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By Jared J. Pehrson | Impact Legal Car Accident Attorneys · Updated January 2026
You went to a grocery store, a hotel, a friend’s apartment complex, or a parking garage. You got hurt. Now you’re trying to figure out whether the property owner is on the hook, what evidence matters, and how much time you have to act. This page answers those questions under Arizona law, and it tells you what to do this week to protect the claim.
Our team handles premises liability cases across Phoenix and Maricopa County: slip and falls, negligent security, swimming pool injuries, parking garage assaults, stairway falls, and more. Free case review at (602) 345-1818, 24/7.
The first 72 hours decide a lot of these cases. Here’s the practical checklist.
If you missed any of those steps, the case isn’t dead. It just means we have to work harder on reconstruction.
Property owners and their insurers rarely accept responsibility on their own. They’ll argue you weren’t paying attention, that the hazard was “open and obvious,” or that you don’t fit the visitor classification the law actually protects. Those arguments are beatable, but only if someone is building the counter-evidence early.
When we take on a premises liability matter, we typically:
We’re a boutique firm. Jared handles cases personally. You won’t be passed down a chain of paralegals.
Arizona property owners are required to maintain their premises in a reasonably safe condition. That duty isn’t absolute. It’s calibrated to the relationship between the owner and the visitor, the foreseeability of harm, and what a reasonable owner in the same position would have done.
To win, you have to prove four elements:
This is the standard negligence framework applied to property. The fight in most cases is over the first two elements: what duty existed, and whether it was breached.
Phoenix has its own hazard profile. A few patterns we see repeatedly:
Local context matters because Arizona courts evaluate “reasonableness” against what an owner in this market should have anticipated. A pool fence dispute in Phoenix is not analyzed the same way it would be in Buffalo.
Liability hinges on how you were classified at the moment of injury. Arizona still uses the traditional three-tier framework.
You’re a business invitee anytime you’re on property that’s open to the public for business purposes, or any property where the owner stands to gain economically from your presence. Examples:
Owners owe invitees the highest duty of care. They must:
Licensees are social guests. You’re at a friend’s house for dinner. You’re at a cousin’s pool party. The owner didn’t invite you for economic gain.
The duty is narrower. Owners must:
They do not have to inspect the property for hidden hazards or fix problems they don’t know about.
Owners owe trespassers almost nothing, only the duty to avoid willfully causing injury. If you were on the property without permission, your claim is steeply uphill.
The attractive nuisance exception. Arizona recognizes that property owners must take reasonable steps to protect children drawn to dangerous conditions they’re too young to appreciate. The classic example is an unfenced swimming pool, which is why Arizona’s pool barrier statute exists. Trampolines, construction sites, and abandoned appliances can also qualify.
Once classification is set, the fight moves to whether the owner did what a reasonable owner would have done. Evidence that matters:
This is why retaining counsel early matters. Surveillance overwrites in days, not months.
Negligent security is a distinct, high-value premises liability theory. It applies when a third party assaults, robs, or otherwise harms you on someone else’s property, and the property owner failed to take reasonable security measures despite foreseeable risk.
Common settings:
The central question is foreseeability. Arizona courts look at:
Reasonable measures depend on context: adequate lighting, functioning locks and gates, working surveillance cameras, trained security staff, controlled access points. When an apartment complex knows the gate has been broken for three months and a tenant is assaulted by an intruder who walked right in, that’s a negligent security case.
These cases are evidence-intensive. We pull police reports for the property, subpoena prior incident histories, and often bring in security industry experts to establish what the standard of care required.
Property owners and their insurers almost always argue you share blame. They’ll claim you weren’t watching where you were walking, you were on your phone, you were wearing the wrong shoes, you ignored a warning sign.
Arizona follows a pure comparative fault rule under A.R.S. § 12-2505. Here’s what that means:
Example calculation. You slip on an unmarked wet floor in a grocery store. A jury values your damages at $100,000. The jury also finds you 30% at fault because you were looking at your phone when you walked into the area. Your recovery is $70,000.
The insurer’s incentive is to push your fault percentage as high as possible. Our job is to push back with evidence: surveillance, witness statements, prior incident reports showing the store knew about the hazard, and expert testimony on human factors and standard retail safety practices.
Successful claims can recover both economic and non-economic damages.
Economic damages are quantifiable financial losses:
Non-economic damages are subjective losses:
Arizona is one of the few states with a constitutional protection against damages caps. Article II § 31 and Article XVIII § 6 of the Arizona Constitution prohibit laws limiting recovery for death or personal injury. That matters in catastrophic cases.
