Snow and Ice Slip and Fall in Michigan: Premises Liability After Kandil-Elsayed

Snow and Ice Slip and Fall in Michigan: Premises Liability After Kandil-Elsayed

For three decades, Michigan winter slip-and-fall cases were among the hardest in personal injury law. A patch of ice in a parking lot was, by definition, "open and obvious." Snow on a sidewalk was a "natural accumulation." Property owners got dismissals at summary judgment. Victims got medical bills.

That world ended on July 28, 2023, when the Michigan Supreme Court decided Kandil-Elsayed v. F&E Oil, Inc., 504 Mich. 132 (2023), and dismantled the "open and obvious" doctrine as a complete bar to liability. The visibility of a hazard is now one factor in comparative fault analysis — not a defense that ends the case before a jury hears it. The shift is the most consequential change in Michigan premises liability in a generation, and nowhere does it matter more than in winter snow-and-ice claims.

This article walks through how Michigan now evaluates snow-and-ice premises liability claims, who is liable for what, the deadlines that catch families off guard, and what every Michigander should do in the first 48 hours after a fall on someone else's property.

What Michigan Law Required Before — and What It Requires Now

Before Kandil-Elsayed, Michigan applied the doctrine articulated in Lugo v. Ameritech Corp., 464 Mich. 512 (2001): if a hazard was visible to a reasonable person, the property owner generally owed no duty. Snow and ice almost always qualified as "open and obvious." Liability survived only when the hazard was "effectively unavoidable" (the only path of egress was the icy one) or had "special aspects" that made it unreasonably dangerous despite visibility (a deep, water-filled pothole; black ice on the only entrance ramp).

After Kandil-Elsayed, the analysis shifted. A Michigan property owner's duty to maintain reasonably safe premises does not vanish because a hazard is visible. Whether the plaintiff should have noticed the hazard is now part of comparative fault — a question for the jury, not a basis for dismissal. The plaintiff's award is reduced by their percentage of fault under MCL § 600.2959 (and barred entirely if the plaintiff is more than 50 percent at fault for non-economic damages). But the threshold barrier of "open and obvious" no longer exists.

For winter cases, this is a paradigm shift. A fall on visible ice in a Meijer parking lot is no longer dismissible at the pleadings stage. The case proceeds to discovery, expert review, and — if necessary — trial.

Who Is Liable for Ice on a Michigan Property

The duty to maintain reasonably safe premises in Michigan turns on the relationship between the visitor and the property owner.

• Invitees — customers, tenants, business visitors, anyone on the property for the owner's commercial benefit — are owed the highest duty. The owner must inspect the premises for hazards, address what reasonable inspection reveals, and warn of risks.
• Licensees — social guests — must be warned of known hidden dangers but are not owed an inspection duty.
• Trespassers are owed only protection from willful or wanton harm.

Beyond that baseline, two additional sources of duty matter in winter cases:

1. The Michigan landlord-tenant statute, MCL § 554.139. Landlords have a statutory duty to maintain leased premises and common areas "fit for the use intended." Common areas include shared walkways, parking lots, building entrances, and exterior stairs. Snow and ice that block access to a tenant's apartment, the laundry room, or the parking lot can render the common area not fit for use — a statutory breach independent of the common-law negligence theory.
2. Commercial property owner duty. Stores, restaurants, hotels, medical offices, and other commercial properties have a duty to take reasonable steps to address ice on walkways within a reasonable time after notice. Reasonableness depends on the timing relative to the storm. Active accumulation during a storm is generally not actionable; ice that persisted on a walkway 12 hours after the snow stopped, with no salt, no shoveling, and no signage, is.

The 120-Day Trap: Falls on Government Property

One of the deadliest deadlines in Michigan personal injury law applies specifically to falls on government-owned property. Under MCL § 691.1404, you must serve written notice on the responsible governmental entity within 120 days of the incident. Miss the 120-day window and the claim is barred — even if the broader three-year statute of limitations (MCL § 600.5805) hasn't run.

For winter falls, this matters constantly. A fall on a sidewalk in Detroit. A fall on the ice-covered ramp of a county courthouse. A fall in a school district parking lot during a parent-teacher conference. A fall outside an MDOT-maintained rest stop on I-94. Each is a government-property claim with a 120-day notice deadline.

Worse, governmental immunity layers another set of requirements on top. The highway exception (MCL § 691.1402) requires the defect to be in the "improved portion" of the highway, and additional rules apply to sidewalks abutting public roads. The public building exception (MCL § 691.1406) covers conditions on or in government buildings. Each exception has its own technical requirements.

Practically: if you fell on government-owned property, contact a Michigan personal injury attorney within weeks, not months. The 120-day notice has to be served by counsel who knows the entity, the jurisdiction, and the substantive facts. Generic late-arriving notices get challenged.

