Were you injured on someone else’s property in Kansas City? If so, you may have a premises liability claim. Premises liability accidents happen in many ways. You may have slipped on a wet floor in a grocery store, been assaulted in a poorly lit parking garage, tripped over a broken sidewalk, or been bitten by a dog at a neighbor’s house.
When a property owner fails to keep their property safe or warn visitors about known dangers under Kansas law, they can be held financially responsible for the injuries you suffered. You may be able to recover compensation for your medical bills, lost income, pain and suffering, and other losses caused by the accident.
The premises liability attorneys at Bretz Injury Law have spent over 30 years holding negligent property owners accountable across Kansas City, KS and throughout the state, recovering more than $300 million for injured clients. Call (913) 361-5510 for a free consultation to find out whether you have a case.
Through Personal Loss And Experience, We’ve Learned What Matters Most. Helping Families Find Their Way Forward
Bretz Injury Law represents individuals who have been injured on someone else’s property throughout Kansas City, Kansas and the surrounding areas. Property injury cases are far more common than most people realize. According to the Kansas Judicial Branch’s 2025 Annual Report, premises liability claims and motor vehicle accidents together account for more than 60% of all civil tort filings across the state’s 31 judicial districts.
Kansas law requires property owners to maintain a duty of care, which is the legal obligation to keep their property reasonably safe for the people who enter it. Over 2,000 slip and fall accidents alone are reported in Kansas each year, and many of those injuries happen because a property owner ignored a hazard they had a responsibility to fix.
Insurance companies do not treat unrepresented injury victims the same way they treat those who have a premises liability attorney fighting to prove negligence on their behalf. When you file a premises liability claim without an attorney, adjusters have more room to reduce your settlement offer or deny your claim altogether.
In Kansas, one of their most common tactics is to argue that you were at least 50% at fault for your own injury, because under K.S.A. 60-258a, reaching that threshold eliminates your right to recover any compensation at all. Even when your injuries are severe, a disputed fault argument can push your settlement down by 25 to 40 percent compared to cases with clear liability.
We understand how difficult it is to deal with mounting medical bills and lost income while you are still trying to figure out whether you even have a case. You should not have to deal with that on your own, and our attorneys are here to make sure you don’t.
When you hire a premises liability attorney, one of the first things we do is move quickly to preserve the evidence that supports your claim. Without prompt action, the evidence you need to prove your case can disappear before you even realize it matters. Having an attorney on your side early gives your case the strongest possible foundation.
Bretz Injury Law handles the full spectrum of premises liability claims in Kansas City, from injuries at commercial businesses to accidents on residential and government property. If you were hurt because a property owner failed to maintain safe conditions, we can help you pursue compensation whether the injury happened at a store, an apartment, or a public sidewalk.
Kansas has specific statutes that directly affect how your premises liability case is filed and resolved.
K.S.A. 60-513 imposes a two-year statute of limitations on premises liability claims. K.S.A. 60-258a establishes the state’s modified comparative fault rule, which can bar your recovery entirely based on your share of fault. For residents of the Kansas City metro area, Kansas and Missouri law diverge in ways that directly affect your case. Missouri allows five years to file a premises liability claim, while Kansas allows only two, and many accident victims on the Kansas side do not realize their deadline is shorter until it is nearly too late.
Under K.S.A. 60-513, you have exactly two years from the date of your injury to file a premises liability lawsuit in Kansas. This statute of limitations applies to all personal injury claims, including slip and fall accidents, negligent security cases, and dog bites that occur on someone else’s property. If you miss this deadline, the court will almost certainly dismiss your case, even if your evidence is strong and your injuries were serious.
The two-year window can feel like a long time, but building a solid case takes months of investigation, evidence gathering, and negotiation with insurance companies, which is why contacting an attorney as early as possible matters.
Kansas follows a modified comparative fault system under K.S.A. 60-258a. If you were partially at fault for your injury, your compensation is reduced by whatever percentage of fault a jury assigns to you. So if your total damages are $200,000 and you are found 30% at fault, your recovery drops to $140,000.
The real danger is the 50% threshold. If a jury determines that your fault was equal to or greater than the property owner’s, you recover nothing. Insurance adjusters understand this rule and routinely argue that the victim should have noticed the hazard, ignored a warning sign, or chosen a different path through the property.
If you were injured by a dangerous condition on property owned by a city, county, or state entity in Kansas, you face an additional procedural requirement before you can file a lawsuit. Under K.S.A. 12-105b(d), you must first submit written notice of your claim to the clerk or governing body of the government entity responsible for the property. This applies to injuries on public sidewalks, parks, government buildings, and city-maintained roads or parking lots.
Failing to provide proper notice can result in your entire claim being dismissed before it ever reaches a courtroom. Because the notice requirements and deadlines under the Kansas Tort Claims Act differ from standard personal injury filings, working with an attorney who understands these procedures is especially important for government property claims.
The amount of legal protection you receive as a visitor on someone else’s property in Kansas depends on your status at the time of the injury. Kansas premises liability law classifies every person who enters a property into one of three categories: invitee, licensee, or trespasser. The duty of care owed, which is the legal standard a property owner must meet to avoid liability, varies depending on that classification.
Kansas modernized its approach to this framework by adopting a single standard for both invitees and licensees. Under current Kansas law, property owners owe the same duty of reasonable care to anyone who enters the property with permission. Missouri still applies different standards to invitees and licensees depending on the purpose of the visit, so which side of the state line your injury occurred on can change the legal analysis.
Trespassers receive the lowest level of legal protection. Property owners are generally not required to make their premises safe for people who enter without permission, though there are important exceptions that apply to certain situations involving children and known trespasser activity.
