Slip and Fall on Ice in New Hampshire: Who Is Legally Liable?

In New Hampshire, a property owner is not automatically liable because you fell on ice. The owner owes a duty of reasonable care under all the circumstances. To recover, you generally must show the owner knew or should have known about the hazard and failed to act reasonably. Also, comparative fault can reduce what you collect, and a three-year deadline applies.

Ice is the most common serious hazard on New Hampshire property, and it is also the one insurers fight hardest. The usual response from an adjuster is some version of "it snowed, everyone knows it is slippery, and your client should have been careful." That answer is not the law. What follows is the actual framework New Hampshire courts apply in personal injury claims.

New Hampshire retired the old visitor categories in 1976

For most of the last century, whether an injured person could recover depended on a label. A trespasser got almost nothing. A licensee was owed only a warning of hidden dangers. An invitee got ordinary negligence protection. Some states still sort cases this way.

New Hampshire does not. In Ouellette v. Blanchard, 116 N.H. 552, 364 A.2d 631 (1976), the Supreme Court abolished those status distinctions as the sole determinant of the standard of care. The Court replaced them with a single test: "owners and occupiers of land shall be governed by the test of reasonable care under all the circumstances in the maintenance and operation of their property." Ouellette, 116 N.H. at 557-58, 364 A.2d at 634.

This matters practically. If a defense lawyer argues that you were "merely a licensee" and therefore owed less, that argument was laid to rest in New Hampshire nearly fifty years ago. The character and circumstances of your entry onto the property remain relevant to what reasonable care required, but they no longer decide the case by themselves.

The reasonable care standard does not make a property owner an insurer of your safety. No liability attaches simply because an accident happened on someone's land. There must be fault.

The real fight is about notice

Under current New Hampshire law, a premises owner is liable if harm results either from failing to carry out activities with reasonable care, or from failing to remedy or warn of a dangerous condition the owner knew about or should have known about. Rallis v. Demoulas Super Markets, 159 N.H. 95, 99, 977 A.2d 527 (2009).

That second theory is where ice cases live, and it turns on notice. There are three ways to establish it:

1. The owner created the condition. Someone employed by the property put the hazard there.

2. Actual knowledge. The owner in fact knew the ice was present.

3. Constructive knowledge. The owner should have known.

Rallis is the case worth understanding, because it corrected a mistake that trial courts and insurers both still make. The plaintiff slipped on a wet floor with green beans on it at a supermarket. The trial judge told the jury that constructive knowledge could be shown only by how long the beans had been on the floor. The Supreme Court reversed. Constructive knowledge may be established by the length of time a condition existed, but it "may also be established by other means." Rallis, 159 N.H. at 100, 977 A.2d 527.

Applied to a New Hampshire winter, that is a significant point. You do not necessarily have to prove how many minutes a patch of black ice sat by the door. Evidence that a downspout routinely discharges across a walkway, that a parking lot always glazes over at the same low spot, or that the property had a recurring problem it never fixed can carry the question to a jury.

One caution: the burden of proof stays with the plaintiff throughout a premises case. The Rallis Court expressly declined to adopt a burden-shifting approach. Rallis, 159 N.H. at 102, 977 A.2d 527. Nobody has to explain themselves until you build the record first.

Simpson v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 144 N.H. 571, 744 A.2d 625 (1999) shows what that record can look like in a storm case. Evidence that a plowing company had spent roughly five hours clearing the lot and spreading nine tons of salt, and that snow and ice were visibly banked against the building, was enough to let a jury find actual or constructive knowledge of icy conditions.

The public sidewalk rule catches people off guard

New Hampshire draws a line that surprises most injured people.

An owner of property next to a public sidewalk is not responsible for maintaining that sidewalk, and is not liable for injury caused by the natural accumulation of snow and ice on it. NHCJI § 11.2.

A business invitor, such as a store owner, is different. That owner has a duty to use ordinary care to remove snow or ice that makes the premises hazardous, within a reasonable time after the owner knew or in the exercise of due care should have known the hazardous condition existed. NHCJI § 11.2; Simpson, 144 N.H. 571.

