A stores obligation to inspect floors for spills.

Yes. They are absolutely. To start with, every property owner is responsible to inspect and maintain their property in a reasonable and safe condition. And of course, what’s reasonable and safe depends on the circumstances. If you’re talking about a grocery store, there’s a very heightened duty because it’s well known that for one reason or another, slippery things end up on the floor. You don’t have carpets there. You have tiles where if you drop some water or drop some produce, it’s going to naturally create a slip-and-fall hazard. So, they have a duty to inspect very regularly, every few minutes or so, and to make sure that they’re keeping very well-maintained logs, written logs of who and when the inspection occurred, who did it, when was it done, how frequently, what did they notice? They have to do that. And then now most of these stores also have video cameras, surveillance cameras, so you can often tell how long has a substance been on the floor and when was an inspection conducted. But they absolutely have a very high duty to regularly and frequently inspect, and that’s especially true in the areas where you’re more likely to find a slip-and-fall hazard.

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