Slip and Fall in an Ontario Store or Mall: Who's Liable and What to Prove

You are walking through a grocery store or a shopping mall, thinking about your list, and your foot hits something you never saw: a patch of water, a crushed grape, a freshly mopped floor with no sign, or a sheet of ice on the way in from the parking lot. A second later you are on the ground, and something is badly hurt. The question almost everyone asks next is the same. Is the store responsible, or is this just my bad luck? In Ontario, the honest answer is that it depends, and it depends on things most people never think about in the moment they fall.

Slip and fall liability in Ontario is governed mainly by a single statute, the Occupiers' Liability Act. That law does not make a store or a mall the insurer of your safety. It does not say that because you fell, someone has to pay. What it says is narrower and far more important. The people who control a space owe you a duty to take reasonable care to keep it reasonably safe. Whether they met that duty, and whether their failure to meet it is what put you on the floor, is what decides your claim. The standard is reasonable care, not perfection, and that single idea runs through every case in this guide.

This guide explains, in plain language, how slip and fall claims against stores and malls actually work in Ontario. It covers who counts as an occupier and can be sued, the reasonable care standard that comes from section 3 of the Occupiers' Liability Act, why almost every case turns on the occupier's system of inspection and cleaning rather than the single spill you slipped on, what you have to prove, the evidence that wins these cases, and the deadlines that can quietly end a claim before it starts, including a strict 60 day notice rule for falls on ice and snow. We put a case a shopper won beside a case a store won, so you can see exactly what makes the difference.

If you were seriously hurt in a fall at a store, a mall, a restaurant, or a parking lot, the smartest early step is to talk to a personal injury lawyer before you give a statement, sign anything, or let a deadline run. Slip and fall cases are built or lost in the first weeks, while the floor, the video, and the cleaning records still exist.

This article is general information about Ontario law. It is not legal advice, and reading it does not make us your lawyers. Every fall is different, and the outcome of any claim depends on its own facts and evidence. If you were injured, do not guess whether you have a case. Talk to a lawyer who can look at what happened and tell you where you stand.

What is the Occupiers' Liability Act, and who is an occupier?

The Occupiers' Liability Act is the Ontario law that sets out the duty owed by people who control property to the people who come onto it. It applies to almost every place the public visits: grocery stores, big box retailers, shopping malls, restaurants, gyms, parking garages, and the parking lots and walkways attached to them. When you are hurt by the condition of one of those places, this is the statute your claim runs through.

The key word in the statute is occupier, and it is broader than most people expect. An occupier is anyone who is in physical possession of premises, or who has responsibility for and control over the condition of the premises, the activities carried on there, or the people allowed to come in. Two things follow from that definition, and both matter enormously in a store or mall fall.

First, occupier is not the same as owner. You do not have to own a place to be its occupier. A business that rents its store space is an occupier of that space. A property management company that runs a mall on behalf of the owner is an occupier of the common areas. A contractor hired to control and maintain a parking lot can be an occupier of that lot.

Second, one space can have more than one occupier at the same time. A single square metre of floor in a mall might be controlled by the mall owner, serviced by a cleaning contractor, and, if it is at a store entrance, connected to a tenant business. Each of them can owe you a duty at once. That is why identifying the right defendants, and all of them, is one of the first and most important jobs in a slip and fall case.

Who is liable when you slip and fall in a store or mall?

Liability depends on who controlled the exact spot where you fell, and on what they did or failed to do. In a standalone store, the occupier is usually the business that operates the store, and sometimes the landlord as well. In a shopping mall, the picture is layered, and the layers decide who you sue.

Think of a mall as a set of overlapping responsibilities. The mall owner or property manager typically controls the common areas: the corridors, the food court, the public entrances, and the parking lot. Each tenant store controls the floor inside its own doors. A cleaning or maintenance contractor may be responsible for inspecting and cleaning the floors on a schedule. In winter, a separate snow removal contractor may be responsible for clearing and salting the lot and the entrances. Any one of them, or several together, can be on the hook depending on where you went down.

Where you fell often points to who is responsible.

Fall inside a shop on water dripping from its own cooler, and that shop is the likely occupier. Fall in the common corridor near the food court, and the mall or property manager is in the frame. Slip on ice in the parking lot, and both the property owner and the snow removal contractor may be responsible. Because more than one party can share the blame, part of a lawyer's early work is to identify every occupier and every contractor with potential responsibility. Suing the wrong party, or missing one, can weaken or even sink an otherwise strong claim.

