fall Attorneys in Summerville

Wintersteen argued that a store able to foresee items landing on its floor should have to prevent them. The Court declined. It wrote that requiring shopkeepers to "anticipate and prevent the acts of third parties" would make them "insurers of their customers' safety."

The opinion leaned on two earlier cases that rejected the same argument. In Simmons v. Winn-Dixie, the number of past falls in the chain's stores did not replace proof of notice. In a 1998 Court of Appeals case against Bi-Lo, a shopper slipped on a grape in a checkout line. She still had to prove notice, even though she blamed the vented bags the grapes came in. Your evidence has to be about the hazard that hurt you, not about how the business runs in general.

Wintersteen describes a line of "foreign substance" cases, meaning something that does not belong on the floor. Spilled soda, melted ice and a dropped grape all fit that label. A fixed defect is different. In O'Leary-Payne v. R.R. Hilton Head II, a metal grounding rod stuck up about five and a half inches from a shopping center sidewalk.

The Court of Appeals still applied the created-or-notice test to that rod. With a built-in defect, though, the questions shift toward who installed it, who maintained it and whether a routine inspection would have caught it. Frost Law Group sorts each fall into one of these two groups early, because each group calls for different proof.

For a fall on private property, the filing period under Section 15-3-530 is generally three years. The clock starts under Section 15-3-535 once you knew about the claim, or would have known with reasonable diligence. Section 15-3-40 can lengthen the period for someone hurt before turning 18. The added time cannot run past one year after the 18th birthday, and it adds nothing when the regular three years would end later. A fall on government property follows a shorter schedule, so confirm which deadline applies before relying on any of these.

A claim also needs proof of harm, which the medical records and bills document. Those records start with the first emergency visit and run through every follow-up appointment. South Carolina's cap on pain-and-suffering damages, in Section 15-32-220, applies to medical malpractice claims.

Repayment claims can reduce what reaches you. If Medicaid paid for your care, Section 43-7-420 treats you as having assigned to SCDHHS, the state Medicaid agency, your right to recover what Medicaid paid. Federal law also requires Medicare's conditional payments to be reimbursed from a recovery. No one can tell you what a fall claim is worth before the medical records and bills are complete.

Water from a mop, fresh wax and a mat laid across a wet entrance all start with a worker's own act. For water or wax, Wintersteen's foreign substance rule reaches a substance that "was placed there by the defendant or its agents." The broader rule for a condition the owner created reaches a mat an employee laid down. Either way, you do not need to show how long the hazard sat. The questions become whether the worker's act made the floor dangerous and whether any warning reached you in time.

Warnings get their own scrutiny. A cone folded behind a display or set two aisles away may not have told you anything. Video, photos and witness accounts can show where the sign stood when you fell.

Falling merchandise raises the created-hazard question in its sharpest form, since a display is something the store set up. The Supreme Court decided Garvin v. Bi-Lo in February 2001, three weeks before Wintersteen. Justice Waller wrote both opinions, and both apply the same two-route test. Garvin shows how much detail a display claim needs before a jury can hear it.

What the Moncks Corner Shopper Offered as Proof

Linda Garvin was shopping at a Bi-Lo in Moncks Corner when she reached for canned goods priced at four for $1.00. The cans sat in cut-open shipping boxes at the end of an aisle, stacked higher than her 5-foot-2 frame. About fifteen cans tumbled down, and some struck her face and cut her near the lip. The Court held her evidence of the height, the boxes and the sale insufficient as a matter of law.

Evidence the Court Said Was Missing

The opinion named the gap. Garvin offered no evidence of "some defective manner of stacking the boxes," and nothing showed Bi-Lo was on notice that "the stacked cans had become rickety." A photo of crushed or leaning boxes, an employee who saw the stack lean or an earlier complaint might have filled that gap. Whether your own display fall has proof of that kind is a question for a lawyer who has seen the evidence.

The party that did the work is not always the property owner. In Larimore, a utility crew dug a trench across a homeowner's lot and refilled it. Its own procedures called for a mechanical tamp to pack the soil, but the crew used the trenching machine instead. The claim against the homeowner failed, while the claim against the utility went to a jury. Frost Law Group traces who performed the work that left the hazard, because that party may answer even when the owner does not.

