Falls at Lowe's tend to trace back to the realities of a home-improvement warehouse: hoses and irrigation runoff in the garden center, slick concrete at the entrance on rainy days, stray hardware or mulch spilled in an aisle, carts and lumber flatbeds crowding the walkways, stock being pulled from high racking during business hours. It is a working environment that customers move through unprotected, and when it goes wrong, injuries are rarely minor.
After a fall, Lowe's builds its own record — an incident report, often with photos and employee statements — and sends the matter into a corporate claims pipeline. You will not be given the report or the surveillance video at the customer-service desk. Here is how the process works and how to keep the evidence intact.
- Lumber & building materials — Partly outdoor or covered-outdoor space with weather exposure and forklift traffic.
- Garden center — Outdoor watering leaves concrete wet for extended stretches — a documented hazard pattern at this kind of store, including a jury verdict at another Lowe's location over a wet garden-center walkway.
- Pro desk — A dedicated contractor checkout with its own queue and floor traffic.
- High-shelf aisles — Self-service shelving stocked above eye level — courts elsewhere have recognized that this stocking method itself can make falling-merchandise risk foreseeable, without needing proof the store knew about that specific item.
- Lumber loading — An outdoor loading zone with forklifts and flatbed carts moving during business hours.
- Checkout lanes — Dropped merchandise and bag spills in a high-traffic lane.
- Entry vestibule — Rain tracked in from a large parking lot pools on hard floor just past the entrance.
- Parking lot & flatbed loading — A large lot with heavy flatbed-cart and vehicle-loading traffic.
What happens after you report a fall at Lowe's
Report the fall before leaving, even if adrenaline is telling you you are fine. A manager or department supervisor will complete an incident report covering where and how you fell, what was on the floor, and who witnessed it. Give a short, accurate account — no guesses, no reflexive apologies — and gather your own evidence in parallel: photos of the hazard, the names of responding employees, and contact information for witnesses.
As with most national chains, the claim then leaves the building. Lowe's routes customer injuries to a corporate claims operation, and the person who calls you will be a claims professional working from that report. Expect a claim number, sympathetic questions, and a request for a recorded statement. Note everything down, commit to nothing, and get advice before you give any recorded account.
Why Lowe's won't just hand you the report — or the footage
The incident report was created by the company for the company — it is treated as internal claims material, and no store employee has authority to release it. Formal requests, and sometimes litigation discovery, are how it comes out. The video is governed by storage, not policy: surveillance systems recycle their recordings on a rolling basis, often days to a few weeks depending on the system. The footage showing a hose left across a garden-center walkway for an hour is the difference between a provable case and a swearing contest — and it is being overwritten on a schedule nobody at the store is watching for you.
What a preservation-of-evidence letter does
A preservation-of-evidence letter puts Lowe's on written, dated notice to preserve the incident report, footage from every camera covering your fall and the lead-up to it, department inspection logs, and the roster of employees on shift. After notice, evidence that conveniently vanishes can support sanctions and adverse jury instructions — which is why these letters work. Our role is straightforward and honest: we do not have the report or the footage, and neither does anyone outside Lowe's. We help you demand preservation immediately, then request and pursue the records through the proper channels until they are produced.
What to do right now
See a doctor today; hard-concrete falls produce injuries that escalate over days, and early documentation ties them to the incident. Keep the shoes and clothing you wore, save your receipt or card statement showing you were there, and write out the details tonight — department, time, hazard, cones or no cones, who responded.
The California statute of limitations for most injury claims is two years, but the surveillance system will not hold your evidence anywhere near that long. Days matter. Get the preservation letter out first, then the written request for the incident report. If you want help doing both this week, that is exactly what this service is for.
Who answers a Lowe's claim
Lowe's discloses its self-insurance structure in unusual detail — including the exact dollar amount at which outside insurance takes over.
- Insurance posture
- Self-insured, confirmed in Lowe's own recent SEC filing. Lowe's retains risk up to $2 million per occurrence for workers' compensation and $10 million per occurrence for general liability, product liability, and auto liability, with excess insurance above those amounts. Its self-insurance liability totaled $971 million as of the most recent fiscal year-end.
- Who adjusts the claim
- Sources connecting Sedgwick to Lowe's are stronger for workers'-compensation claims than for customer injury claims specifically — we're not naming a customer-claims administrator here because the evidence for one wasn't solid enough to publish as fact.
- Store format
- Corporate-operated; no franchise structure. "Lowe's Home Centers, LLC" is the entity typically named in California litigation.
- Evidence angle
- A MyLowe's Rewards account has been reported to retain purchase history for roughly three years (five for major appliances) if a phone number or email was given at checkout — worth checking your own account.
Claims-handling details change over time. This is a starting point for your own claim, not a statement about how yours will be handled — and the out-of-state cases referenced above illustrate a hazard pattern, not California legal precedent.
Sources for company and claims details
Checked August 14, 2026. Processes can change; confirm the recipient before sending correspondence.
Fell here? Start your request now — the sooner the preservation letter goes out, the better the chance the footage still exists.
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