What duty does a store or mall owe you?

The core duty is set out in section 3(1) of the Occupiers' Liability Act. An occupier owes a duty to take such care as in all the circumstances of the case is reasonable to see that persons who come onto the premises, and the property they bring, are reasonably safe.

Read that wording slowly, because two phrases carry the whole test. The duty is to take reasonable care, and the goal is that you are reasonably safe. It is a standard of reasonableness. It is not a standard of perfection.

This is the single most important idea in slip and fall law, and it cuts both ways. It means a store is not automatically liable just because someone fell. A floor does not have to be flawless, and a hazard does not have to be impossible. But it also means a store cannot shrug and say accidents happen. The question is always the same. Did the occupier do what a reasonable business in its position would have done to find the hazard and deal with it before it hurt someone?

The leading case: Waldick v. Malcolm

The leading authority on this standard is the Supreme Court of Canada's decision in Waldick v. Malcolm, 1991 CanLII 71 (SCC). The case arose out of a fall on an icy surface, and the Court used it to explain what section 3 requires of an occupier. Two points from the decision still shape every Ontario slip and fall case today.

The first point is that the standard is reasonableness in all the circumstances. What is reasonable is not fixed. It rises and falls with the nature of the premises, the kind of hazard, and how much risk it created. A busy grocery entrance on a rainy day, where dozens of people track in water every minute, calls for a more active response than a quiet back corner that few customers ever reach. Reasonable care is measured against the real situation, not against a one size fits all rule.

The second point is that what everyone else does is not automatically the standard. The Court rejected the argument that an occupier can escape liability simply by showing that the local custom was to do nothing. If a common practice is itself careless, following it is no defence. An occupier cannot point to a sloppy habit that others share and call it reasonable care. This matters in the retail world, because a chain cannot defend a thin inspection routine just by saying every other store does it the same way. If the routine is unreasonable, it fails the test no matter how common it is.

Taken together, Waldick confirms that section 3 imposes an active duty. It is not enough to wait for a complaint and then react. A reasonable occupier looks for hazards before they hurt anyone, and how well it does that is the question a court will ask.

What are the four things you have to prove?

Occupiers' liability is a form of negligence, and a slip and fall claim has four building blocks. You, as the injured person, carry the burden of proving each one on a balance of probabilities, which simply means more likely than not. If any block is missing, the claim fails, even if the others are strong.

The first block, duty, is usually the easiest. If you were a customer in a store or mall, the occupier owed you the duty. The last block, damages, is about proving the size of your loss with medical and financial evidence, and it is its own major exercise.

The two blocks that decide most cases are breach and causation. Breach is the fight over whether the occupier took reasonable care, and, as the next section explains, that fight is almost always about the occupier's system rather than the single spill. Causation is the requirement that the occupier's failure be what actually caused your fall. This is why identifying the hazard early is so important. If you cannot say what you slipped on, or there is no evidence that a hazard existed at all, causation becomes hard to prove even when you were badly hurt. A fall with no identifiable cause is a difficult claim, no matter how sympathetic the injury.

Why does slip and fall liability come down to the system, not the spill?

This is the heart of a store or mall case, and it is where claims are won and lost. A store cannot watch every square foot of floor every second of the day, and the law does not expect it to. What the law expects is a reasonable system: a routine of inspecting the floors, cleaning up hazards, and guarding dangers, of the kind a reasonable business would have in place, plus proof that the system was actually followed on the day you fell.

So the real contest is rarely about the puddle itself. It is about everything the occupier did or did not do around the puddle. A court will want to know the answers to questions like these.

• Did the occupier have a schedule for inspecting the floors, and how often were they supposed to be checked?
• Did staff actually walk the floors and record it, or is there no log at all?
• How long was the hazard on the floor before you fell? A spill that appears seconds before you step in it is very different from one that sat unnoticed for an hour.
• When a hazard was found, was it cleaned or guarded promptly, with a cone, a sign, or a barrier?
• Were there enough staff, trained well enough, to keep up with the traffic in that area?

An occupier that can show a reasonable, documented, actually followed system will often win, even though a customer got hurt, because it took reasonable care and the law asks no more. An occupier that cannot show any real system, or whose records reveal the floors went unchecked for long stretches, is exposed, because that gap is itself a failure of reasonable care.