A store may answer a created-hazard claim by pointing at someone else, such as a vendor stocking shelves or an outside cleaning crew. Act No. 42 widened whose fault a jury may count, for claims arising after January 1, 2026. Jurors can assign part of the fault to a wrongdoer nobody sued, a tactic lawyers call the empty chair. The defendant has 180 days from the start of the suit to name that person, unless the court finds good cause to allow more time.

The share rule itself is older, dating to July 1, 2005. Section 15-38-15 limits a defendant whose fault a jury puts under 50% to that defendant's own percentage of the damages. A defendant whose share reaches 50% may still owe the entire award, and so may one whose conduct a jury finds willful, wanton, reckless or intentional.

Blame also needs evidence. In O'Leary-Payne, the shopping center owner filed a separate suit against the contractors who installed the rod. It offered no proof of their fault at trial, so the court barred it from blaming them in closing argument. Frost Law Group looks early at which companies touched the floor, since a missing party can shift where fault lands.

Actual notice means the owner or someone working for it knew about the hazard before you fell. A customer may have told a cashier about spilled detergent. An employee may have seen a leak and gone for a mop without blocking the aisle. In Davenport v. Cotton Hope Plantation, a Hilton Head Island resident had phoned the management company several times about dead floodlights at his stairway.

Names, times and any texts or emails sent to management give slip and fall attorneys in Summerville a way to prove this kind of notice. Witnesses who heard an employee mention the spill before your fall matter just as much.

Constructive notice is, in the words of the Court of Appeals, "a legal inference which substitutes for actual notice." It lets a jury treat the owner as knowing what it should have known. South Carolina appellate opinions describe three ways to build it. A claim that falls short on one may still stand on another, so each deserves a look.

Time on the Floor Before You Fell

The traditional route asks how long the hazard was there. Evidence of age can come from the hazard itself. Cart tracks through a spill, dirt mixed into the liquid or dried edges around a puddle all suggest time. Time-stamped video and any sweep log the store keeps can do the same work. Without some proof of time, a spill that appeared seconds before your fall generally cannot support constructive notice.

An Inspection Routine the Owner Adopted

In O'Leary-Payne, the shopping center's owner had a procedure requiring employees to inspect all sidewalks regularly. The woman who tripped was walking at dusk on a lit but dim walkway behind a Hilton Head outlet store. The court held that because the owner should have seen the rod during an inspection, it had constructive notice. An owner's own safety rules can become evidence of what it should have found. A written inspection policy is among the first records slip and fall attorneys in Summerville ask a business to produce.

Hazards That Keep Coming Back

The first footnote in Wintersteen adds a third route. Recurrence alone is not enough, but a hazard that returns so often it amounts to "a continual condition" can count. Paired with other evidence, such as employees knowing about it, that pattern "may be sufficient to create a jury issue" on constructive notice. The footnote draws on two earlier cases.

Sweet Gum Balls in a Hospital Parking Lot

In Henderson, decided in 1990, a person slipped on a sweet gum ball in a hospital parking lot. The hospital had planted sweet gum trees there in 1971. Its architect later advised removing the trees, yet the hospital added a stairway beside one of them. The Supreme Court found a jury question on whether the hospital was negligent for keeping the trees without enough safeguards.

Poinsettia Leaves Left for the Next Sweeping

In Pinckney, a 1992 Court of Appeals case, a person slipped on fallen poinsettia leaves at a Winn-Dixie store. The evidence allowed jurors to infer that the store manager saw leaves dropping to the floor. The leaves then stayed there until the next periodic sweeping. That mix of a repeating hazard and an employee's knowledge is the pattern the footnote describes.

Wintersteen's second route has two parts. The owner must have known or should have known about the hazard, and it must have "failed to remedy it." The opinion quotes a federal appeals court applying South Carolina law. That court held a storekeeper "only to reasonable care in the discovery and remedy or removal" of a hazard. An employee who spots a spill, blocks it off and calls for a mop may have met that standard. Whether the response in your fall was reasonable depends on timing and details an attorney has to pin down.

Much of the notice evidence belongs to the business. An incident report, security video, sweep or inspection logs, work orders and the shift schedule can each show who saw what and when. Ask for a copy of the incident report, or whatever reference number the business uses, before you leave. Frost Law Group can ask for the rest in writing while the business still has it.

