Premises Liability (Slip and Fall) in Michigan

Hi. My name is Andrew Miller. I’m a personal injury attorney with Thomas, Garvey & McKenna located in St. Clair Shores, Michigan. I want to take a minute to discuss with you today premises liability in Michigan.

Premises liability cases involve injuries that occur on somebody else’s land. The traditional example would be a slip and fall. In Michigan, like many other states, landowners have a duty to inspect their land and warn and protect you against dangers that are on the land.

However, in Michigan, there’s a very powerful judicial doctrine, known as open and obvious. Open and obvious basically means that a landowner doesn’t have a duty to inspect his land and protect you against dangers that an average person of ordinary intelligence would discover on their own.

This sounds simple, but it really isn’t. For example, in one case a blind man slipped and fell on a pool of standing water in a bathroom. Now, his premises liability claim was rejected because the court said that an average person of ordinary intelligence, that is someone who could see, would have discovered that pool of water.Â So the court literally gave a blind man sight, and rejected his premises liability claim.