So where you fell can matter as much as how you fell. A fall on the city sidewalk running past a storefront on Elm Street in Manchester is analyzed differently from a fall ten feet away in that store's own entryway or parking lot. Two things follow. Photograph the exact location before anything melts, and do not assume the case is over because someone told you the town owns the sidewalk. Property lines are frequently not where people think they are, and an owner who creates an unnatural accumulation, such as a plow pile that melts and refreezes across a walkway, is in a different position than one who simply left nature alone.

For tenants, a landlord has a duty to use ordinary care to remove ice or snow from outdoor entrances and driveways under the landlord's control within a reasonable time after the end of a storm. NHCJI § 11.10.

A lease does not erase a landlord's duty: Robinson (2024)

This is the most important recent development in New Hampshire premises law, and it came out of the Hillsborough County courts.

In Robinson v. 1 Bouchard Street Realty, 2024 N.H. 59 (Oct. 22, 2024), a landlord leased commercial property to New Hampshire Plastics, LLC. The lease required the tenant to keep the premises "free of dirt, snow and ice." An employee of the tenant slipped and fell on ice on the property in February 2020 and sued the landlord. The trial court granted the landlord summary judgment, reasoning that the lease had shifted the duty to the tenant.

The Supreme Court reversed. Commercial landlords and tenants may allocate maintenance responsibility between themselves, and exculpatory clauses bind the parties to the lease. But "they have no effect on non-signers." Tanguay v. Marston, 127 N.H. 572, 578 (1986). Because the injured employee was not a party to the lease, the Court held that the lease's ice-removal requirement "has no effect on the defendant's duty to the plaintiff to maintain its property in a reasonably safe condition." Robinson, 2024 N.H. 59.

The Court also cleared away an old obstacle. The landlord had relied on Kuchynski v. Ukryn, 89 N.H. 400 (1938), a case decided when New Hampshire still granted landlords limited tort immunity. That immunity was "relegated to the history books" in Sargent v. Ross, 113 N.H. 388, 396-97 (1973), which established that landlords, like everyone else, must exercise reasonable care not to subject others to an unreasonable risk of harm. Kuchynski therefore rests on an invalid premise and cannot carry a modern summary judgment motion.

If you were hurt on leased property and were told the lease makes it someone else's problem, Robinson is the answer, and it is barely two years old.

Hiring a plow contractor does not transfer the risk

A related argument arrives constantly: "we hired a contractor, so sue them."

New Hampshire rejected that shield in a case that arose at the Bedford Mall. In Valenti v. NET Properties Management, Inc., 142 N.H. 633, 710 A.2d 399 (1998), the plaintiff fell on a wet entryway at the mall, which the defendant owned and managed after hiring independent contractors to design and maintain the entry. The Court adopted Section 425 of the Restatement (Second) of Torts and held that a possessor of business premises is vicariously liable for an independent contractor's negligent failure to maintain the property in a reasonably safe condition.

The Court put the principle plainly: "Although a possessor of business premises is free to delegate the duty of performance to another . . . he cannot thereby avoid or delegate the risk of nonperformance of the duty." Valenti, 142 N.H. at 636. The Robinson Court quoted that same language in 2024.

A New Hampshire business can hand the shovel to someone else. It cannot hand off the responsibility.

But the contractor can be sued too, and sometimes only the contractor.

Valenti answers half the question. It keeps the property owner on the hook. It does not tell you whether you can also go after the company that actually did the plowing, and in some cases that is the only claim available.

You can. In Bloom v. Casella Construction, Inc., 172 N.H. 625, 232 A.3d 357 (2019), a nurse at Dartmouth-Hitchcock in Lebanon parked in an employee lot, took about two steps, and fell on ice that had never been sanded or salted. She sued the snow plowing contractor. The trial court threw the case out, reasoning that the contractor had not taken over the hospital's entire duty to keep its property safe, because the contract split the work and left most of the salting with the hospital.

The Supreme Court reversed. Under Section 324A(b) of the Restatement (Second) of Torts, a contractor does not escape liability by showing it took on only part of the job. The provision applies, in the words the Court adopted, "as long as the party who owes the plaintiff a duty of care has delegated to the defendant any particular part of that duty." 172 N.H. at 630-31. Because there was a genuine dispute about what Casella had actually agreed to do, the case went back for trial.

Then notice who the plaintiff in Bloom could not sue. The property owner was her employer, and RSA 281-A:8 gave it workers' compensation immunity. The contractor was the only defendant available to her. If you are hurt on ice at your own workplace, the snow contractor may be the entire case. The fight will be about the scope of its contract, so ask for that contract and any winter maintenance guidelines attached to it early, while they still exist.