This is also why the paperwork carries so much weight. Inspection logs, cleaning schedules, incident reports, and staff training records are the real battleground of a slip and fall case. If those documents exist and look good for the store, the defence is strong. If they are missing, blank for the relevant period, or plainly not followed, that absence is often the injured person's single best piece of evidence. Which is exactly what the next two cases show.

Tondat and Kerr: a shopper's win and a store's win, side by side

Two Ontario Court of Appeal decisions bring the system principle to life, and reading them together is the clearest way to understand what separates a winning claim from a losing one. In one, the shopper won because the store could not prove a reasonable system. In the other, the store won because it could. Same law, opposite results, and the difference comes down to the system.

The shopper's win: Tondat v. Hudson's Bay Co.

In Tondat v. Hudson's Bay Co., 2018 ONCA 302, a customer slipped and fell on a wet floor in the store and was injured. The store was found liable, and the Court of Appeal upheld that result. The reason is the important part. It was not that water on a floor is automatically the store's fault. It was that the store could not establish that it had a reasonable system of inspection and cleaning in place, and being followed, to find and deal with hazards like the one that caused the fall. Without proof of a reasonable system, the occupier could not show that it had taken the reasonable care section 3 requires. The gap in the system was the breach.

The store's win: Kerr v. Loblaws Inc.

In Kerr v. Loblaws Inc., 2007 ONCA 371, a customer was also hurt in a fall in a store. This time the occupier was not liable. The store was able to show that it had a reasonable system of inspection and maintenance, and that it was meeting the standard of reasonable care expected of an occupier. Because the store took reasonable care, the fact that a customer fell and was injured did not make it responsible. The reasonable care standard, not a guarantee of safety, decided the case in the store's favour.

The two cases compared

Put side by side, the two cases send one clear message. The dividing line is not how badly you were hurt, and it is not even how the hazard got onto the floor. It is whether the occupier can prove that it had, and followed, a reasonable system to keep the floors reasonably safe. That is why your lawyer's early demand for the store's inspection logs, cleaning schedules, and security video is often the most valuable single step in the whole case. Those documents are what decided Tondat and Kerr, and they will likely decide yours.

Illustrative examples: when is a store liable for a fall?

The following are illustrations only. They are not real clients, and they are not predictions about any particular case. They are here to show how the reasonable care standard and the system question play out with different facts.

The grape on the floor for an hour (store likely liable). A shopper slips on a squashed grape in the produce aisle of a busy grocery store and fractures her wrist. When the store's records come out, it turns out the aisle was supposed to be inspected every 30 minutes, but the log shows no inspection for more than 90 minutes before the fall, and staff cannot say when they last checked. A hazard that sat that long in a high traffic aisle, in a store whose own system was not followed, points to a failure of reasonable care. This is the kind of case a shopper is well placed to win, because the occupier cannot show it did what its own system required.

The spill seconds before the fall (store likely not liable). A customer slips on a drink another shopper dropped moments earlier in a mall corridor. Security video shows the spill happened less than a minute before the fall, and the mall's cleaning records show regular, logged inspections of that corridor throughout the day, including one shortly before. On these facts, no reasonable system could have caught the spill in time. The occupier took reasonable care, and the fact that a fall still happened does not make it liable. Reasonable care, not perfection, is the test.

The untreated lot after a freeze (occupier and contractor in the frame). A shopper crosses a mall parking lot the morning after freezing rain and falls on a sheet of ice, injuring his hip. The lot had not been salted or sanded, and the winter maintenance contractor's records show no treatment that morning despite a known freeze overnight. Here the property owner and the snow removal contractor may both be responsible, and the case will turn on what a reasonable winter maintenance system required after that particular weather. This is also a case where a special 60 day notice deadline, explained below, is almost certainly in play.

The shopper on the phone in a marked off area (shared fault). A customer steps around a bright yellow wet floor sign and a cone while looking at his phone, walks across a floor that staff had just mopped and clearly guarded, and slips. The store may still bear some responsibility, but a court could find that the shopper's own carelessness contributed to the fall and reduce his compensation to reflect his share of the blame. This is contributory negligence, and it lowers a recovery rather than erasing it.

What is not enough to win a slip and fall claim?

The most common misunderstanding about these cases is the belief that falling is the same as winning. It is not. The fact that you fell, on its own, does not prove that anyone was careless. I fell, so the store must pay is not the law, and a claim built only on the fall will struggle.