An invitee enters by the owner's express or implied invitation, usually for a purpose that benefits the owner. The owner owes an invitee reasonable or ordinary care and must warn of hidden dangers it knows or should know about. Sims describes the invitee as receiving "the utmost duty of care" from the landowner. Even so, an owner is not an insurer, so proof of the owner's actual or constructive knowledge still matters.

Store Customers, Clinic Patients and Gas Station Visitors

Sims quotes a South Carolina torts treatise listing common invitees. The list includes store customers and patients in a physician's office. It also covers people using a filling station restroom and workers invited onto the premises. That reaches most people hurt in a Summerville store, clinic or gas station. Sims then splits invitees into two branches. The first, the public invitee, covers anyone invited in as one of the general public, for the use the land is open for.

Shoppers, Utility Workers and Delivery Drivers as Business Visitors

Business visitors form the other branch, coming for a purpose tied to business dealings with the owner. The Restatement comment Sims quotes places a person who enters a shop to buy or to look at goods on display in this branch. Sims treated the utility employee as a business visitor because the homeowner benefited from the power she was there to measure. The court also pointed to Larimore, where a siding installer working on a new house counted as an invitee. It quoted the Restatement's example of a truck driver delivering goods to a private home.

A friend's cookout feels like an invitation, but South Carolina law treats a social guest as a licensee. The host must use reasonable care in activities on the land and warn of concealed dangers the host actually knows about. Beyond that, the host has no obligation to make the premises safe for the guest. A soft deck board in a Knightsville backyard generally matters under this rule only if the host knew about it and said nothing.

Sims also quotes a national legal encyclopedia that lists other licensees, such as people who come to seek a favor, do volunteer work or pick up property they left behind. Proving what a host knew can be hard, and it often depends on texts, repair records or a neighbor's memory. Frost Law Group can weigh that proof with you before anyone assumes a claim exists or does not.

Sims and Larimore both repeat that the care owed an invitee must match the circumstances, "including the age and capacity of the invitee." Larimore applied that rule against an experienced contractor who knew the site and inspected it for his own crew. In Callander, an owner's knowledge that older customers backed onto its stools helped create a jury question. Who you are can matter as much as what you stepped on.

An owner owes an adult trespasser only the duty not to injure the trespasser willfully or wantonly. Estate of Adair v. L-J, Inc. came up from Charleston County. The owners there had posted no trespassing signs, dug ditches, built berms and put up gates. A man who drove onto their sand pits at night was a trespasser, and the Court of Appeals upheld summary judgment for the owners. That ruling ends a case before trial when no real dispute exists over the facts that matter. Few fall victims are trespassers, but an insurer may still test the label if you cut across a closed area.

H.P. Larimore was installing vinyl siding on a new house when a utility crew dug a trench across the lot. He was on site the day the crew dug it. After a rain, he stepped on the dirt covering it while looking up at the gables. The trench caved in and fractured his right hip.

At trial, the judge found the trench open and obvious, and Larimore did not appeal that ruling. The Court of Appeals affirmed the directed verdict for the homeowner, who had no knowledge of the defect. It declined to read Section 343A "to require landowners to anticipate harm from an open and obvious condition from the moment of the condition's creation." The court explained that an owner's liability to an invitee "rests upon his superior knowledge of the danger." An owner who never knew about a hazard generally cannot be expected to anticipate injuries from it.

Comment f to Section 343A gives the standard reason an owner may need to anticipate harm from an obvious condition. It applies where the owner "has reason to expect that the invitee's attention may be distracted." Section 343A(2) adds that a visitor's right to use public land is a factor pointing toward anticipating harm. Two South Carolina cases show those ideas at work.

A Missing Warning Sign at a Crowded Charleston Doughnut Shop

In Callander, an elderly customer walked into a crowded Charleston doughnut shop. He backed up to sit on a stool that lacked a rounded seat cushion and fell. The owner had known about the stool for more than two months. It had once posted a warning sign, but the sign was missing that day. With the shop often crowded and often visited by senior citizens who backed onto the stools, the Supreme Court found a jury question.

Distracted Shoppers and Visitors on Public Land

A shopper reading shelf tags or steering a cart is looking where the store's displays direct her eyes. Comment f treats that kind of distraction as a reason an owner may need to expect falls near its displays. On public land, Sims cites Creech, a case about a woman who fell off a public dock. Sims reads Creech to mean a landowner may be liable for an obvious danger if it should have anticipated the harm. Frost Law Group asks what drew your eyes away from the floor, because the answer can bring the exception into play.

