How Long Must a Spill Be on a Costco Floor Before Costco Is Liable

Read the inspection entry carefully before subtracting its time from the time of your fall. “Aisle checked” may refer to a different part of a long aisle. Even if the employee inspected the right spot and found it clean, a drink could have spilled there much later. Ask for the employee’s name and account of the inspection. Here is what the two kinds of evidence can tell you:

• A clean floor at the last inspection: the record puts the spill sometime after that inspection, assuming the inspection was reliable. It cannot tell you how much of the intervening time the floor was wet.
• The spill itself on video: a continuous view of the same spill from 10:03 to a fall at 10:21 would give you eighteen minutes. Check the timestamp before using that figure.

Eighteen minutes is not a legal cutoff either. Reece asks whether the store had a reasonable opportunity to discover the danger. The view of the spill and employees’ distance from it help answer that.

Use the following hypothetical to check a timing argument:

The inspection and fall are twenty-four minutes apart. That is not proof of a twenty-four-minute spill. If the store’s account is correct, the liquid arrived only a minute before the fall. Investigate the 11:06 image and retain the surrounding frames. Check fixed aisle features to identify the spot, and compare the camera clocks. A witness who saw the liquid earlier may resolve the conflict. Evidence of a warning to staff or an employee creating the spill may establish notice without relying on the reflection.

Use a separate row for each event. Leaving an unknown time blank is more accurate than borrowing a time from a different record.

Write down a witness’s estimate in their own terms. For example, “around eleven” belongs in the chart with that qualification. Keep a link or reference to the original file behind every video entry. Your lawyer will need to establish that the records are authentic before relying on the chart in a demand or a response to a motion challenging notice. The entries also need to explain how the store had an opportunity to find and address the spill.

For example, a recording stops at 9:00 and starts again at 9:20. Nothing in that gap shows you when liquid reached the floor. Put the gap in your timeline as missing footage. Compare that with a recording that shows the same spill continuously from 9:12 until a 9:27 fall. Subject to checking the clock and confirming the condition did not change, that is evidence of fifteen minutes. Make clear whether any number you present is a minimum, a maximum or an estimate.

Ask the person who operates the camera system to explain any gap. Was recording triggered by motion? Are frames missing, or did the clock reset? Similar-looking stills at either end cannot rule out a cleanup followed by another spill. When the store offers a different timeline, go back to the footage before mediation. Locate the image or witness account that supports its version, then identify any evidence that conflicts with it.

If the proposed evidence is an expert’s estimate based on how far liquid spread, examine the assumptions. How fast was liquid escaping? Was the floor sloped? What fluid was involved? Which of those facts were measured? There may be a range of possible times. Even a reliable estimate has to be considered alongside the store conditions: an obvious spill beside an employee may be discoverable sooner than a hard-to-see patch farther away.