Several things, by themselves, do not establish liability.

• The mere fact that you fell and were hurt. Injury proves that you have damages. It does not prove that the occupier breached its duty.
• A brief, momentary hazard that the occupier had no reasonable chance to find and fix. As the spill example shows, reasonable care does not mean instant care.
• The absence of any identifiable hazard. If no one can say what you slipped on, causation is hard to prove.

At the same time, several things that people wrongly assume defeat a claim do not automatically do so.

• A wet floor sign does not automatically end your claim. It can hurt it, but it depends on whether the warning was adequate, visible, and placed where it would actually reach you.
• Being partly at fault does not necessarily end your claim. As explained below, Ontario law can reduce your recovery for your own share of the blame, but that is a reduction, not a bar.
• Not being certain of the exact substance is not always fatal, if other evidence, such as video and the failure of the occupier's system, still shows a hazard existed and was not dealt with. It is harder, but it is not automatically the end.

The honest summary is that a slip and fall claim needs more than a fall. It needs a hazard, a failure of reasonable care around that hazard, a link between the two and your injury, and proof of your loss. That is a real hurdle, and it is also exactly why the evidence you and your lawyer gather early is so important.

Can a slip and fall be partly your own fault?

Yes, and the argument that it was is one of the most common defences in these cases. Ontario law allows a court to divide fault between the occupier and the injured person. If your own carelessness contributed to the fall, your compensation can be reduced by your share of the responsibility. This is called contributory negligence, and the key point is that it reduces a claim, it does not automatically end it. A person found partly at fault can still recover the occupier's share of the loss.

The kinds of arguments a defence will raise include inappropriate footwear for the conditions, distraction such as looking at a phone, ignoring a clearly visible and adequate warning sign or barrier, moving too fast, or walking into an area that was obviously and openly hazardous. None of these automatically defeats a claim. The occupier still has to prove that it took reasonable care in the first place, and even where a shopper is found partly responsible, the occupier remains on the hook for its portion of the fault.

If an insurer is telling you that the fall was entirely your own fault, treat that as an opening negotiating position, not a legal conclusion. Whether fault should be shared, and in what proportion, is a fact specific question that turns on the evidence, and it is one worth getting advice on before you accept blame.

What are the deadlines to bring an Ontario slip and fall claim?

Deadlines are where good claims die quietly, so this section matters even if nothing else sticks. A slip and fall case can involve two very different clocks, and one of them, for winter falls, is dangerously short.

The basic deadline: 2 years to sue

In general, you have 2 years from the date of your fall to start a lawsuit. This comes from Ontario's Limitations Act, 2002, which sets a basic limitation period of 2 years for most claims. Two years can feel like plenty of time, but it is not, and here is why. The evidence that wins these cases, security video, cleaning and inspection logs, and the memories of witnesses and staff, disappears long before the 2 years are up. Video is often recorded over within days or weeks. Waiting until the deadline is near usually means waiting until the best evidence is gone.

The 2 year clock can be affected by when you reasonably discovered your claim, and special rules apply for minors and for people who are incapable of managing their affairs. But you should never assume you have extra time. The safe assumption is that the 2 years run from the day you fell.

The special deadline for ice and snow: 60 days written notice

If your fall was caused by snow or ice, a second, much shorter and much stricter deadline applies, and it catches people out constantly. Under section 6.1 of the Occupiers' Liability Act, added by a recent amendment, you generally cannot bring a claim for personal injury caused by snow or ice unless you first give written notice of the claim within 60 days of the fall. The notice must set out the date, the time, and the location of the fall, and it must be given to the occupier or to a contractor who was hired to remove snow or ice.

This rule is a trap for the unwary, for three reasons.

• It is short. 60 days is a small fraction of the 2 year limitation, and it starts running the day you fall, while you may still be in pain, in treatment, or unaware that a deadline even exists.
• It applies broadly, including on commercial lots. The notice requirement covers falls caused by ice and snow on the kinds of premises the Act governs, not just private homes. That includes commercial parking lots, mall entrances, and store walkways. If you slip on an icy mall or store lot, this notice rule is very likely in play.
• Getting it wrong can end the claim. There are limited exceptions, for example where there is a reasonable excuse for the lack of notice and the defendant is not prejudiced by it, and the requirement does not apply where the injury results in death. But you cannot count on fitting into an exception. The safe course is to give proper written notice, to the right parties, immediately.

