Yes, You Can Sue. But Michigan Makes It Harder Than Most States.
You slipped on ice in a parking lot. You fell on a wet floor at Meijer. You tripped on a broken sidewalk outside a restaurant in Royal Oak. Your back is killing you, you missed two weeks of work, and your medical bills are stacking up. So you Google "can I sue for a slip and fall in Michigan" and you get a hundred different answers.
Here's the real one: yes, you can sue. Michigan law allows premises liability claims against property owners who fail to maintain their property in a reasonably safe condition. But winning that lawsuit is significantly harder in Michigan than in most other states, and the reason comes down to four words: open and obvious.
The Open and Obvious Doctrine
Michigan's biggest obstacle in slip and fall cases is the "open and obvious" defense. The idea is simple: if the hazard was so apparent that a reasonable person would have noticed it and avoided it, the property owner had no duty to protect you from it. Ice in a parking lot in January? A property owner will argue that's open and obvious — everyone in Michigan knows parking lots are icy in winter.
For decades, this defense killed legitimate claims. Courts threw out cases where the hazard was visible, even if the property owner had done absolutely nothing to address it. A landlord could let ice build up for weeks and escape liability because — technically — the ice was visible.
The Courts Pushed Back
Recent Michigan Supreme Court decisions changed the landscape. The court recognized that visibility alone shouldn't let property owners off the hook when the hazard is effectively unavoidable. If every customer has to walk through the same icy parking lot to reach the store entrance, the ice isn't really "avoidable" in any meaningful sense — you either walk through it or you don't go in. The court also looked at whether special aspects of the hazard made it unreasonably dangerous despite being visible.
This was a significant shift. It didn't eliminate the open and obvious defense, but it created real exceptions that allow more cases to reach a jury.
What You Actually Have to Prove
Under Michigan premises liability law (see MCL § 600.2949a), a successful slip and fall claim requires proving the property owner owed you a duty of care (this depends on your status — invitees like store customers are owed the highest duty), the property owner knew or should have known about the dangerous condition, the property owner had a reasonable opportunity to fix it and didn't, and the condition caused your injuries.
That second element — knowledge — is often the hardest to prove. If a grape fell on the grocery store floor 30 seconds before you stepped on it, the store arguably didn't have time to discover and clean it. If it had been there for an hour with brown shoe marks tracked through it, the store clearly should have known. Surveillance footage is your best friend in these cases, which is why acting fast matters — most stores overwrite their security footage within 14 to 30 days.
Michigan's Statute of Limitations
You have three years from the date of injury to file a premises liability lawsuit under MCL § 600.5805. But the practical deadline is much shorter. Evidence disappears. Witnesses forget. And if you wait too long to get medical treatment, the defense will argue your injuries weren't that serious.
Koussan Law's Track Record in Slip and Fall Cases
Koussan Law secured a $6,000,000 settlement in a Michigan slip and fall case — one of the largest premises liability results in the state. We know how to overcome the open and obvious defense, how to preserve critical evidence, and how to build a case that survives summary disposition and gets to a jury.
If you were injured on someone else's property, call us at (313) 800-0000 or use our case calculator to get a preliminary estimate of your claim.
