These types of cases are considered general negligence cases. Generally, a premises owner owes a duty to people on the property to exercise reasonable care to protect the people from an unreasonable risk of harm caused by a dangerous condition on the land. The appellate courts of the State of Michigan have made such cases much more difficult than in the past. One of the doctrines making these cases more difficult than before is known as the open and obvious doctrine. This means that if the dangerous condition would have been open and obvious to an average person with ordinary intelligence upon casual inspection, the case will be dismissed. There are times that even when a condition is open and obvious, the case will be allowed to proceed. For example, if there are special aspects that make the condition unreasonably dangerous, the case may be allowed to proceed. Such special aspects have traditionally been things like a platform that is high in the air so that if someone falls from that platform, they will very likely sustain serious injury or death.

Another aspect of slip and fall claims is a requirement that the defendant have notice of the defective condition to allow the defendant to fix the problem. This is called the notice requirement. For example, if a person in a supermarket falls on a soft drink spilled by the person directly in front of the customer, it is likely that the supermarket did not have time to wipe up the liquid. On the other hand, if another customer broke a bottle and the liquid stayed on the floor for ten minutes and other customers were not notified, then it is likely that the issue of notice to the market would not be a problem.

Problems have occurred in Michigan law with regard to conditions caused by “black ice”. These are icy conditions that generally cannot be seen and are very dangerous. Some cases have succeeded when such conditions caused people to fall and seriously injure themselves while other cases have been dismissed. The law is in flux regarding this issue.