Because the ice and snow notice can need to go to more than one party at once, the property occupier and any separate snow removal contractor, and because an injured shopper usually has no idea who the contractor is, a winter fall is one of the strongest reasons to get a lawyer involved within days, not months.

One more warning. If you fell on municipal property, such as a public sidewalk owned by a city or town, a different regime with its own, often even shorter, notice deadline can apply. That is beyond the scope of a store or mall claim, but if there is any chance your fall was on public rather than private property, get advice immediately, because those deadlines can be measured in days.

How do you prove a slip and fall claim? The evidence that wins

A slip and fall claim is won with evidence gathered early, while it still exists. The occupier and its insurer will start protecting their position within hours. You should protect yours too. Here is what matters and how to preserve it.

At the scene, if you are physically able:

• Report the fall to the store or mall right away and ask that a written incident report be made. Note the names of the staff you spoke to and ask for a copy if you can get one.
• Photograph the hazard and the area before anyone cleans it up. Capture the puddle, the ice, the spill, the object, and whether a warning sign was present or absent. Take both wide shots that show the location and close ups that show the hazard. Photograph your footwear and the lighting too.
• Fix the exact location, date, and time in your notes.
• Get the names and contact information of any witnesses. Independent witnesses are powerful, and they scatter quickly.

In the days and weeks that follow:

• See a doctor promptly and keep going. Medical records that begin right after the fall connect your injury to the event, which is part of proving both causation and damages.
• Write down what happened while it is fresh: what you were doing, where you were looking, what you slipped on, and what happened immediately after.
• Keep every receipt and record of your expenses and any missed work.
• Keep the clothes and, above all, the footwear you were wearing, unwashed, in a bag. The defence will ask about your shoes, so preserve them.
• Do not give a recorded statement to the store's insurer before you have advice. Well intentioned answers early on can be used to build a contributory negligence argument later.

The evidence that usually only a lawyer can secure:

• Security video. Most stores and malls have cameras, but footage is frequently recorded over within days or a few weeks. A prompt, formal demand to preserve the video is often the difference between having decisive proof and having nothing.
• The occupier's inspection logs, cleaning schedules, and maintenance records for the relevant period. As Tondat and Kerr show, these documents often decide the case.
• In an ice or snow case, the winter maintenance contract and the snow removal contractor's records of when the lot was treated.
• Incident reports and internal communications about the fall.

What can you claim if the store was at fault?

If liability is established, the compensation in a slip and fall claim follows ordinary personal injury principles. Importantly, there is no automobile style verbal threshold and no statutory deductible here. Those rules apply to car accident claims, not to falls. That difference surprises people. The same broken wrist can be treated very differently depending on whether a car or a wet floor caused it, because a car accident claim runs through a special no fault and threshold system while a slip and fall does not.

The common heads of compensation in a slip and fall claim include:

• Pain and suffering, known as non pecuniary damages, for the injury itself and its effect on your life and activities.
• Past and future loss of income, and loss of your ability to earn, if the injury affects your work.
• The cost of past and future care and treatment your injuries require.
• Out of pocket expenses connected to the fall, from medication to assistive devices to travel for treatment.
• In some cases, a claim by close family members for their own losses.

Because there is no deductible skimming the pain and suffering award and no threshold gate to pass, the value of a slip and fall claim turns on two things: proving the occupier was at fault, and proving the full extent of your losses with solid medical and financial evidence. Both are evidence exercises, and both reward starting early.

How does a slip and fall claim unfold?

Most people have never been through a personal injury claim, so it helps to see the shape of one. A store or mall slip and fall claim usually moves through the following stages, though every file is different.

It begins with reporting the fall and preserving evidence, ideally on the day it happens. For an ice or snow fall, the 60 day written notice needs to go out quickly. A lawyer then investigates: identifying every occupier and contractor who might be responsible, and sending demands to preserve the video and produce the inspection, cleaning, and maintenance records. In parallel, your medical evidence builds as you treat and your doctors document your injuries and their effect on your life.

A formal claim is started before the 2 year limitation expires. The parties then exchange documents, which is where the inspection logs, cleaning schedules, and video come into the open, and they question each other under oath at examinations for discovery. This is where the system question, the same one that decided Tondat and Kerr, gets fought out on the actual records. The great majority of cases settle at some point in this process, once both sides can see what the evidence shows. A minority proceed to trial, where a judge decides whether the occupier took reasonable care and, if not, what your losses are worth.

