Slip & Fall Lawyer in Connecticut

Under Conn. Gen. Stat. § 13a-149, if you are injured on a defective highway, road, bridge, or sidewalk maintained by a Connecticut municipality, you must provide written notice of the injury to the proper municipal officer within 90 days of the accident. This is not a procedural preference — Connecticut courts treat it as a jurisdictional prerequisite that cannot be waived or excused. The notice must identify the date, time, and location of the fall and the nature of the injury. If the correct officer is not served, or if notice is provided even one day after the 90-day window, the court lacks subject-matter jurisdiction to hear the claim and it is permanently dismissed. There is no discovery rule, no tolling for incapacity, and no equitable exceptions. If you fell on any public sidewalk, road, or municipal property in Connecticut, contact an attorney the same day to determine whether § 13a-149 applies and to begin preparing the notice immediately.

Connecticut applies a modified comparative fault system under Conn. Gen. Stat. § 52-572h(b): if you are found to be more than 50% responsible for your own injury, you recover nothing. If you are 50% or less at fault, you recover your proven damages reduced by your fault percentage. In practice, this means defense attorneys in Connecticut aggressively argue comparative fault through evidence of your footwear, your distraction, your awareness of posted warnings, your familiarity with the property, and your physical condition at the time of the fall. If a jury finds you 60% at fault — you ignored a wet floor sign and were looking at your phone — your claim is dismissed with no recovery. If the jury finds you 40% at fault on a $100,000 damages case, you recover $60,000. The fault allocation is often the central battleground in Connecticut premises cases, making early evidence collection of the hazardous condition's visibility, warning adequacy, and the property owner's failure to inspect critically important.

Partially. Connecticut has modified the traditional common law framework through Conn. Gen. Stat. § 52-557a, which provides that property owners owe the same duty of reasonable care to social invitees — guests at a home or social event — as to business invitees. This eliminates the classic argument that a social guest is only a licensee owed a warn-of-known-hazards duty. For commercial premises, the traditional invitee duty of reasonable inspection and remediation continues to apply to customers, clients, and business guests. The licensee category — someone entering with permission but not as a social or business guest — retains the warn-of-known-hazards duty in contexts not covered by § 52-557a. Trespassers are owed minimal duty, primarily to avoid willful injury, with child-trespasser protections. The § 52-557a modification most significantly affects homeowner liability for injuries to social guests and expands the scope of the "reasonable care" duty beyond commercial settings.

Connecticut's statute of limitations for premises liability claims is two years from the date of the injury under Conn. Gen. Stat. § 52-584. However, the same statute includes a three-year statute of repose: even if the two-year discovery clock has not run, the claim cannot be filed more than three years from the act or omission that caused the injury. In most slip-and-fall cases, the incident is immediately known and the SOL and repose run together — you have two years from the fall date. The more critical and shorter deadline in Connecticut premises cases is the 90-day municipal highway notice under § 13a-149, which applies whenever a public way is involved. If the fall was on private commercial property, the two-year SOL governs and the 90-day notice requirement does not apply. Identifying which deadline applies — public way vs. private premises — is a threshold determination that must be made immediately after the injury.

For a business invitee claim on Connecticut private commercial property, you must establish: (1) you were lawfully on the property as an invitee; (2) the property owner knew or should have known of the dangerous condition — either actual notice (a staff member knew about the spill) or constructive notice (the condition existed long enough that reasonable inspection would have discovered it); (3) the owner failed to exercise reasonable care to remedy or warn of the condition; (4) the condition caused your injury; and (5) your comparative fault was 50% or less under § 52-572h(b). Constructive notice requires temporal evidence — a condition that existed for a very short time may not establish constructive notice, while a condition that persisted for hours likely does. Surveillance footage, maintenance logs, and prior incident reports are the primary evidence for the notice element. Connecticut courts evaluate reasonableness of inspection against the type of property, the foreseeability of the hazard, and the practical measures available to the owner.