Resource Hub · The Post-Incident Playbook
A fall just happened.
Here’s the first 72 hours.
What you document in the three days after a slip and fall substantially decides whether it stays a routine report or becomes a costly claim.
General information for business owners and facility managers, not legal advice. Consult a licensed attorney about any specific incident or claim.
In this guide
Why do the first 72 hours matter so much?
Evidence decays fast. Surfaces get cleaned and change, security video overwrites itself, witnesses scatter, and memories soften. The window to capture what the floor was actually like at the moment of the fall is measured in hours and days, not weeks. The party that preserves that evidence — and tests the floor while conditions still match — negotiates from a position of strength.
For every fall fatality, an estimated 23 people fall and report a minor injury, and another 70 fall and go completely unreported. Falls are far more common than incident logs suggest, and the one that’s documented well is the one that’s defensible.
What should you do in the first hour?
Help the injured person first; nothing else comes close. Then freeze the scene in data.
Help the person
Get medical attention if there’s any doubt. Juries notice how the injured were treated.
Say little, record much
“Are you okay? We’re getting help” is complete. Never say “that floor is always slippery.”
Photograph before cleanup
Location, walking path, surface condition, footwear, signage, lighting — before anything is moved.
Capture witnesses
Names and numbers of everyone who saw the fall or the condition, including staff.
Should you preserve video footage immediately?
Yes. Do it today, before anyone asks for it. Locate every camera covering the area and export footage from before the incident through the aftermath. Many systems overwrite on a rolling cycle, and footage lost after you knew of an incident can be treated as spoliation (destruction of evidence), which lets a court instruct a jury to assume the missing video was unfavorable to you. This is the single most common preservation failure we see.
Should you test the floor after a fall?
In most cases, yes, and quickly. A post-incident slip resistance test under a recognized standard converts “it felt slippery” into a number both sides can examine.
What belongs in the incident report?
Stick to facts a stranger could verify. Record who, exactly where, when, footwear, what was on the floor, when the area was last inspected and cleaned, and who responded. Write down what you saw (“clear liquid, ~12 in., no cone present”) and skip the guesses about why it happened. Attach the photos, the witness list, and the maintenance and cleaning log for that area. A clean, factual report written the day of the incident is worth more than a polished narrative written a week later.
What will the other side’s expert look for?
Whatever you failed to keep. The expert checklist is remarkably stable: slip-resistance data, inspection and cleaning logs, video, prior incidents at the same spot, footwear, lighting, warning-sign practice, and whether anything about the surface changed after the fall. Every gap gets filled with the least favorable inference available. We know the checklist because our auditors sit on both sides of these cases.