How to document snow removal to protect against slip and fall lawsuits
Property managers must manually log every instance of shoveling, salting, and brining to protect against liability when tenants try to sue over ice and snow injuries. Having these precise written records and pavement photos proves crucial during legal depositions and can lead to dropped lawsuits, even though tracking every single snowfall feels tedious.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Following management directives to maintain manual paper trails and logs
- 2Using snow logs and photos of salted pavement to defend against slip-and-fall claims
In their words
Unedited, most upvoted first, each linked to the thread it came from.
“2 weeks ago we had meeting and the President of the firm wants us to track each time the snow falls so we keep track of when we shovel.”source ↗
“Is this an overkill?”source ↗
“I've had to answer questions under oath in a lawsuit deposition on a slip and fall. I had written records and the lawsuit was dropped.”source ↗
“I had a resident slip downhill at 5am on ice and try to sue us. Snow logs showing we salted and brined 15 hours before the injury, and photos of blue salt on the pavement the day of the injury was extremely helpful in court.”source ↗
Where this came up
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