Punitive damages are also available in a narrow set of cases. To recover punitive damages in Arizona, a plaintiff must show by clear and convincing evidence that the defendant acted with an “evil mind”: conscious disregard of a substantial risk of harm, intent to injure, or spite. This applies in cases where, for example, a property owner knew about a serious hazard, ignored prior incidents, and continued operating without fixing it.
We handle cases involving the full range of injuries, including brain injuries, spinal cord damage, fractures, burns, soft-tissue injuries, and wrongful death.
Claim value depends on several factors, and any honest answer requires looking at all of them:
A serious case with strong evidence and a well-insured commercial defendant looks nothing like a case with disputed liability against an underinsured private homeowner. For more on how value gets calculated, see our overview of what your case is worth.
What we don’t do is quote a number on a first call without the medical records, the incident evidence, and the policy information. Anyone who does is selling, not advising.
Under A.R.S. § 12-542, you generally have two years from the date of injury to file a personal injury lawsuit in Arizona. Miss it, and you lose the right to sue. Permanently. See our deeper write-up on the Arizona statute of limitations for the full breakdown.
A few important exceptions and rules:
Discovery rule. In some cases, the two-year clock doesn’t start until you reasonably discovered (or should have discovered) the injury. This matters for latent injuries, for example, a slow-developing back condition or a head injury whose symptoms emerge weeks later. The discovery rule is fact-specific and frequently contested. Don’t assume it applies to you without legal guidance.
Minor tolling under A.R.S. § 12-502. If the injured person is under 18, the statute of limitations is tolled (paused) until their 18th birthday. They then have 2 years from that birthday to file. This matters for pool injuries, school injuries, and playground burns.
Government entity claims under A.R.S. § 12-821.01. If your injury happened on government-owned property (a city park, a public school, a county building, a state university, a city bus stop, a public swimming pool), you must file a written notice of claim within 180 days of the injury. Miss that 180-day deadline and your claim against the government entity is barred, even if you’re still inside the general 2-year window. This is the single most common deadline trap we see.
When the deadline is close, options narrow fast. Call us before you make decisions you can’t undo.
Two years from the date of the injury under A.R.S. § 12-542. If the property owner is a government entity (city, county, state, public school district), you must file a written notice of claim within 180 days under A.R.S. § 12-821.01. Minors get the clock tolled until their 18th birthday. Deadlines move fast. Get a case review well before the cutoff.
You can still recover. Arizona uses pure comparative fault under A.R.S. § 12-2505. Your damages get reduced by your percentage of fault, but there’s no cutoff that bars recovery, even at 99% fault. The insurer’s job is to push your fault percentage as high as possible. Our job is to push back with evidence.
Often yes. The host has a duty of care as a property owner. Depending on the hazard and the facts, the rental platform may also have exposure. Phoenix and Scottsdale have heavy short-term rental inventory, and we see cases involving pool injuries, balcony falls, unsafe stairs, and unmarked elevation changes. Document the hazard immediately, before the next guest checks in and the host fixes it.
You’re on a much faster clock. Under A.R.S. § 12-821.01, you must serve a written notice of claim on the correct government entity within 180 days of the injury, with specific content requirements. Miss the notice deadline and the claim is barred, even if you’re still inside the general 2-year statute. Public schools, city parks, public pools, county facilities, and public transit all fall under this rule.
Possibly. This is a negligent security case. The question is whether the assault was foreseeable and whether the complex took reasonable security measures. Evidence we look for includes prior similar incidents on the property, broken locks or gates, inadequate lighting, ignored tenant complaints, and absent security personnel. These cases are evidence-intensive and time-sensitive. Police records, prior incident reports, and surveillance all need to be locked down early.
That’s a common defense, not the end of the analysis. Even when a hazard is visible, Arizona courts recognize that owners can still owe a duty to remediate or warn, particularly when they can anticipate that invitees may be distracted, may have their attention drawn elsewhere, or may have to encounter the hazard to use the property. Whether the defense actually applies is fact-specific.
If you were hurt on someone else’s property in Phoenix, the first 30 days matter more than the next six months. Evidence disappears. Insurers call. Deadlines start running. Talk to us before you talk to the property owner’s adjuster.
Free case review: (602) 345-1818. We answer 24/7. No attorney’s fees unless we recover (case costs and fee terms are spelled out in the written agreement).
Impact Legal Car Accident Attorneys
16202 N Cave Creek Rd Suite D, Phoenix, AZ 85032, United States
(602) 345-1818
By Jared J. Pehrson | Impact Legal Car Accident Attorneys
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