Texas slip and fall laws fall under premises liability, which holds a property owner responsible when a dangerous condition on their property injures you. To win, you generally have to prove the owner knew or should have known about the hazard, you have to file suit within two years of the fall, and if a jury finds you more than 50 percent at fault, you recover nothing. The details below shape every claim.
The Two-Year Deadline
You have exactly two years from the date of the injury to file a lawsuit. Section 16.003 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code sets this deadline for all personal injury claims, including slip and fall cases.1State of Texas. Texas Code Civil Practice and Remedies 16.003 – Two-Year Limitations Period Miss the deadline and the court will almost certainly dismiss your case, no matter how strong the evidence is. The clock starts the day the injury occurs, not the day you learn how serious it is.
If the fall happened on government property, a separate six-month notice requirement applies before you can file suit. More on that below.
What Duty the Owner Owed You
Texas common law sorts visitors into three categories, and the category you fall into controls how much the owner owed you.
Invitees
You are an invitee when you enter for the mutual benefit of yourself and the owner, like shopping at a grocery store or eating at a restaurant. The owner must actively inspect for hidden dangers and either fix the hazard or warn you about it. Most commercial slip and fall cases run on this standard, and it is the most favorable to injured visitors because the owner has to look for problems, not just react to ones already known.
Licensees
Licensees enter with permission but mainly for their own purposes. Social guests and door-to-door solicitors typically fall here. The owner only has to warn you about known dangerous conditions you are unlikely to discover yourself. There is no duty to inspect the property for hazards before you arrive, which makes it harder to prove a claim because you have to show the owner actually knew.
Trespassers
Trespassers enter without any legal right or the owner’s consent. The owner’s only duty is to avoid injuring you through willful or grossly negligent conduct. Failing to clean a spill is not enough; setting a trap for intruders is.
Children are the exception. Under the attractive nuisance doctrine, an owner can be liable for a dangerous condition like an unfenced pool if the owner knew children frequently played in the area, the hazard posed a serious risk of death or bodily harm, and the child was too young to appreciate the danger.
Proving the Owner Had Notice of the Hazard
Qualifying as an invitee is not enough on its own. You still have to show the owner knew about the hazard or should have known. This notice requirement is where most Texas slip and fall claims succeed or fail. The fact that you slipped does not, by itself, prove negligence.
Actual Knowledge
Actual knowledge exists when the owner or an employee personally saw the hazard, was told about it, or created it. Security footage of an employee walking past a puddle without cleaning it, or a maintenance log noting a reported leak, can establish this. In Keetch v. Kroger Co., the Texas Supreme Court held that even when the owner’s operations create the hazardous condition, a jury must still find the owner knew or should have known. Creating the hazard is circumstantial evidence of knowledge, not automatic proof.
Constructive Knowledge
Constructive knowledge applies when the owner did not personally know about the hazard but should have discovered it through reasonable care. Texas courts rely on a time-notice approach: how long did the condition exist before your fall? If it sat long enough that a reasonable owner would have found it during normal inspections, constructive knowledge is established.
In Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Reece, the Texas Supreme Court held that a plaintiff must offer some temporal evidence showing the hazard existed long enough to give the owner a reasonable opportunity to discover it. An employee standing near the hazard proves only that discovery was possible, not that it should have happened. Evidence that a spill was dirty, dried, or had footprints through it helps show it had been there a while. Without some evidence of duration, the claim will likely fail.
How Shared Fault Affects Your Recovery
Texas uses a modified comparative fault system called proportionate responsibility. If you share some blame, say you were texting while walking through a marked wet area, the jury assigns a percentage of fault to you and to each defendant.
The critical threshold is 50 percent. If the jury finds you more than 50 percent responsible for your own injury, you recover nothing.2State of Texas. Texas Code Civil Practice and Remedies 33.001 – Proportionate Responsibility If your share is 50 percent or less, your damages are reduced by your percentage. A $100,000 award with 30 percent fault assigned to you becomes $70,000.
