Slip-and-Fall Claims: Why Your Snow Contractor's Paperwork Is Your Best Defense

January 13, 2026 · JRW Services LLC

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.