Slip & Fall Lawyer in Massachusetts

Massachusetts's three-year personal injury statute of limitations under G.L. c. 260, § 2A runs from the date of the injury for standard premises liability claims. But the most time-sensitive evidence in any Massachusetts slip-and-fall case is surveillance video — commercial properties, MBTA stations, grocery stores, and parking lots typically overwrite footage in 24 to 72 hours. Property maintenance logs, prior incident reports, and snow removal contractor invoices may be retained longer, but are subject to document destruction policies that cease to apply once a litigation hold is issued. An attorney retained in the first 24 to 48 hours after the injury issues a comprehensive preservation demand covering video, maintenance logs, incident reports, and inspection records — before the property's standard records management cycle destroys them.

Papadopoulos v. Target Corp., 457 Mass. 368 (2010) was a paradigm shift in Massachusetts winter premises liability. Before Papadopoulos, the "storm in progress" and "natural accumulation" doctrines provided broad immunity to property owners for slip-and-falls during and after winter weather. The SJC abolished the natural accumulation rule: Massachusetts property owners must now exercise reasonable care in managing snow and ice on their premises, using the same reasonable-care standard that applies to all other hazards. After Papadopoulos, a property owner who fails to salt a parking lot within a reasonable time after a winter storm, who allows a freeze-thaw ice sheet to develop on pedestrian steps, or who fails to post warning signs when ice is known to form in a shadowed area is potentially liable for the resulting fall. Documenting the property's snow removal and ice management practices — contractor records, service logs, satellite weather data — is the core evidence-building task in a Massachusetts winter slip-and-fall.

MBTA premises — subway stations, bus stops, commuter rail platforms — are subject to a partial sovereign immunity waiver under G.L. c. 161A. The MBTA owes reasonable care to passengers and station visitors, but Massachusetts's Tort Claims Act (G.L. c. 258) imposes a $100,000 per-claimant cap on government liability and requires written presentment to the attorney general or agency head within two years of the injury under G.L. c. 258, § 4. MBTA station claims — particularly at high-traffic Boston stations (Park Street, Downtown Crossing, Back Bay) and Cambridge stations (Harvard Square, Kendall/MIT) — require a two-track approach: preservation demands for MBTA surveillance and maintenance records, and timely government presentment to avoid cap analysis surprises at trial.

Massachusetts's modified comparative negligence under G.L. c. 231, § 85 applies a 51% bar: plaintiffs whose negligence is greater than the defendants' combined negligence recover nothing; at 50% or less, damages are reduced. In premises liability cases, defense counsel builds comparative fault narratives around plaintiff inattention (phone use, rush), inappropriate footwear for weather conditions, and knowledge of the general condition. The abolition of assumption-of-risk in Massachusetts (G.L. c. 231, § 85 explicitly abolishes it) means that a plaintiff who voluntarily entered a building with a wet floor sign cannot be defeated solely by the sign's presence — reasonable care analysis still applies. An attorney documents the specific hazard conditions the plaintiff encountered and establishes the absence of adequate warnings or remediation before the defense conducts its own inspection.