The jury assigns fault in whole numbers, and that includes you, the defendant, any settling parties, and any designated third parties.3State of Texas. Texas Code Civil Practice and Remedies 33.003 – Determination of Percentage of Responsibility Each liable defendant pays only the percentage matching their assigned fault.4State of Texas. Texas Code Civil Practice and Remedies 33.013 – Amount of Recovery Property owners routinely argue shared fault in these cases, so expect it to be contested even when the hazard looks obvious.
What You Can Recover
Texas sorts compensable losses into economic damages and non-economic damages, with exemplary damages reserved for extreme cases.
Economic Damages
Economic damages cover financial losses you can document with receipts, bills, and pay records. Past and future medical expenses such as hospital stays, surgery, physical therapy, and prescriptions fit here, along with lost wages and any long-term reduction in earning capacity if the injury limits your ability to work going forward.5State of Texas. Texas Code Civil Practice and Remedies 41.001 – Definitions Texas does not cap economic damages in ordinary personal injury cases.
Non-Economic Damages
Non-economic damages compensate for losses with no price tag: physical pain, emotional distress, loss of enjoyment of daily activities, and strain on family relationships. These are subjective, and juries have wide discretion in setting the amount. Texas does not cap non-economic damages in a standard premises liability case. Medical malpractice claims are a different story, but a slip and fall has no legislated ceiling on pain and suffering.
Exemplary Damages
Exemplary damages are rare in slip and fall cases because they require proof of fraud, malice, or gross negligence. When they do apply, Texas caps them at the greater of $200,000 or two times your economic damages plus up to $750,000 in non-economic damages.6State of Texas. Texas Code Civil Practice and Remedies 41.008 – Limitation on Amount of Recovery In practice, they arise only when an owner knew about a serious hazard and deliberately ignored it over an extended period.
Falls on Government Property
If you fell on property owned by a city, county, school district, or state agency, different rules apply under the Texas Tort Claims Act. Two differences matter most.
First, the duty of care is lower. For an ordinary premises defect, a government entity owes you only the duty it would owe a licensee, even if you would qualify as an invitee on private property.7State of Texas. Texas Code Civil Practice and Remedies 101.022 – Duty Owed: Premise and Special Defects You have to prove the entity actually knew about the hazard, not just that it should have known. The exception is when you paid for access to the premises, which triggers the full invitee standard.
Second, you have to give written notice within six months of the incident, describing the injury, the time and place, and the nature of what happened.8State of Texas. Texas Code Civil Practice and Remedies 101.101 – Notice Missing that notice can bar the claim even if you still file suit within two years. Some home rule cities impose even shorter notice periods through their charters. The only exception is when the government entity already has actual notice of your injury.
Evidence to Preserve Right Away
Slip and fall evidence disappears fast. Surveillance footage gets overwritten, witnesses forget details, and the hazard itself gets cleaned up. The first 24 to 48 hours after a fall are when the most critical evidence is either preserved or lost.
Photographs of the hazard at the time of the fall are the single most valuable thing you can gather. They freeze the condition in place and show details like the size of a spill, whether warning signs were posted, and the lighting. Pair those with medical records from your initial treatment and any incident report the property manager or store created. If the property has surveillance cameras, send a written request to preserve the footage as soon as possible.
Witness statements from anyone who saw the fall or noticed the hazard before you fell help establish how long the condition existed. Maintenance and inspection logs can reveal whether the owner followed a reasonable cleaning schedule or skipped routine checks. These materials carry the time-notice argument that constructive knowledge requires.
If the Case Doesn’t Settle
Most slip and fall cases resolve before trial. The property owner’s insurance carrier usually handles the claim, and negotiations often start with a demand letter itemizing medical bills, lost income, and other losses. The strength of your evidence directly controls your leverage: footage, contemporaneous photographs, and a clear medical trail draw a different response from an adjuster than a claim with gaps.
If no settlement comes together, suit is filed by submitting an Original Petition through the Texas e-filing system, which is mandatory for civil cases in district and county courts.9eFileTexas.Gov. Official E-Filing System for Texas The petition identifies the defendant, describes the facts, and lays out the legal basis for the claim. Texas courts frequently require mediation before setting a trial date, and a written settlement reached there is binding. If mediation does not resolve the case, it proceeds through discovery and toward trial.