Slip-and-Fall Claims: Why Your Snow Contractor's Paperwork Is Your Best Defense
February 17, 2025 · JRW Services LLC
How service logs, weather records and treatment documentation protect NJ property owners when a winter slip-and-fall claim lands.
A slip-and-fall claim usually arrives months after the storm, when nobody remembers that Tuesday in January. What settles it, one way or the other, is paperwork.
What a claim looks like
New Jersey property owners owe a duty of reasonable care to keep walkways and lots safe. When a claim comes in, the questions are simple: what were the conditions, what did you do about them, and when. "We always salt" is not an answer. A log entry that says a crew applied calcium chloride to the main entrance walk at 5:42 a.m., two hours before the incident, is.
The records that matter
- Service logs for every visit: time in, time out, what was plowed, what was treated, with what material.
- Weather data tied to the event. Certified snowfall totals and temperature records establish what the storm actually did.
- Pre-season documentation: the site map, photos and the scope showing which areas were contracted for service.
- The contract itself, showing trigger depths and responsibilities, so it's clear what was supposed to happen.
What this means when you hire
Ask any snow contractor how they document their work, and ask to see a real (redacted) service report. If the answer is a shrug, every storm they service is a liability you're carrying without records. Our crews log every visit and every application, and clients get event reports they can drop straight into a claim file.
Nobody plans to be sued. The properties that come through claims cleanly are the ones that treated documentation as part of the service, not an extra. The pre-season checklist is where that record starts.
Common questions
Who is responsible for snow removal, the landlord or the tenant? Whatever the lease says, and that is worth reading before winter rather than after a fall. Commercial leases split this every possible way: some put the whole site on the landlord, some hand the tenant their own entrance and walkways, and plenty are ambiguous enough that both sides believed someone else had it. Municipal sidewalk ordinances sit on top of that and can impose their own duty regardless of the lease.
What documentation actually helps after a slip and fall? Times, not adjectives. When the crew arrived, what was treated, what material went down and where, and when they left. A claim usually turns on what the property did during a specific window on a specific date, and the site that can produce that window is in a very different position from the one describing its general practice.
How long should we keep storm records? Longer than you expect the claim to arrive, because these surface well after the season. Keep the full winter's service records rather than the last few storms, and keep them somewhere that is not one person's phone.
Looking for a contractor that is prepared for the worst?
That is the whole way we run. Fill out the form or call (973) 459-0074, and we will walk your property and build the plan before the first storm.