The one real safe harbor: RSA 508:22

There is a genuine statutory limit, and it is narrower than property owners tend to assume. Under RSA 508:22, a certified commercial applicator, and an owner, occupant, or lessee whose premises are maintained by one, is not liable for damages from hazards caused solely by snow or ice, even with actual notice, when the failure or delay in addressing them results from implementing the best management practices for winter road, parking lot, and sidewalk maintenance published by the Department of Transportation and the Department of Environmental Services. Gross negligence or reckless disregard of the hazard defeats the protection.

The statute has teeth in both directions. To claim it, the applicator, owner, occupant, or lessee must keep a written record of its winter maintenance practices, including the type of de-icing material used, the rate or quantity, the dates of treatment, and the weather conditions for each de-icing event. Those records must be kept for three years. RSA 508:22, II.

That record requirement is the practical center of a modern New Hampshire ice case. Either the records exist and show what was actually done and when, or they do not exist and the safe harbor is unavailable. Requesting them early, before they age past the three-year retention window, is often the difference between a provable case and a stalled one.

One caution on secondary sources: some practice materials still quote a pre-2021 version of RSA 508:22 and cite the wrong certification chapter. The current statute keys certification to RSA 489-C:2. Read the statute itself.

"You should have been watching where you were going"

Expect this argument. New Hampshire is a modified comparative fault state. Under RSA 507:7-d, your own fault does not bar recovery so long as it is not greater than the defendant's fault, but your damages are reduced in proportion to the fault assigned to you. Cross 50 percent and you recover nothing.

Two points are frequently missed.

First, the burden is not yours. The statute places the burden of proving the existence or amount of a party's fault on "the party making such allegation." An insurer asserting you were careless has to prove it.

Second, you are entitled to rely to some degree on the property owner doing its job. In Broughton v. Proulx, 152 N.H. 549, 880 A.2d 388 (2005), the Supreme Court approved an instruction telling the jury that if the defendant owed the plaintiff a duty, the plaintiff "was entitled to place some reliance upon it," and that the jury decides how much reliance the plaintiff could place on the defendant's performance of the duty to maintain reasonably safe conditions. Walking into a store in January is not, by itself, an assumption of every risk the store created.

If you want the mechanics in more detail, see comparative fault in New Hampshire injury cases.

The deadline

Most New Hampshire personal injury actions must be brought within three years of the act or omission complained of. RSA 508:4, I. There is a discovery rule for injuries and their causal connection that could not reasonably have been discovered at the time, but it is not a safety net to rely on.

Three years sounds generous. It is not, because the evidence that decides ice cases has a much shorter life. Surveillance video is often overwritten in days or weeks. Weather data, plow contractor invoices, and the RSA 508:22 maintenance records all have to be preserved before anyone has a reason to keep them. More detail is on the statute of limitations page.

What this looks like in Goffstown, Bedford, and Manchester

Civil injury cases from Goffstown, Bedford, and Manchester are heard in the Hillsborough County Superior Court, Northern District, at 300 Chestnut Street in Manchester. That district also covers New Boston, Weare, Amherst, Mont Vernon, and a number of surrounding towns. Nashua and the southern tier of the county go to the Southern District instead.

The local fact patterns repeat year after year:

• Goffstown. Mast Road (NH-114) commercial lots and the Pinardville strip, where plowed banks along the road edge melt during the day and refreeze across walkways and entrances overnight. Shirley Hill Road grades add runoff that freezes at the bottom.

• Bedford. The Route 101 and South River Road (NH-3A) retail corridor, which is exactly the setting of Valenti. Large lots, contracted maintenance, long walks from a far parking space to a single entry, and canopy runoff at the doors.

• Manchester. Elm Street and downtown storefronts, where the public sidewalk rule and the business entryway rule sit within a few feet of each other, and older multi-unit buildings where common area stairs and entries stay under the landlord's control.

Apartment and multi-family falls deserve particular attention after Robinson. Common areas, exterior stairs, and shared entries typically remain under the landlord's control regardless of what a lease says about tenant responsibility, and an injured guest, delivery driver, or employee is virtually never a signatory to that lease.

For location-specific detail, see Goffstown personal injury, Bedford personal injury, and Manchester personal injury.

