Photographs of the exact hazard, contact information for anyone who saw you go down, the property’s incident report, surveillance video, and your medical records are the types of evidence that often decide an Illinois slip and fall case. Nearly all of it starts vanishing immediately. Spills get mopped, broken tile gets replaced, snow melts, and camera systems record over older footage. Our Northbrook premises liability attorneys have seen strong claims rise or fall on a single cell phone photo. Here is what to gather, in what order, and what each piece has to prove under Illinois law.
Why Illinois Puts the Evidence Burden on the Person Who Fell
Most people assume a business has to hold onto the proof after someone is hurt on the property. Illinois law says otherwise. The Illinois Supreme Court has stated the rule plainly. There is no general duty to preserve evidence. A duty arises only when an agreement, a contract, a statute, a special circumstance, or a voluntary undertaking creates one, and only when a reasonable person in that position should have foreseen that the item mattered to a possible lawsuit.
The consequences are not theoretical. In a 2004 case, a newspaper carrier fractured his elbow after falling in a hole in a brick sidewalk. He returned to the scene hours later to look at the hole but did not photograph it. Days afterward, the homeowner pulled up the bricks so nobody else would get hurt. He then sued the homeowner’s insurance company over the lost evidence. The Illinois Supreme Court ruled against him. He had never asked that insurer to preserve the sidewalk or even to document its condition, and he took no picture when he had the chance.
Illinois does give a party already headed for court reason to handle evidence carefully, and destroying proof can cost a business inside the lawsuit. That is thin comfort next to a photo you took yourself.
Photographs and Video, Taken Before Anything Is Cleaned Up
Your phone is the most valuable tool at the scene of a slip and fall, and the window is short. Shoot more than you think you need, and shoot it before an employee arrives with a mop or a cone. If you cannot stand, ask the person with you to do it.
- Wide shots that show where the hazard sits in the room, aisle, stairwell, or lot
- Close-ups of the actual hazard with a common object beside it for scale, such as a shoe or a set of keys
- The lighting, the flooring transition, any handrail or mat, and whether warning signs or cones were present
- The shoes you were wearing, still on your feet, before you change them
- Your visible injuries that day, and again as bruising develops over the following week
One short video walking the approach you actually took captures sightlines and distractions that a still photograph flattens out. That matters in Illinois, where a property owner can still be responsible for an open and obvious danger if the owner should have anticipated that people would be hurt by it anyway. The Premises Liability Act sets the standard as reasonable care under the circumstances, and pictures are how a jury sees the circumstances.
Witness Names and the Property’s Incident Report
Witnesses do not stay findable. Shoppers scatter, employees change jobs, and memories fade. Before you leave, collect names, cell phone numbers, and email addresses from anyone who saw the fall or saw the hazard beforehand.
Ask two specific questions and write the answers down:
- “How long was that there?”
- “Did anyone report it?”
Under Illinois law, a business breaches its duty to a customer who slips on a foreign substance in three situations. The substance got there through the negligence of the business, an employee knew it was there, or it sat long enough that ordinary care should have turned it up. The last two routes turn on what the business knew and how long the hazard sat there. An employee who says the spill had been sitting there all afternoon gives you real evidence of notice, and an Illinois appellate court has held that this kind of statement by an employee can be used against the employer.
Request that an incident report be prepared, and ask for a copy before you leave. Many businesses refuse. If yours does, write down the name and title of the person who took it, the time, and what you told them.
Surveillance Footage and a Written Request to Preserve It
Cameras in stores, lobbies, garages, and stairwells often capture the fall. Sometimes, the camera will capture the hour before the fall, showing how long the hazard sat there and whether an employee walked past. How long a system keeps that video varies, and older footage is routinely recorded over.
Because Illinois recognizes no automatic duty to preserve, a verbal mention to a manager is thin protection. Make the request in writing, identify the date, the time, the camera location, and the footage window you want kept, and keep proof that you sent it. Illinois courts have pointed to a request from the injured person to preserve the item, or to the holder setting the item aside for that person, as the kind of extra fact that can turn mere possession into a duty. A written, dated, delivered request is how you create the first of those facts instead of hoping for it.
Medical Records That Tie the Injury to the Fall
Get examined the same day when you can, and tell the provider you fell and how it happened. That sentence in the chart becomes the earliest written link between the property condition and the injury, and it is difficult for an insurer to argue around. Delays hand the other side its favorite argument: something else caused the problem.
Collect the paper as you go. Emergency records, imaging, therapy notes, prescriptions, bills, and mileage all belong in one folder, along with pay records showing time you missed. Federal privacy rules give patients the right to ask for and get a copy of their health records from the providers and health plans those rules cover.
Keep a short dated journal of pain levels, sleep problems, emotional state, and the tasks you cannot manage. Symptoms that surface days later, including the headaches and concentration trouble associated with a traumatic brain injury, need documenting as soon as they appear.
Two Illinois Rules That Change What Evidence You Need
Illinois divides fault rather than treating it as all or nothing. If the trier of fact assigns you a share of the fault, your damages are reduced in proportion to that share, and you recover nothing at all when that share is more than 50%. Insurers know this, so they build a story about what you were doing. Evidence that answers that story, including the absence of warning cones, the lighting, and what you were carrying, protects your recovery as much as evidence about the hazard.
Deadlines change what is worth chasing and how fast. Illinois generally gives you two years after a personal injury claim accrues to file suit, which in most falls means two years from the day you were hurt. That window narrows sharply when the party you would sue is a local public body. The Local Governmental and Governmental Employees Tort Immunity Act sets a one-year limit for most civil actions against those entities and their employees. Its definition reaches municipalities, counties, townships, park districts, school districts, forest preserve districts, fire protection districts, and other local governmental bodies. If you fell on property run by one of them, the calendar is already tighter than you think.
Talk to a Chicago Slip and Fall Attorney Before the Proof Is Gone
Much of the evidence that wins a premises case disappears quickly, and much of what survives sits with the business you would be suing. The attorneys at Stein & Shulman, LLC bring over 60 years of combined experience representing injured people across Chicago and the surrounding suburbs, and every case is handled directly by an attorney rather than passed off to staff. We can send preservation requests, pursue video and cleaning records, and locate witnesses while there is still something to find.
Contact Stein & Shulman, LLC for a free consultation. We are available 24/7, and there is no fee unless we win.