The open and obvious defense assumes a clear view of the hazard. Photos taken from your own eye level, at the same time of day, show what a visitor could actually see. A tape measure against a raised slab or a wheel stop records its height. The color of the hazard against the floor, the light level and any display or crowd nearby all belong in the record. These details are worth recording while the scene still looks the way it did.

Inside a store, the Wintersteen test controls. Outside, the store and the shopping center owner may be different defendants. O'Leary-Payne explains that a center owner who keeps control of the parking area and sidewalks owes customers ordinary care to keep those passageways reasonably safe. In that case, the lease put the common areas in the landlord's hands.

Frost Law Group reviews the lease and the store's conduct in grocery and retail store falls. Wet produce aisles and entrance mats on rainy days are two examples. Who controlled the exact spot often decides who has to account for it.

South Carolina's Residential Landlord and Tenant Act requires a landlord to keep all common areas in a reasonably safe condition. Section 27-40-440 also requires repairs that keep the premises fit and habitable. Supplied facilities, including elevators, must stay in reasonably good and safe working order. In Robinson v. Code, the Court of Appeals described the tenant's claim as one for failure, "after notice, to make necessary repairs."

Frost Law Group handles apartment injury claims that start in a dark stairwell, on a broken step or in a cracked parking area. A written repair request can help prove notice, though the result still depends on the full record. Section 27-40-610 lets a tenant recover actual damages when a landlord fails to comply with Section 27-40-440. The Act covers residential tenancies, so a fall at a leased office or warehouse falls outside it.

Claims against the state, counties, towns, school districts and special purpose districts run through the South Carolina Tort Claims Act. Under Section 15-78-40, those entities answer in the same manner as a private person, subject to the Act's limits and exceptions. For a claim against a public body, Section 15-78-30(f) defines loss to include bodily injury, lost wages and other economic loss, pain and suffering and mental anguish. The deadlines are strict, and missing one can end a claim that might have gone forward against a private owner. Frost Law Group can check early who owns and maintains the spot.

Two Years to Sue and One Year to File a Claim

Section 15-78-110 generally requires suit within two years after you discovered the loss or should have discovered it. The window stretches to three years only when you first file a verified claim with the agency or political subdivision. Under Section 15-78-80(d), the agency has to receive that claim no more than a year after the discovery date. An injured child may get more time under Section 15-3-40, which reaches these suits too.

What a Verified Claim Must Say

Section 15-78-80 spells out the contents of a verified claim. It describes how the loss happened, how large it is, the time and place, the people involved if known and the amount claimed. Each agency and political subdivision must name an employee or office to accept these claims. When the right defendant is unclear, the claim may go to the Attorney General.

Weather, Park and Public Way Exceptions

Section 15-78-60 lists losses a government entity does not answer for. Item 8 covers snow or ice, or temporary or natural conditions caused by weather on a public way or other public place. That immunity does not reach snow or ice that an employee's negligent act affirmatively caused. Rainwater pooled on a town walkway after a Lowcountry storm may fall within the weather rule.

Item 16 covers parks, playgrounds and recreation areas. There, the entity must have had actual notice of the defect and failed to fix it within a reasonable time. Item 15 covers defects on streets and other public ways that a third party caused. Liability there requires notice and a failure to make timely repairs. Which item fits a given fall is a question an attorney works through with the maintenance records in hand.

Damage Limits and the Courthouse Where Suit Is Filed

Under Section 15-78-120, no one person may recover more than $300,000 for a single occurrence. The total for that occurrence cannot exceed $600,000. The Act also bars punitive damages, which punish a wrongdoer, and prejudgment interest, which covers the time before a judgment.

Section 15-78-100 requires filing in circuit court, in whichever county saw the act or omission behind the injury. For Dorchester County, the Court of Common Pleas, the civil side of circuit court, meets at 5200 East Jim Bilton Boulevard, St. George. A fall at a town facility in Summerville's Berkeley County part would generally belong in Berkeley County, part of the Ninth Judicial Circuit. When a private company is sued alongside the government entity, the fact finder must return a special verdict. That separate finding states each defendant's share of liability.