Written and reviewed by Josh Kohanim, Esq., California Bar No. 328609 · Reviewed
In this guide
A property owner's knowledge is established with documents: the three routes to notice, the letter that goes out first, the five categories of proof, and the cases where notice cannot be shown. Whether a particular hazard was dangerous, and what the claim is worth, are separate questions. For the whole claim, start at our Los Angeles slip and fall accident lawyer page.
Three ways to prove they knew
The easiest route is the one that skips notice entirely. CACI No. 1012 in the Judicial Council of California Civil Jury Instructions, 2025 edition addresses a condition created by the defendant or an employee acting within the scope of employment. In that case the jury must conclude the defendant knew of the condition. There is nothing to prove about timing, only who created the condition.
The second route is actual notice: someone responsible for the property was told, or saw it. This is proved with documents that carry a date. An incident report, a complaint log entry, a maintenance ticket, or a text message to a manager is worth more than any number of witnesses who remember it being wet.
The third route is constructive notice, and it carries most cases. CACI No. 1011 asks the jury to decide whether the condition was of such a nature and existed long enough that the defendant had sufficient time to discover it and, using reasonable care, repair it, protect against it, or adequately warn of it. The instruction then adds the rule that carries the case. A defendant must make reasonable inspections. If an inspection was not made within a reasonable time before the accident, that may show the condition existed long enough for an owner using reasonable care to have found it.
Why a missed inspection counts as knowing
It comes from Ortega v. Kmart Corp. (2001) 26 Cal.4th 1200. The plaintiff slipped on milk beside a refrigerator case and had no evidence of where it came from or how long it had been on the floor. The California Supreme Court framed the question directly. May a plaintiff rely solely on the owner's failure to inspect within a reasonable period of time to establish the inference that the condition existed long enough for a reasonable person to have discovered it. The Court concluded that such evidence is sufficient to allow that inference.
That rule reverses who has the harder job. Instead of you proving how long the puddle sat there, which is usually unknowable, the owner has to account for the interval it left the floor unwatched. The document the owner did not create becomes the evidence against it. California Evidence Code section 600(b) supplies the mechanism, defining an inference as a deduction of fact that may logically and reasonably be drawn from another fact established in the action.
The letter that protects the records
A preservation letter is a written notice to a property owner, its insurer, and any contractor that identified evidence must not be destroyed, altered, or overwritten. It is the first thing we send in a fall case, usually the same day we are retained, because the records that decide notice are on automatic deletion schedules and nobody has to break a rule for them to vanish.
A letter that says preserve all relevant evidence accomplishes very little. A letter that names the date, the time window to the ten minutes, the physical location, the camera views, the shift, and each document type by its industry name is a different instrument. Once specific footage has been identified and demanded, its later disappearance is something the owner has to explain to a judge.
| Category | What it shows | How it is obtained |
|---|---|---|
| Inspection records | Whether anyone checked, and the gap | Preservation letter, then a document request |
| Video | Duration, and who walked past | Written demand naming cameras and times |
| Incident and complaint records | What was reported, and when | Request to the owner and its administrator |
| Prior similar incidents | A recurring condition already known | Discovery after suit is filed, and public records where an agency is involved |
| Employee testimony | Practice as opposed to written policy | Sworn depositions of the manager and the shift crew |
Employee testimony is where written policy meets practice. A chain will produce a floor safety manual requiring an inspection every hour. The crew on shift will describe what happened that night. In our cases the distance between those two answers is often the strongest fact in the file.
What each record is called
- Sweep sheet, safety sweep log, or floor inspection log. Retail and grocery. Ask for the sheet covering the hours before and after, not only the hour of the fall.
- Work order and maintenance ticket. Buildings, garages, and refrigeration. A ticket opened before the fall for the same defect is the cleanest actual notice there is.
- Daily activity report or post log. Anywhere with security staff. Guards write down conditions they see and often the times they walked an area.
- Incident report and claim file number. Created the day of the fall, then routed to a claims administrator, the outside company that handles the owner's claims, which is why the store may say it cannot give you a copy.
- Janitorial or floor care contract. Names another insured party and states the promised cleaning frequency, which becomes the standard the property failed to meet.
Proving a government owner knew
The same question is asked in different words. Government Code section 835 requires either that an employee created the dangerous condition or that the entity had actual or constructive notice long enough before the injury to have protected against it. CACI No. 1103 tells the jury that a public entity knows of a dangerous condition if an employee knows of it and reasonably should have informed the entity.
CACI No. 1104, drawn from Government Code section 835.2(b), then asks whether the entity had a reasonable inspection system and whether a reasonable system would have revealed the condition. It permits the jury to weigh the practicality and cost of such a system against the likelihood and seriousness of the danger. An agency that never inspected the walkway is answering the same question a supermarket answers about its sweep log. The deadlines are the difference, and our guide to falls on sidewalks and public property covers those.
When knowledge cannot be proved
The fresh hazard. Video shows the spill occurring ninety seconds before you reached it, inside a documented inspection cycle, with an employee already responding. No route to notice exists, because nothing was missed. The record that is already gone. A fall reported eight months later, with the video long overwritten, no sweep sheet retained, and no incident report, often leaves nothing to prove notice with.
The condition with no owner. Where the hazard was created by a third party the owner neither controlled nor could have discovered, notice fails on the facts rather than on the paperwork. The condition that is not dangerous. Notice of a trivial irregularity establishes nothing, because there was no unreasonable risk to have notice of. Our Los Angeles premises liability page explains how that threshold question is decided.
What you can do yourself this week
Write down the exact date, the time to the nearest ten minutes, the building, and the spot, because every request depends on those four facts. Send one written request, by email if you prefer, to the property and its insurer, naming the video and the inspection records for that window. Keep your copy and the timestamp. Then photograph the location again, because a condition repaired after your fall is its own kind of record.
If the fall produced a serious injury, the evidence work and the medical work run in parallel and neither waits for the other. The store or building side of the proof is covered in our guides to store and supermarket falls and apartment and stairway falls. We send the preservation letters the day we take the case, and there is no fee unless we recover.