How do you protect your slip and fall claim?

You cannot change the fact that you fell. You can change how well your claim is proven, and most of that work happens in the first days and weeks. If you take nothing else from this guide, take this list.

• Report the fall and get it recorded in writing, with the names of the staff involved.
• Photograph the hazard and the whole area before anyone cleans it up.
• If ice or snow was involved, treat the 60 day written notice as urgent and get advice right away.
• See a doctor promptly and keep up with treatment, so the medical record tells a consistent story.
• Do not give a recorded statement to the occupier's insurer before you have advice.
• Keep your footwear and clothing, unwashed, exactly as they were.
• Talk to a lawyer early, while the security video and the cleaning logs still exist. Once they are gone, they are gone.

How can a lawyer help with a slip and fall claim?

A slip and fall claim looks simple and is not. The law is a reasonableness standard that turns on documents the occupier controls and would rather not hand over, on deadlines that can be as short as 60 days, and on evidence that vanishes within weeks. A lawyer's job is to move fast on the things that decide the case.

In practice, that means a lawyer can:

• Identify every occupier and contractor who might share responsibility, so the right parties are pursued and none is missed.
• Send preservation demands for security video and records before they are overwritten or destroyed.
• Obtain and scrutinize the inspection logs, cleaning schedules, and maintenance records, which, as Tondat and Kerr show, usually decide whether the occupier took reasonable care.
• Meet the deadlines, including the strict 60 day ice and snow notice and the 2 year limitation, and give notice to the right parties.
• Build the medical and financial evidence that proves the full extent of your losses.
• Answer the standard defences, including the argument that the occupier had a reasonable system and the argument that the fall was your own fault.
• Value the claim properly and negotiate, or litigate, from a position built on evidence rather than guesswork.

How VC Lawyers can help

Slip and fall claims against stores and malls are won on speed and evidence. At VC Lawyers, we act quickly to preserve the security video and demand the inspection and cleaning records that decide these cases, we identify every occupier and contractor who may be responsible, and we make sure the deadlines, including the short 60 day notice for ice and snow falls, are met. We then build the medical and financial proof of what the injury has cost you, and we press the occupier's insurer with the reasonable system and shared fault defences squarely answered.

We work on a contingency fee basis for personal injury clients, which means no fees unless we recover for you, and the first consultation is free. If you were hurt in a fall at a store, a mall, a restaurant, or a parking lot, do not wait for the video to be erased. Contact VC Lawyers for a free consultation, or learn more about our personal injury practice.

This article is general information about Ontario law. It is not legal advice, and reading it does not create a lawyer and client relationship. Every claim turns on its own facts and its own evidence, and the deadlines are strict. For advice about your situation, speak with a lawyer.

Key terms explained

• Occupier. Anyone in physical possession of premises, or who has responsibility for and control over the condition of the premises, the activities on them, or who is allowed in. You do not have to own a place to be its occupier, and a single space can have more than one occupier at once.
• Occupiers' Liability Act. The Ontario statute that sets out the duty occupiers owe to people who come onto their property. It is the main law behind a store or mall slip and fall claim.
• Reasonable care standard. The duty in section 3 of the Act to take such care as is reasonable in all the circumstances to see that people are reasonably safe. It is a standard of reasonableness, not perfection.
• Duty of care. The legal obligation an occupier owes you to take reasonable care for your safety on the premises.
• Breach. A failure to meet the reasonable care standard, most often because the occupier had no reasonable system of inspection and cleaning, or did not follow the system it had.
• System of inspection and cleaning. The routine an occupier uses to find and deal with hazards. Whether a reasonable system existed and was followed is the question that decides most slip and fall cases.
• Causation. The requirement that the occupier's failure actually caused your fall and your injury. If no hazard can be identified, causation is hard to prove.
• Damages. The compensation you can recover, including pain and suffering, income loss, care costs, and out of pocket expenses.
• Contributory negligence. A finding that your own carelessness contributed to the fall. It reduces your recovery by your share of the fault; it does not automatically end the claim.
• Limitation period. The deadline to start a lawsuit, generally 2 years from the fall under the Limitations Act, 2002.
• Ice and snow notice. The written notice required within 60 days of a fall caused by snow or ice under section 6.1 of the Occupiers' Liability Act, given to the occupier or the snow removal contractor.
• Balance of probabilities. The standard of proof in a civil case, meaning more likely than not.