How long does the spill have to have been there?
No statute sets a number of minutes. It's a reasonableness question that depends on the circumstances.
What affects it. How busy the area is. How visible the hazard was. How frequently the business inspects. A spill in a main aisle of a busy store during peak hours becomes discoverable faster than one in a rarely traveled corner.
What proves duration. Surveillance footage. Inspection or sweep logs showing when the area was last checked. And the condition of the substance itself — a puddle with cart tracks and footprints through it has been there a while; a fresh one hasn't.
The recurring problem is that a genuinely fresh spill, minutes old, usually can't support constructive knowledge on the duration route. Courts have granted summary judgment on exactly that basis.
Which is why the second route matters so much. If the condition occurred with regularity, it was foreseeable, and duration becomes irrelevant. A spill that's two minutes old at a location that floods every rainstorm is a different case.
If it's a recurring problem at that spot, how long it sat stops mattering. ---
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