You do not expect to get hurt walking into a grocery store, a warehouse, or an office parking structure. Most days, nothing happens. Then one day the floor gives way, a hazard you never saw catches your foot, and your life changes in the time it takes to fall. That is the starting point of nearly every commercial premises injury case California courts see each year, and it is the starting point for a pending matter The Homampour Law Firm is currently prosecuting against a commercial property owner in Los Angeles Superior Court. That matter remains active and in the discovery phase, so we do not publish its facts or predict its outcome. What follows is how these cases work in California and how the firm approaches them, informed by decades of litigating against commercial property owners and their insurers.
2 years
California deadline to file a premises liability lawsuit
6 months
Deadline to file a claim against a government property owner
4
Elements you generally must prove in a premises claim
People often describe these cases informally as slip and fall claims, but that label understates what is really at stake. A commercial premises injury case in California can involve a grocery store, an apartment complex, a parking structure, a warehouse, a shopping center, or raw commercial land under development. The legal theory is the same across all of them: a property owner, tenant, or manager had a duty to keep the property reasonably safe, and someone got hurt because that duty was ignored. Common hazards include wet or slippery floors with no warning signs, broken stairs, handrails, or uneven flooring, poor lighting in stairwells, parking lots, or walkways, uneven pavement, potholes, or unmarked drop-offs, falling merchandise or unsecured shelving, inadequate security that allows a preventable assault, broken elevators or escalators, and hazards left behind after construction or maintenance work. What connects every one of these situations is a party with the ability and the legal responsibility to fix a dangerous condition, who did not do it.
One of the most misunderstood aspects of these claims is who can be sued. Many injured people assume only the name listed on the property deed matters. That assumption can cost you your case if you stop your investigation there. Under California law, legal responsibility can fall on anyone who owned, leased, occupied, or controlled the property, not only the record owner. A property management company, a commercial tenant, a related business entity, or a maintenance contractor can be responsible depending on who actually controlled the specific area where the injury happened. Large commercial properties are frequently held by webs of related companies, and identifying which entity controlled the area involved in your injury is often the difference between a case that settles fairly and a case that gets dismissed on a technicality. This is the factual investigation The Homampour Law Firm undertakes at the outset of every premises case it accepts.
A commercial premises claim generally turns on four elements, and on the defenses a property owner raises to sidestep them.
An injured person generally must show the defendant owned, leased, occupied, or controlled the property; that the defendant was careless in how it kept up or managed the property; that the person was actually hurt; and that the carelessness was a substantial factor in causing the injury.
You do not always have to prove the owner had specific advance knowledge of the exact hazard. If a reasonable inspection would have caught the problem, that can be enough. California law calls this constructive notice, and it exists so an owner cannot escape responsibility by choosing not to look closely at conditions it has a duty to monitor.
Owners frequently argue a hazard was so obvious the injured person should have avoided it. California law does not treat an obvious hazard as an automatic excuse. If it was foreseeable that people would still encounter the hazard, because it blocked a walkway or customers had no alternate path, the owner may still owe a duty to fix the condition rather than point at it after someone gets hurt.
Defeating the obvious-hazard defense requires evidence about foot traffic patterns, the layout of the property, and whether a reasonable alternative route actually existed.
Every one of these cases ultimately becomes a fight over records: inspection logs, maintenance schedules, incident reports, work orders, and lease agreements that reveal who really controlled the property and what they knew about its condition. Insurance companies for commercial property owners understand these fights well, and they are rarely quick to concede fault. Our approach follows the same structure in every premises case we accept. We investigate who actually owned, leased, or controlled the property. We pursue inspection and maintenance records through formal discovery to determine what the owner knew or should have known before the injury. We identify every potentially responsible party, since commercial properties are frequently held and managed by multiple related entities. And we prepare every case as if it is going to trial, because insurance companies negotiate differently with firms that are ready to try a case in front of a jury. The firm has built its reputation on trial-ready preparation in complex negligence cases throughout California, including a $104 million brain injury recovery, a $65.75 million trucking recovery, and a $38 million wrongful death recovery. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome in any future case, including any case currently in litigation.
If a business, landlord, or property owner failed to keep their property reasonably safe, the path forward starts with documentation and speed. Evidence at commercial properties changes quickly: spills get cleaned, hazards get repaired, and surveillance footage gets overwritten on a rolling schedule that can run as short as a few weeks. The sooner an attorney can send a formal request to preserve evidence, the better the chance that critical proof survives long enough to matter. The Homampour Law Firm handles premises liability cases on a contingency fee basis and advances the costs of investigation and litigation, so you owe nothing unless there is a recovery. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
The breakdowns below cover retail store safety duty standards, constructive notice, commercial video preservation, mediation strategy, and slip and fall retail store liability.
Retail duty standards under Ortega
Constructive notice explained
Preserving surveillance video
We take premises liability cases against commercial property owners and their insurers as counsel or co-counsel and pay statutory referral fees.
Refer a caseIt is a premises liability claim that arises when unsafe conditions on commercial property injure someone. Under California law, anyone who owns, leases, occupies, or controls property must use reasonable care to keep it safe and to warn of hazards they know or should know about.
In most cases, California gives you two years from the date of the injury to file under Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1. If the property is owned by a government agency, the deadline is generally six months to file an administrative claim. Talk to a lawyer as soon as possible so you do not lose your rights.
Not always. You can win by showing the owner actually knew about the hazard, or by showing a reasonable inspection would have discovered it. This second path is called constructive notice, and it is often the central issue in these cases.
