If someone is injured at or on a resort due to slippery conditions, the resort may be liable for his or her injuries if the resort was negligent, or careless, in some way.
As a general rule, liability—the legal obligation to pay money for someone’s injuries or damage to another’s property—depends on fault. The legal system does not force someone to pay if they did nothing wrong; in fact, that’s one of the purposes of insurance—to compensate people or pay for their medical care when there is no one else legally liable for the injury.
Fault is based on either an intentional bad act (i.e. deliberately injuring someone else; like assault) or on negligence. Negligence is unreasonable carelessness; it’s taking less care than the average or ordinary “reasonable person” would under similar circumstances.
A major component of negligence is that there must be knowledge of a problem and an opportunity to act. For example, say that there was a sudden sleet storm and the sidewalk at a resort slicked-up quickly. If a guest fell immediately, before anyone on the resort’s staff could become aware of the problem or do anything about it, the resort would probably not be liable. On the other hand, if there was an ice storm overnight and someone slipped on a path at the resort 12 hours later, the resort probably would be liable—since a reasonable person, knowing that there are guests or clients, would go out and check for ice on sidewalks and walkways after an ice storm. The failure to do anything about the ice 12 hours after the storm would very likely be negligent.
Another factor is control. Suppose that a guest slipped on vegetable oil from a bottle dropped by a resort employee. Since the employee is under the resort’s control, the resort is liable for his or her acts. On the other hand, if the guest slipped because another guest squirted slick suntan lotion on the ground, the resort might not be responsible or liable for that—the other guest’s actions were not under its control.
Liability has to be judged on a case-by-case basis; there is no hard-and-fast rule for when someone is liable. For example, turning back to the guest-squirting-suntan-lotion example above, if another guest had reported the slippery spot to a resort staff member and the resort did nothing about it when there was the chance—didn’t mop it up, didn’t put out a “wet floor” sign, etc.—then the resort would probably become liable. In that case, they knew and had the chance to act; therefore, the failure to do so may not be reasonable.
So a resort would be liable, or responsible, for injuries that occur due to slippery conditions if the resort was negligent, or unreasonably careless.