When you get hurt in a store, the first thing you probably think about is whether you’re okay. Once a manager hears about it, the store starts thinking about something else: its liability.
Most grocery chains, retailers, restaurants and apartments in Carrollton have a set process for customer injuries, and the insurance company usually writes it. Managers are trained to follow it, and it’s built to keep the claim as small as possible.
We see the same few tactics over and over. Here’s what they look like and what you can do to protect your evidence before it’s gone.
Step 1 in Their Playbook: The Incident Report and Statement Trap
What is a business incident report for a slip and fall?
An incident report is the business’s internal record of your fall, usually built on a template from its insurer or corporate risk team. It’s written to protect the business, and many won’t give you a copy.
The questions are rarely neutral. “Were you on your phone?” invites you to blame yourself. “Are you hurt?” catches you while adrenaline is masking pain. Questions about your shoes set up the blame game in Step 3. What the form almost never asks: how long the hazard was there and when the floor or area was last checked.
Then comes the adjuster’s call, usually within a few days. They’ll be friendly, ask how you’re feeling and offer to record “your side of things” so the claim can move along. That recording is for their file. A casual “I’m doing okay” or “I wasn’t really looking down” can later be used to argue your injuries are minor or that the fall was your fault.
You’re not required to give the business’s insurer a recorded statement. If you do talk to them, stick to basic facts like the date, time and location, and don’t guess about what caused the fall or how badly you’re hurt. See a doctor before that conversation so you know the full extent of your injuries. If you’ve hired a lawyer, you can simply tell the adjuster to contact your attorney instead.
Step 2 in Their Playbook: The 30-Day Video Overwrite
How long do businesses keep security footage after a fall?
No Texas law requires a business to keep routine footage for a set period. Many systems record over themselves on a rolling cycle, sometimes only a few days. A store may save a short clip of you falling and let everything else roll off. That clip shows you on the ground. It doesn’t show the spill sitting in the aisle for 45 minutes beforehand.
That missing footage matters. In Texas, you generally have to prove the business knew about the hazard (actual notice) or that it existed long enough that a careful business should have found it (constructive notice). Video from before your fall is often the only objective proof of that timeline.
Destroying evidence a party should have kept is called spoliation. But after the Texas Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in Brookshire Bros. v. Aldridge, a slip and fall case where the store kept only about eight minutes of video, courts generally reserve the harshest penalties for intentional destruction. The smarter move is preventing deletion with a spoliation letter, a formal demand to preserve footage and records. Sent on day 35, it likely will preserve nothing.
Step 3 in Their Playbook: Shifting the Blame
If the evidence can’t disappear, the business will try to make the fall your fault. Not entirely. Just enough.
Under Chapter 33 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, a jury assigns each party a percentage of responsibility, and your compensation drops by yours. Found 20% at fault on a $100,000 claim, you recover $80,000. Found more than 50% at fault, you recover nothing.
That’s why insurers lean on familiar arguments: your footwear, your phone, your full hands, a hazard that was “open and obvious,” a wet floor sign set out after the fact, or a prior back or neck injury. Each is an argument, not a fact. But unanswered arguments stick, and the playbook counts on you not having the footage or records to answer them.
How O’Hare and Koch Law Firm Counters Their Playbook
We move fast and go after the evidence the playbook is designed to bury.
- A spoliation letter first, demanding footage from any relevant camera for the hours around your fall, not just the moment of impact.
- The notice timeline: sweep logs, inspection checklists, maintenance records, staff schedules and prior complaints.
- Witnesses and the scene, documented before memories fade or employees move on.
- The blame arguments, tested against what the footage and records actually show, with your doctors connecting your injuries to the fall.
And once you’re represented, the adjuster deals with us, not you.
Hurt in a Carrollton Business? Protect Your Claim Now
Here are steps to take immediately to protect yourself:
- Report the fall to the business before you leave the property.
- Get medical care, even if you feel fine.
- Photograph and video the hazard and your injuries, and keep the shoes you wore.
- Write down names, times and what you saw.
- Decline a recorded statement to the business’s insurer.
- Call a Carrollton slip and fall lawyer within days, not weeks.
Texas generally gives you two years to file a premises liability lawsuit, and slip and falls on government property can carry additional notice deadlines of six months or less under some city charters. But the deadline that usually matters most is the camera system’s overwrite cycle.
How O’Hare and Koch Law Firm Can Help
If you were hurt in a fall at a Carrollton store, restaurant or other business, O’Hare and Koch Law Firm can investigate what happened and move quickly to preserve the evidence before it’s lost. With over 25 years of experience handling personal injury cases, O’Hare and Koch Law Firm represents injured people in Carrollton and across Dallas-Fort Worth. Consultations are free, and you pay no attorney fees unless we recover for you. Contact us today online or at 972-960-0000 to talk through your fall.