What Counts as a Reasonable Time to Address Ice

Property owners are not required to be perfect. They are required to be reasonable. The legal question in most winter cases is whether the time elapsed between the storm ending and the fall was long enough that a reasonably diligent owner would have addressed the hazard. Michigan case law and jury practice have produced rough guidance:

• Active storm: Falls during ongoing snowfall or freezing rain are difficult to litigate. Property owners are not expected to clear faster than precipitation accumulates.
• Hours after the storm: The reasonableness clock starts. Commercial properties with on-site staff face higher expectations than vacant lots. A McDonald's parking lot with ice four hours after the snow stopped is a different case than a remote farm road.
• Twelve to twenty-four hours after the storm: Most commercial properties should have addressed accumulation. Ice still present at this point, with no evidence of salt or shoveling, is strong evidence of negligence.
• Days after the storm: A property owner who did not address ice in the days following an event is at maximum exposure. Persistent ice almost always reflects either neglect or a defective property design (gutter discharge onto walkways, blocked drainage) that funnels meltwater into a re-freezing zone.

The special aspects framework still matters under the new comparative-fault paradigm. Ice that re-freezes from defective drainage. Black ice on an unlit ramp. The only path of access blocked by ice. These factual patterns increase the percentage of fault attributable to the property owner and reduce the comparative-fault offset to the plaintiff's recovery.

Damages: What Winter Slip-and-Fall Cases Are Worth

The injury list in winter falls is brutal. Hip fractures — particularly in adults over 65, where the one-year mortality rate after a hip fracture is roughly 20 to 30 percent. Wrist and forearm fractures from instinctive bracing. Traumatic brain injuries from striking pavement. Lumbar and cervical spine injuries. Tibial plateau fractures and ACL/MCL injuries from the rotational mechanics of a fall.

The damages categories that drive value in serious cases:

• Past and future medical expenses — surgery, hardware, revision surgeries, physical therapy, assistive devices, home health services. These often run to six figures over a lifetime for serious orthopedic injuries.
• Lost wages and lost earning capacity — missed work plus, for permanent injuries, the lifetime difference between pre-injury and post-injury earnings. A 50-year-old electrician with a permanent shoulder restriction has a substantial lost-earning-capacity claim.
• Pain and suffering — not capped in non-medical-malpractice premises liability cases.
• Loss of consortium — a spouse may recover for the loss of companionship and services caused by the injury.
• Disfigurement and loss of bodily function — permanent scarring, gait abnormality, range-of-motion restrictions.

Koussan Law's $6,000,000 slip-and-fall settlement — one of the largest recorded in Michigan history — illustrates what is possible in serious premises cases when the legal and medical evidence is built well. Most cases do not resolve at that level. But cases with serious permanent injuries, clear duty breach, and well-documented damages routinely produce six- and seven-figure recoveries when the firm invests in the work.

Five Things to Do in the First 48 Hours After a Winter Fall

1. Photograph the hazard before it melts. Use your phone before you leave the property. Wide shots showing surrounding context, close shots showing the ice itself, photos of the absence of salt and signage. These photographs disappear within hours when staff respond. The photos you take in the first ten minutes are the single most valuable evidence in a winter case.
2. Get medical care the same day. Even if you feel "okay." Adrenaline masks pain. A documented ER or urgent care visit on the day of the fall is foundational. A two-week delay between the fall and the first medical visit is one of the most common reasons claims fail.
3. Get an incident report and the names of witnesses. Most commercial properties require staff to document falls. Ask for a copy of the report. Get names and contact info of any witnesses. If the property refuses to provide a report, document the refusal in writing.
4. Preserve the weather data. Pull the National Weather Service hourly observations from the nearest station for the 24 hours before and after your fall. This data establishes when the storm ended, the temperature trajectory, and whether the property had reasonable time to address the conditions. We pull this in every winter case; it is free and authoritative.
5. If the property is government-owned, contact counsel within weeks. The 120-day notice deadline runs whether you know about it or not. A government-property claim filed at month four is a barred claim, no matter how strong the underlying facts.

How Koussan Law Handles Michigan Snow-and-Ice Cases

We accept Michigan winter slip-and-fall claims on contingency. You pay nothing unless we recover. We front the cost of investigation, expert witnesses, weather-data analysis, building-condition inspection, medical records, and litigation. Our experience in this practice area includes the $6 million slip-and-fall settlement referenced above and a $1,850,000 traumatic brain injury settlement arising from a stairwell fall in a Detroit apartment building. The discipline that produces those numbers is the same discipline we apply to a parking-lot ice fall when the carrier has already taken the position the case is open-and-obvious and worth nothing.

If you have been hurt in a snow or ice fall on someone else's property anywhere in Michigan, contact us for a free consultation. Request a consultation, use our free case calculator, or call (313) 800-0000. We will review the facts and tell you, honestly, whether we think the case has merit — at no cost.

Related Practice Areas

• Snow & Ice Slip and Fall
• Slip and Fall
• Staircase & Stairwell Falls
• Sidewalk Trip and Fall
• Premises Liability

Past results do not guarantee future outcomes. Every premises liability case is fact-specific. The terms of the $6 million settlement discussed in this article are confidential. This article is for general informational purposes only and is not legal advice. Reading this article does not create an attorney-client relationship with Koussan Law.