An invitee is someone who enters a property for the owner’s benefit, such as a customer shopping at a retail store, a patient visiting a medical office, or a client walking into a business. A licensee is someone who enters with the owner’s permission but for their own purposes, such as a social guest at a private home or a mail carrier making a delivery.
In Kansas, property owners owe both categories the same duty: they must exercise reasonable care to keep the premises safe. That includes inspecting the property for hidden hazards that visitors would not easily discover on their own and providing adequate warnings about any dangerous conditions they know to exist.
K.S.A. 58-821, enacted in 2014, codified the trespasser standard by establishing that property owners owe trespassers only the duty of care that existed at common law as of July 1 of that year. In practice, this means a property owner must simply refrain from injuring a trespasser through willful, wanton, or reckless conduct. Setting traps or intentionally creating dangerous conditions to harm someone who enters without permission is prohibited.
When a property owner knows that trespassers regularly access a specific area of their land, those individuals may be reclassified as implied licensees, which raises the duty of care the owner must provide.
Children are treated differently under Kansas premises liability law because they cannot recognize and avoid the same dangers that adults are expected to identify. The attractive nuisance doctrine holds property owners to a higher duty of care when their property contains features that are likely to attract children, even if those children enter without permission.
Unfenced swimming pools, abandoned construction equipment, open trenches, and unsecured machinery are all examples of conditions that courts have recognized as attractive nuisances. If a property owner knows or should know that children are likely to be drawn to a dangerous feature on their property, they have a legal obligation to take reasonable steps to prevent access or eliminate the hazard.
To succeed in a premises liability claim, you need to establish four things. A dangerous condition existed on the property, the owner knew or should have known about it, the owner failed to fix it or warn you, and that failure directly caused your injury. All four require evidence, and the strength of your case often depends on how quickly that evidence is gathered after the accident.
Photographs of the hazard, maintenance records showing whether the property was inspected, incident reports filed at the scene, and witness statements from anyone who saw what happened all help build your case. This evidence can prove that the dangerous condition existed before you were injured and that the property owner had time to address it. Inspection logs and repair histories can reveal whether the owner had a pattern of ignoring known problems, which strengthens the argument that their negligence was not an isolated failure.
Many people who are hurt on someone else’s property hesitate to pursue a claim because they feel like they should have been paying closer attention or noticed the hazard themselves. That instinct is understandable, but it does not mean the property owner is off the hook.
The law does not ask whether you could have been more careful. Property owners carry a legal obligation to maintain safe conditions regardless of how careful you were being at the time.
One of the biggest challenges in premises liability cases is that evidence disappears fast. Surveillance footage from businesses and parking garages is frequently overwritten within days or weeks. Spills get mopped, broken stairs get repaired, and incident reports get buried. Contacting an attorney as soon as possible after your injury gives us the best chance to secure that evidence before it is gone.
Kansas premises liability claims allow you to pursue both economic and non-economic damages, and in certain cases, punitive damages as well. The total value of your claim depends on the severity of your injuries, the cost of your medical treatment, how long you are unable to work, and the degree to which the injury has affected your daily life.
Property injuries can be expensive to treat and slow to heal. Nationally, the CDC reports that nonfatal fall injuries alone cost the U.S. healthcare system approximately $80 billion each year, and individual cases involving traumatic brain injuries, spinal damage, or fractures requiring surgery can generate medical bills that reach well into six figures. If a property owner’s negligence caused the death of a family member, surviving relatives may also be entitled to file a wrongful death claim.
Economic damages compensate you for the measurable, out-of-pocket financial losses your injury has caused. Medical expenses typically make up the largest portion of an economic damage claim and can include emergency room visits, hospitalization, surgery, prescription medications, physical therapy, and any ongoing rehabilitation you need as a result of the accident.
If your injuries have forced you to miss work, you can also pursue compensation for lost wages and, in cases involving permanent disability or long-term impairment, reduced future earning capacity. Future medical costs are recoverable as well, covering anticipated treatment, follow-up procedures, and any accommodations you will need as part of your recovery.
Non-economic damages address the personal toll of your injury beyond what shows up on a medical bill. Pain and suffering, emotional distress, anxiety, and the psychological impact of a traumatic accident are all recognized categories of non-economic damages in Kansas. If your injury has left visible scarring or permanent disfigurement, you can seek compensation for how those physical changes affect your confidence and your interactions with others.
Loss of enjoyment of life is another category that applies when your injury prevents you from participating in activities you valued before the accident. Kansas juries weigh the severity and permanence of the injury when determining what these damages are worth.
When a property owner’s negligence results in someone’s death, surviving family members have the right to file a wrongful death claim under Kansas law. Recoverable damages in these cases can include funeral and burial costs, the lost income the deceased would have provided, and the loss of companionship, guidance, and emotional support the family has been deprived of.
In rare cases where the property owner’s conduct goes beyond ordinary negligence and rises to the level of willful, wanton, or reckless disregard for the safety of others, Kansas courts may also award punitive damages. Punitive damages exist to punish the property owner for especially dangerous behavior and to discourage similar conduct in the future.
Bretz Injury Law has recovered more than $300 million for injured clients across Kansas, and for over 30 years, our attorneys have held negligent property owners, businesses, and government entities accountable for the harm they cause. We handle your case on a contingency fee basis with a written guarantee, which means you pay nothing unless we win. Our Kansas City, KS office serves clients across Wyandotte County and offers free consultations and bilingual services in English and Spanish. If you were injured on someone else’s property, call us at (913) 361-5510 or contact our team online to find out what your case is worth.
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