A caller slipped on a wet floor in a grocery store, fell on a broken sidewalk in front of a restaurant, or was assaulted in a poorly lit parking garage. Each of these is a premises liability case, and each requires a fundamentally different intake conversation than a standard auto accident. The legal theories are different. The evidence is different. And the questions your intake team asks in the first five minutes will determine whether this case is worth pursuing or not.
Premises liability law holds property owners and occupiers responsible for injuries that occur on their property when they knew or should have known about a dangerous condition and failed to correct it. That "knew or should have known" element is what makes intake so critical. Your intake agent is often the first person to capture the facts that establish notice, and if those facts are not gathered correctly on the first call, they may be lost forever.
In a car accident case, the fundamental questions center on how the collision happened, who had the right of way, and what injuries resulted. In a premises liability case, those injury questions are secondary to a more complex threshold inquiry: does the property owner bear legal responsibility?
Your intake team needs to understand the basic elements of a premises liability claim to ask the right questions:
Standard auto accident scripts ask about the crash, the other driver, and the injuries. Premises liability scripts must go further, probing for who owned the property, how long the dangerous condition existed, and whether anyone reported it before the accident.
Get the specific property: the business name, the address, and the type of location (retail store, restaurant, apartment complex, government building, private residence). This matters for several reasons. Government properties involve different filing requirements and shorter notice periods. Private residences have homeowner's insurance rather than commercial policies. Chain locations may involve corporate defendants with deep pockets.
This is the notice question, and it is the single most important factor in determining case viability. A wet floor that formed 30 seconds before someone slipped on it presents a very different case from a floor that had been wet for three hours with a missing caution sign. Ask directly: how long was the condition there before the accident?
Also ask if there were any prior complaints or incidents. If another customer complained about the same hazard earlier that day, the property owner had actual notice. If the hazard was a recurring problem (like a particular area that always floods), the owner may have constructive notice even without prior complaints about that specific day.
Witnesses and video evidence are critical in premises cases. Surveillance footage in particular can establish exactly how long a hazard existed before an incident, whether employees walked past it without addressing it, and whether prior customers slipped or nearly fell. This footage is often overwritten within 24 to 72 hours. Capturing this information on the first intake call allows the attorney to act quickly on evidence preservation.
Many businesses require customers who are injured on their property to fill out an incident report before leaving. If a report was filed, get the name of the employee who handled it and any reference number provided. If no report was filed, note that. The absence of a report when one was clearly warranted can actually support the claim in some cases.
Premises liability cases with documented medical treatment are substantially stronger than those without. Ask what treatment has been received, whether the caller has seen a doctor since the incident, and whether they have any pre-existing conditions that might complicate the injury picture. Get a sense of injury severity. Fractures, head injuries, and back injuries in premises cases are typically the strongest from a damages perspective.
| Case Type | Key Intake Factors | Red Flags |
|---|---|---|
| Slip and Fall (retail) | Duration of hazard, employee awareness, wet floor signage | Caller admits they weren't paying attention, no injuries requiring treatment |
| Negligent Security | Prior crime history at location, security measures in place, property owner awareness | No police report, location in a high-crime area with known ongoing issues |
| Elevator/Escalator Accident | Prior malfunction reports, maintenance records, building owner vs. maintenance company | Caller attempting to use equipment against instructions |
| Swimming Pool Accident | Posted rules, depth markings, lifeguard presence, drain entrapment | Caller admits intoxication, age and supervision issues for minors |
| Dog Bite (on property) | Prior bite history, leash law compliance, property owner knowledge of aggression | Caller provoked the animal, bite was minor with no medical treatment |
| Negligent Maintenance | Property management vs. ownership structure, HOA involvement, inspection records | No documented injury, caller refuses to see a doctor |
The single biggest challenge in premises liability intake is establishing notice. A property owner is generally not responsible for a hazard they had no way of knowing about. That is why your intake team must gather as much information as possible about how long the dangerous condition existed and who knew about it.
Constructive notice: Even if no one specifically reported the hazard, the property owner may be liable if the condition had existed long enough that a reasonable inspection would have discovered it. This is established through evidence of duration. A banana peel that has been on the floor long enough to turn brown suggests it had been there for a while, even if no employee reported it.
Train intake agents to ask follow-up questions that help establish duration and awareness:
Not every premises liability call results in a case worth signing. Your intake team needs clear guidelines for when to escalate to an attorney review versus when to decline politely. Common threshold criteria include:
Intake note: Never make a legal determination that a case is "strong" or "worth pursuing" on the phone. Your intake team's job is to gather facts, not assess legal merit. Flag any case that has injuries, a clear hazard, and a viable defendant for attorney review, and let the attorney make the qualification decision.
In premises liability cases, evidence disappears fast. Surveillance footage gets overwritten. Floors get repaired. Broken steps get fixed. Incident reports get revised. Your intake process should include immediate evidence preservation protocols for any case that appears viable.
An intake agent trained primarily on auto accident calls will instinctively ask "who had the right of way" or "was the other driver cited." Those questions are irrelevant in a premises case and waste valuable call time. Premises intake requires a specialized script that focuses on property, hazard, notice, and defendants.
In many premises cases, the property owner and the occupier are different parties. A tenant business may occupy a property owned by a landlord. A property management company may handle maintenance on behalf of an absentee owner. Multiple contractors may have been responsible for different aspects of the property. Intake should capture as much information as possible about who owns, manages, and maintains the location, not just who was present when the accident happened.
Intake agents often gather the basic facts of the incident (what happened, where, what injuries) and treat the notice question as secondary. It is not. In premises liability, notice is often the most contested element of the claim. A full intake should gather as many notice-related facts as possible on the first call, because the caller may not remember them as clearly later.
When a caller was injured on government property (a city sidewalk, a public school, a government building, a municipal park), the intake team must immediately flag this for attorney attention. Government premises liability claims typically involve:
The intake agent does not need to know the specific rules in every jurisdiction, but they must know to ask whether the incident occurred on government property and flag those cases for expedited attorney review.
Our intake specialists receive specific training on premises liability case types, including the notice doctrine, evidence preservation requirements, and the identification of multiple potential defendants. We use specialized intake scripts for different premises case categories, ensuring that the critical facts are captured on the first contact regardless of which case type presents.
For law firms handling a mix of auto accident and premises liability cases, this specialization matters. A generalist intake agent trained only on car accidents will miss the qualifying questions that make or break a premises case. Our teams are trained across case types, so your callers get the right questions regardless of how they were injured.
HQ Intake handles 24/7 intake across all personal injury case types, including premises liability. Our specialists are trained to capture the specific facts that matter in property accident cases.