The Michigan Slip & Fall Guide

The Michigan Supreme Court decided another slip and fall case in July 2026. It is the third ruling since 2023 to move this area of law. If you fell on someone else's property, the rules that decide your case are not the rules your neighbor heard about a few years ago. Below, newest first, is what changed and when.

Bowerman v Red Oak Management Co, Inc, 2026

Michigan Supreme Court, decided July 20, 2026, Docket No. 167718

Jan Bowerman lived at an apartment building for elderly and disabled residents. A contractor replacing concrete under the dumpster left a shallow trench in the parking lot. It sat uncovered and unmarked for weeks. She took her trash out before sunrise and stepped into it.

The Supreme Court reversed the dismissal of both of her claims. Against the contractor, the Court treated the claim as ordinary negligence, not premises liability, because the contractor did not possess or control the lot when she fell. A jury could find that digging a trench and walking away from it uncovered created an unreasonable risk. The Court also pointed out that the Court of Appeals leaned on what Bowerman herself did or failed to do. That belongs to comparative fault, not to letting the contractor off as a matter of law.

Against the property manager, the Court read the landlord's statutory promise to keep common areas fit for their intended use in light of who actually lives there. A building that holds itself out as housing for elderly and disabled tenants has to keep the trash area reasonably usable by elderly and disabled tenants. The Court let both claims go forward, against the contractor that created the hazard and against the company that manages the property.

Janini v London Townhouses Condominium Association, 2024

Michigan Supreme Court, decided July 11, 2024, Docket No. 164158

Daoud Janini fell on a snow and ice covered sidewalk in the common area of his own condominium complex and suffered a brain injury. The Court of Appeals threw the case out on a technicality of ownership. He co-owned the land he fell on, so he could not sue over it.

The Supreme Court disagreed and overruled the older Court of Appeals decision that had built that rule. A condominium co-owner is an invitee when they enter the common elements. The association controls those areas, the co-owner pays the association to maintain them, and that imbalance of control creates the same kind of relationship a landlord has with a tenant. So the association owes reasonable care and the co-owner can bring a premises liability claim.

Janini held that co-ownership of the common elements does not by itself bar a claim against the association. A co-owner who crosses an unshoveled sidewalk, an icy stairwell, or a broken walkway in the common area enters as an invitee.

Gabrielson v The Woods Condominium Association, Inc, 2024

Michigan Court of Appeals, published, decided January 4, 2024, Docket Nos. 364809 and 364813

Penny Gabrielson rented a room from the woman who owned a condominium unit in Livonia. A rubber strip over the lip of the front step had come unglued and curled up in the heat. Her foot caught it. She broke bones in her wrist and hit her head.

Two things came out of this published opinion. First, the Court of Appeals held that the 2023 Kandil-Elsayed change applies retroactively, to that case and to every case still pending on direct appeal. Second, the panel walked through the difference between an invitee and a licensee and reached different answers for different defendants. As a tenant, Gabrielson was an invitee of the unit owner who leased her the room. As a guest on the wider complex, she was a licensee of the association, which owed her a narrower duty to warn about hidden dangers it knew about.

Status still decides how much protection the law gives. Who owns the specific piece of ground can change the answer inside a single property.

Kandil-Elsayed v F & E Oil, Inc, and Pinsky v Kroger Co of Michigan, 2023

Michigan Supreme Court, decided July 28, 2023, Docket Nos. 162907 and 163430

Two ordinary falls got the Supreme Court's attention. Ahlam Kandil-Elsayed slipped on snow and ice at a gas station. Renee Pinsky caught her foot on a cable strung from a Kroger checkout counter to a display basket. Both trial courts and both panels of the Court of Appeals used the same move. The hazard was obvious, so the property owner owed no duty, so the case ended before a jury ever heard it.

The Supreme Court stopped that. It held that a land possessor owes invitees a duty to use reasonable care against an unreasonable risk of harm from a dangerous condition. The open and obvious nature of a hazard no longer erases that duty. It moves to breach and to comparative fault, which are jury questions. The Court also cut back the old "special aspects" test where it strayed from the real standard, which asks whether the property owner should have anticipated the harm even though the danger was obvious.

Before 2023, a judge could look at a photo of an icy walkway and end a case in one ruling. After Kandil-Elsayed, the question is whether the owner acted reasonably and whether the owner should have anticipated the harm anyway. The Court moved the injured person's own carelessness into comparative fault, which reduces damages instead of erasing the claim. Both cases went back down for further proceedings.

Lowrey v LMPS & LMPJ, Inc, 2016

Michigan Supreme Court, decided December 13, 2016, Docket No. 153025

Krystal Lowrey slipped going down a stairway at a diner and broke her tibia and fibula. She argued the stairs were wet and the restaurant should have known.

The Supreme Court held that the injured person carries the burden on notice. A property owner is not liable for a hazard unless it had actual or constructive notice of it, and the owner does not have to prove it lacked notice or show what a reasonable inspection would have turned up. The plaintiff has to put forward enough evidence on that element to reach a jury.

This one survived 2023 untouched, and it is why the first hours after a fall matter so much. Photos, the names of employees who saw it, whether anyone had already reported the spill, incident reports, and store video that gets overwritten on a schedule. Notice is proven with evidence that disappears fast.

Bernardoni v City of Saginaw, 2016

Michigan Supreme Court, decided July 5, 2016, 499 Mich 470; 886 NW2d 109

Sue Bernardoni tripped on a two and a half inch vertical gap between two sidewalk slabs and sued the city under the highway exception to governmental immunity. She backed it up with photographs of the defect taken about thirty days after the fall.

The Supreme Court held that those photos alone did not create a fact question on whether the defect had existed for at least thirty days before she fell, which the statute requires. Without something more, a jury had no basis to find the timing. The city won.

Cases against a city, county, or state agency run on a different track than cases against a store or a landlord. There are proof requirements and notice deadlines that arrive quickly and do not bend. Waiting to look into it can decide the case before anyone reaches the merits.

Lugo v Ameritech Corp, Inc, 2001

Michigan Supreme Court, decided July 3, 2001, 464 Mich 512; 629 NW2d 384

Lugo is the rule Kandil-Elsayed replaced, and it is why so many people still believe they have no case. Lugo involved a fall in a parking lot pothole. The Court placed the open and obvious doctrine inside the duty element, which a judge decides. If the hazard was obvious, the duty vanished.

Lugo left one narrow escape hatch called "special aspects," illustrated by standing water covering the floor at a building's only public exit and by an unguarded thirty foot pit in a parking lot. Almost nothing cleared that bar. The 2023 decision overruled the duty holding and cut back the special aspects test. If a lawyer told you years ago that your fall was too obvious to pursue, that advice reflected a rule Michigan no longer follows.

Reading case law is not the same as knowing what your own facts support. If you fell in Michigan and you are not sure where you stand, call 844-ASK-AZZO (844-275-2996). Our intake team takes your information, gathers where and when you fell, and routes your question to the right person at the firm. No pressure, and no charge to ask.

Lauren Sitto Azzo, lead attorney at Azzo Law, PLLC, is responsible for the content of this page. This section is general information about Michigan court decisions and not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.