A fall inside a grocery store, apartment stairwell, or workplace break room rarely gets treated as anyone’s fault but yours, at least not by the property owner’s insurance company. What actually decides whether you get paid is whether someone knew about the wet floor, broken step, or icy sidewalk, and left it there anyway. That question gets contested almost immediately, often before you have even seen a doctor.
As a Union slip and fall lawyer with 25 years of Northern Kentucky personal injury experience, Scott Best has built cases around exactly this kind of dispute, pulling incident reports, surveillance footage, and maintenance logs before a property owner’s insurer can claim they never existed.
Contact us for a free conversation about your accident and learn how we may help.
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Union has grown fast, from a small crossroads community into the second-largest city in Boone County, and its retail corridors, apartment communities, and warehouses have grown right along with it. We handle slip and fall claims tied to that growth, wherever the hazard came from and whoever owned the property.
If a property owner’s negligence puts you on the ground, we look at how the fall happened, not just where it happened, and whether the same hazard had already tripped up someone else before you.
Kentucky law gives you one year from the date you fell to file a lawsuit against the property owner, under KRS 413.140(1)(a). With some narrow exceptions, missing that date could cost you your right to sue, no matter how clear the property owner’s negligence was. Insurance companies know this deadline too, and some slow-walk negotiations hoping it passes before you file anything.
Kentucky also uses a pure comparative fault rule under KRS 411.182, which means even if you were partly to blame for not seeing a hazard, you can still recover damages, reduced by your percentage of fault. There is no cutoff percentage that wipes out the claim, unlike in many other states. That rule works in your favor more often than people expect, since property owners routinely argue a hazard was obvious to make a claim disappear entirely rather than just reduce it.
This information reflects Kentucky law as of September 2026.
Most people hurt in a Union grocery store, apartment complex, or workplace are legally an “invitee,” someone on the property with the owner’s permission and for the owner’s benefit, like a shopper or a tenant’s guest. A tenant hurt in their own apartment or a shared area like a stairwell is covered by a related but separate set of landlord rules, which still require the landlord to keep hallways, stairs, and other shared spaces reasonably safe.
Kentucky law requires property owners to keep the property reasonably safe for invitees. That means checking for hazards on a regular basis, fixing what they find, and warning visitors about anything they have not fixed yet.
Insurance companies lean hard on one defense: the “open and obvious” hazard. If a hazard was easy to see, the argument goes, the property owner did not need to warn anyone about it. Kentucky’s Supreme Court has pushed back hard on that idea. In two key cases, the Court said an obvious hazard does not automatically end a property owner’s duty. Instead, it’s a question for the jury to weigh — not a rule that lets the property owner off the hook before the case even starts.
That question is often what actually decides a case, not just whether the hazard could technically be seen.
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Even with that duty in place, a fall by itself never proves the property owner failed to meet it. We have to show either that the property owner actually knew about the hazard (called actual notice), or that the hazard had been there long enough that a reasonable inspection should have caught it (called constructive notice). An adjuster will raise this on the first phone call, usually by asking how long the hazard was there, since a spill that formed 30 seconds earlier is a very different case than one that sat there for two hours.
We build that timeline early. We pull security footage before stores overwrite it, request sweep logs and maintenance records showing when the area was last checked, and track down employees who were working that shift. The stronger that record is before an insurer starts negotiating, the harder it becomes for the insurer to argue the hazard came out of nowhere.
Most claims start with the property owner’s insurance company, not a courtroom. We send a demand backed by your medical records and the evidence of notice, and the insurer either makes a fair offer or it does not. If they lowball the claim or deny it outright, we file suit before the deadline, and the case moves into discovery, where both sides exchange records and depositions. Most cases still settle once the evidence is on the table. A smaller number go to trial, where a judge or jury decides the outcome, but you rarely need to appear in person until a deposition or trial itself.
We work on contingency, so you pay nothing upfront and nothing at all unless we recover money for you. Your free consultation is also the point where we tell you honestly whether a case is worth pursuing, before either of us spends more time on it.
That offer is usually calculated to close the file before you know the full cost of your injury, including time off work, future treatment, and any lasting limitations. Talk to us before you sign anything releasing your claim, even if the offer feels generous.
Scott Best is a highly regarded Personal Injury attorney with nearly 25 years of experience dedicated to protecting the rights of individuals in Florence and surrounding areas. With a career built on aggressive representation and strategic litigation, Scott ensures that victims of negligence receive the maximum compensation they deserve. Known for his hands-on approach and deep local roots, he combines elite legal expertise with an unwavering commitment to securing the best outcomes for every client.
You do not have to sort out the notice question, the deadline, or the paperwork on your own. Contact Scott Best Law to schedule a free consultation about your fall, and we will tell you plainly what your claim looks like and what happens next. The sooner we can start pulling footage and records, the harder it is for a property owner to argue this was your fault.
Call Scott Best, Attorney at Law today to schedule a free consultation or to request immediate help with a
case. We are here to make the process as stress free as possible and we look forward to helping you settle
your case to your satisfaction.
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