The rising cost of slip and fall claims for US businesses

The rising cost of slip and fall claims for U.S. businesses

Slips and falls are a regular occurrence for customer-facing businesses. A customer might slip on a wet floor in a restaurant, or someone could fall at a trampoline park. Visitors can also trip and fall in retail stores, hotels or gyms. The fall might only last a few seconds, but the claim following it can arrive weeks, months or in some cases, years later, often resulting in significant costs for the business.

Slip-and-fall claims have long been a risk for customer-facing businesses. Liability data shows that general liability claims are becoming more expensive to resolve, while restaurant sector data indicates that slips, trips, and falls account for a large share of losses.

For businesses, this creates a growing risk management challenge. It's no longer a matter of whether an incident happened, but whether the business has the evidence, records, and processes in place to understand what happened when a claim is made.

Below, Videoloft explains what businesses need to know about managing these risks and rising costs.

General liability claims are becoming more expensive

Slip-and-fall incidents are usually covered by a business's commercial general liability or premises liability insurance. This is the part of business insurance that responds when a customer claims bodily injury arising from a business's premises or operations.

In recent years, data has shown that claim severity is increasing. Verisk's 2025 general liability analysis reports that annual severity increased by 45%, from $70,000 in 2020 to $101,000 in 2024. The analysis also found that the average premium change per policy increased by 8.5% in 2024, after a 7% increase in 2023. Bodily injury claims primarily drove these losses due to their high severity.

That's important for customer-facing businesses because slip-and-fall incidents are classed as bodily injury events and higher claim severity can affect businesses through legal costs and increased premiums.

Restaurants are seeing more pressure from slips, trips and falls

This is even more relevant for restaurants where wet floors, busy entrances, spills and high foot traffic can all increase risk.

Marsh's 2024 Restaurant Loss Cost Trends report found that the portion of losses from claims involving slips, trips, and falls is increasing. Marsh also reported that these claims are significantly more severe than other claim types.

That makes slips, trips, and falls more than an inconvenience. They can affect loss history, insurance premiums, internal safety procedures, and the amount of time managers spend dealing with claims.

Insurance Journal, citing NEXT Insurance data from 2021 to 2024, also identified slip and fall among the most expensive restaurant claim categories, alongside fire, assault and battery, and water damage.

For restaurants, bars, cafes, hotels, gyms, and trampoline parks, the problem is even more acute. These are environments where customers move through shared public spaces, often around food, drink, equipment or high-activity areas. Even with good safety procedures in place, incidents can still happen. When they do, the business needs to be able to quickly piece together the facts.

Claims can arrive long after the incident

Timing is one of the biggest challenges businesses face when handling slip-and-fall claims.

The deadline for filing a premises liability lawsuit typically varies by state. LawInfo's state-by-state premises liability guide says limitation periods usually range from one to six years, depending on the state and circumstances. That means a business may hear about an alleged slip-and-fall incident long after it happened. By then, staff might have changed, witnesses might be hard to identify, and CCTV footage may have been overwritten.

This timing issue, therefore, creates an evidence gap. A business might have had all the information needed to verify the incident when it happened, but not kept it long enough to be used when the claim arrives. When evidence is missing, businesses and insurers have to rely on incomplete information, making it harder to determine whether a hazard existed, whether staff knew about it and whether reasonable steps were taken to prevent it.

In a restaurant slip and fall claim, relevant evidence might include things like cleaning logs, staff statements, CCTV footage, floor condition and previous complaints or incidents. No single piece of evidence proves everything, but together these records help insurers assess liability and they can also help distinguish genuine claims from fraudulent ones.

This is where video footage can be useful. Nationwide's guidance for food-service facilities says security cameras can help verify the legitimacy of claims, protect against fraudulent lawsuits, and ensure genuine incidents are addressed. However, if video is being recorded, it needs to be retained long enough to support an investigation.

Long-term storage might support better insurance outcomes

Insurance pricing depends on many factors. The Hartford says insurers look at many different factors when pricing insurance premiums for businesses, including industry, business size, number of employees, location, and claims history. It also notes that implementing risk management practices can help businesses reduce insurance costs.

This is where longer-term CCTV storage might help. If businesses have CCTV footage readily available, they may be able to investigate incidents quickly, provide clearer evidence to insurers, and challenge questionable claims more effectively, which could then reduce losses over time. A stronger claims history and managing risk better could then support a better position at renewal.

Do insurers require longer CCTV retention?

There is not a single standard rule requiring all businesses to retain CCTV footage for a specific period of time for general liability purposes. Requirements vary by insurer, policy, industry, and risk profile.

However, insurers do treat cameras and evidence capture as part of risk management. Nationwide's guidance for both food-service and retail businesses explicitly connects security cameras with claim verification and protection against fraudulent lawsuits.

For higher-risk public venues - such as restaurants, bars, trampoline parks, gyms, leisure facilities, hotels, and large retail sites - it's worth asking the insurer whether the policy includes expectations around camera coverage, retention periods, incident reporting, or evidence preservation.

Businesses should also document their own retention policy. A camera system is less useful if managers do not know how long footage is stored, who can access it, how footage is exported, or what process applies after an incident.

What business should do now

The rising cost of customer injury claims does not mean every business needs to overhaul their entire security processes. But it does mean they should review whether their current processes are fit for the claims environment in which they operate.

As liability claims become more expensive and restaurant-sector data shows slips, trips, and falls taking a larger share of losses, businesses need to think beyond prevention alone. They also need to think about proof.

When a claim arrives months after an incident, the business that can produce clear records, preserved CCTV footage, inspection logs, and a consistent response process is in a stronger position than one relying on memory and incomplete paperwork.

This story was produced by Videoloft and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.

Copyright 2026 Stacker Media, LLC

This story was originally published May 29, 2026 at 6:00 AM.