Michigan Premises Liability Representation 

Recent Developments and Key Legal Issues

The Open-and-Obvious Doctrine: Overturned in 2023

For over two decades, Michigan followed the rule from Lugo v. Ameritech Corp., 464 Mich. 512 (2001): a property owner generally owed no duty to protect visitors from dangers that were open and obvious, unless the condition had “special aspects” that made it unreasonably dangerous anyway — and a judge decided that question before a case ever reached a jury. The Michigan Supreme Court overturned that framework in Kandil-Elsayed v. F & E Oil, Inc., 512 Mich. 95 (2023), holding that an open and obvious hazard no longer eliminates the property owner’s duty of care. Instead, how obvious the danger was is now weighed as part of comparative fault under MCL 600.2959 — a question for the jury, not a threshold bar decided by the court. In practice, this means many premises liability claims that would have been dismissed before 2023 can now proceed to a jury, which will weigh the visitor’s own awareness of the hazard against the property owner’s failure to address it.

Proving the Property Owner Knew About the Hazard

Whatever duty applies, a claim still requires showing the property owner had actual or constructive notice of the dangerous condition before the injury. Michigan courts have made clear that a property owner is not an automatic insurer of visitor safety, and doesn’t have to prove it conducted a routine inspection — the burden is on the injured person to show the hazard existed long enough, or was obvious enough, that the owner should have discovered and fixed it (Lowrey v. LMPS & LMPJ, Inc., 500 Mich. 1 (2016)).

Common Premises Liability Claims

Ice and snow accumulation remains one of the most litigated hazards in Michigan (Mann v. Shusteric Enterprises, Inc., 470 Mich. 320 (2004)), and post-Kandil-Elsayed, an icy walkway is no longer an automatic bar to recovery — the Court of Appeals found a jury question in Nathan v. David Leader Management, Inc., 342 Mich. App. 507 (2022), where snow and ice outside an apartment building may have been effectively unavoidable. Defective or missing stairs and handrails are another frequent basis for these claims, whether from a failure to maintain a safe walking surface (Lowrey, above) or a failure to install a required handrail (Mills v. A.B. Dick Co., 26 Mich. App. 164 (1970)). Inadequate lighting and negligent security claims are analyzed under the same premises-liability framework rather than as ordinary negligence (Finazzo v. Fire Equipment Co., 323 Mich. App. 620 (2018)).

Deadlines and Claims Against Government-Owned Property

Michigan gives injured people three years from the date of injury to file a premises liability lawsuit under MCL 600.5805(2). Claims against government-owned property — a public sidewalk, a municipal building — work differently: MCL 691.1406 waives governmental immunity only where the agency had actual or constructive notice of the defect and failed to fix it within a reasonable time, and requires written notice to the government within 120 days of the injury describing exactly where and how it happened. Michigan courts treat that 120-day notice as a strict precondition to suit — a late or incomplete notice can be fatal to the claim regardless of its merits (Goodhue v. Department of Transportation, 319 Mich. App. 526 (2017)).