Slip & Fall Lawyer in Oklahoma

Oklahoma's statute of limitations for premises liability claims is two years from the date of injury under 12 O.S. § 95(3). Oklahoma retains the traditional invitee/licensee/trespasser trichotomy for landowner duty. As an invitee — a customer in a store, a patron at a restaurant, a guest at a hotel — you are owed the highest duty: reasonable care to keep premises safe, including a duty to inspect for hazards. Licensees receive a lower duty — disclosure of known dangerous defects unlikely to be discovered. Trespassers are owed only the duty to avoid willful or wanton injury. The classification determines the entire scope of the landowner's obligation before any fault analysis begins.

Oklahoma's open-and-obvious doctrine is uniquely harsh for plaintiffs. In most states, an obvious hazard reduces the plaintiff's recovery through comparative fault. In Oklahoma, it eliminates the claim entirely by negating duty. Southerland v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (1993 OK CIV APP 12, 848 P.2d 68) established that where a danger is open and obvious, no duty exists on the part of the landowner, so the comparative negligence framework of 23 O.S. § 13 is never reached. The Oklahoma Supreme Court reaffirmed this in Scott v. Archon Group, L.P. (2008 OK 45). The narrow exception — McClendon v. McCall — preserves liability only if the injury from an open and obvious condition was reasonably foreseeable to the landowner despite the obviousness. Defeating the open-and-obvious defense requires proving either that the hazard was not actually obvious to the specific plaintiff in the specific circumstances, or that the McClendon foreseeability exception applies.

Oklahoma follows a notice-based framework for premises liability. The injured person must show that the property owner had actual or constructive notice of the dangerous condition. Constructive notice means the hazard existed long enough that a reasonably prudent owner would have discovered it through ordinary inspection. The exception carved by Lingerfelt v. Winn-Dixie Texas, Inc. (1982 OK 44, 645 P.2d 485) is important for self-service retail: when the business's self-service methods create a reasonable probability of a hazard — spilled merchandise, loose products on the floor — the plaintiff does not need to prove notice of the specific condition. The self-service method itself establishes sufficient notice. Whether notice was adequate is ordinarily a jury question under Rogers v. Hennessee (602 P.2d 1033, Okla. 1979).

If the premises liability claim involves government property — a state building, a county courthouse, a city sidewalk — the Governmental Tort Claims Act under 51 O.S. § 156(B) requires a written claim within one year of the date of loss. Against the state, the claim is filed with the Office of Risk Management. Against a political subdivision, it is filed with the clerk of the governing body. The claim must include treating provider names and a HIPAA authorization under § 156(F). Incapacity tolling under § 156(E) excludes up to 90 days of incapacity from the notice period. Oklahoma also follows the natural accumulation rule for snow and ice: property owners are not liable for natural accumulations of snow and ice (Buck v. Del City Apartments, Inc., 431 P.2d 360, Okla. 1967, reaffirmed in Dover v. W.H. Braum, Inc., 2005 OK 20). Liability attaches only when the owner creates or enhances an unnatural accumulation or has specific knowledge of a hidden hazard not equally obvious to the invitee.