What to do after a fall on ice

Evidence in these cases disappears with the weather. In rough order of value:

1. Photograph the exact spot immediately, including a wide shot showing the location relative to the entrance, door, or property line, and a close shot showing the ice itself. Include something for scale.

2. Photograph the surrounding conditions. Plow piles, downspouts, roof drip lines, salt or sand present or absent, and whether adjacent areas were treated.

3. Report it and get the report. Ask the store, property manager, or landlord to document the fall, and ask for a copy.

4. Identify witnesses, including employees who may have treated the area earlier or been told about it.

5. Note the time. Weather records can establish when precipitation stopped, which drives the "reasonable time after the storm" analysis.

6. Get medical attention promptly. Gaps in treatment are the single most common way an otherwise sound New Hampshire injury claim loses value.

7. Preserve evidence in writing, quickly. A written request that the owner preserve video and winter maintenance records is worth far more sent in week one than in month six.

For a worked example of how these elements come together, see a New Hampshire premises liability example.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is a property owner automatically liable if I slip on ice in New Hampshire?

No. New Hampshire applies a reasonable care standard under Ouellette v. Blanchard, 116 N.H. 552 (1976), not strict liability. You generally must show the owner created the hazard, actually knew about it, or should have known about it and failed to act reasonably. An accident happening on someone's property is not by itself proof of fault.

Can I still recover if I was partly at fault for my fall?

Yes, as long as your share of fault is not greater than the defendant's. Under RSA 507:7-d, damages are reduced in proportion to your fault, and recovery is barred only if your fault exceeds the defendant's. The party alleging your fault carries the burden of proving it, and Broughton v. Proulx, 152 N.H. 549 (2005), confirms you may place some reliance on the owner meeting its duty.

Who is responsible if I fall on a public sidewalk in front of a business?

Generally the abutting owner is not responsible for the natural accumulation of snow and ice on a public sidewalk. NHCJI § 11.2. But a business owner does owe a duty to clear hazardous snow and ice from its own premises within a reasonable time after learning of the condition, and an owner who creates an unnatural accumulation, such as a plow pile that refreezes across a walkway, may be liable. The exact location of the fall often decides the issue.

My landlord's lease says the tenant handles snow removal. Does that end my claim?

Not if you did not sign the lease. In Robinson v. 1 Bouchard Street Realty, 2024 N.H. 59 (2024), the Supreme Court held that a lease requiring the tenant to keep the premises free of ice had no effect on the landlord's duty to an injured employee of the tenant, who was not a party to the lease. Exculpatory lease terms bind the signers, not third parties.

How long do I have to file a slip and fall claim in New Hampshire?

Three years from the act or omission, under RSA 508:4, I, with a limited discovery rule for injuries that could not reasonably have been discovered at the time. The practical deadline is much shorter, because surveillance video, plow contractor records, and the winter maintenance records required by RSA 508:22 are routinely destroyed or overwritten long before three years pass.

Talk through your case

If you were hurt on ice in Goffstown, Bedford, Manchester, or anywhere in New Hampshire, the questions that decide the case are answerable early: who controlled the area, what the maintenance records show, and what the property looked like before it melted.

Apis Law handles premises liability cases across New Hampshire from offices at 470 Mast Road in Goffstown and 3 Executive Park Drive, Ste 201E, in Bedford. You can request a free case review, learn more about Attorney Keith F. Diaz, review case results, or read more about New Hampshire slip and fall claims and personal injury representation. You can also start from the Apis Law home page.

External resources

• RSA 508:22, Liability Limited for Winter Maintenance, New Hampshire General Court

• RSA 507:7-d, Comparative Fault, New Hampshire General Court

• Robinson v. 1 Bouchard Street Realty, 2024 N.H. 59, New Hampshire Judicial Branch

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About the Author

Keith F. Diaz, Esq. is the founder of Apis Law, PLLC, a New Hampshire personal injury and employment law firm. Attorney Diaz has been practicing in New Hampshire since 2003 and is admitted to practice in the State of New Hampshire (Bar No. 15831), the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire, and the First Circuit Court of Appeals. He founded Apis Law in 2022 to provide dedicated, client-focused representation to individuals and families throughout New Hampshire.

This article is general information about New Hampshire law and is not legal advice for any specific situation. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.