Escalator and Elevator Injuries: Who's Liable in Michigan?

We ride them without a second thought — the escalator at the mall, the elevator in a Detroit office tower, the moving walkway at the airport. But when this equipment is poorly maintained, a routine trip can end in a mangled foot, a broken hip, or worse.

Escalators and elevators are heavy, powerful machines with dozens of moving parts. In Michigan they carry shoppers through Somerset and Twelve Oaks, patients through hospital atriums, and commuters through parking decks and transit stops. When an owner or maintenance company cuts corners, the people who pay the price are the riders. If you or a loved one was hurt, you may have a premises liability or product claim — and understanding who is responsible is the first step.

How Escalator and Elevator Injuries Happen

These are rarely "freak accidents." Most trace back to something a company should have caught and fixed. Common causes include:

• Sudden stops or jerks that throw riders off balance and down the steps
• Missing, loose, or broken steps and treads on an escalator
• Gaps and entrapment — shoes, fingers, drawstrings, or clothing caught where the steps meet the comb plate or side skirt
• Elevator misleveling, where the car stops several inches above or below the floor, creating a trip hazard
• Doors that close on riders or fail to reopen
• Free-fall or sudden drops from cable, brake, or control failures
• Entrapment between floors, sometimes for long periods
• Worn handrails, missing safety signage, or deactivated emergency stops

Common Injuries

Because of the forces involved, these accidents produce serious harm: crushed or amputated fingers and toes, deep lacerations, ankle and foot fractures, broken hips from falls, head injuries and concussions, spinal injuries, and in elevator free-fall or entrapment cases, catastrophic or fatal outcomes. Children and older adults are especially vulnerable.

Who Is Liable? Often More Than One Company

One of the biggest reasons to involve a lawyer early is that these cases frequently involve multiple responsible parties, and each will try to point at the others. Potential defendants include:

The Property Owner or Operator

The mall, hospital, hotel, or building owner has a duty to keep the premises reasonably safe for the people it invites in. That includes inspecting the equipment, responding to known problems, and roping off or shutting down a unit that isn't working right. An owner who ignored complaints or skipped inspections can be liable.

The Maintenance and Service Company

Most escalators and elevators are serviced under contract by specialized companies. If a technician performed a repair negligently, missed an obvious defect, or fell behind on required maintenance, that company can be on the hook — and its inspection and service logs are often the most important evidence in the entire case.

The Manufacturer

If a design or manufacturing defect caused the failure — a faulty brake, a defective control board, a step assembly prone to breaking — the manufacturer may face a product liability claim in addition to any negligence by the owner or servicer.

Michigan Law: Premises Liability, Not No-Fault

Michigan's no-fault system covers motor vehicle crashes, not falls on someone else's property. An escalator or elevator injury is a premises liability or ordinary negligence claim, which means you generally must prove the owner or servicer knew, or should have known, about a dangerous condition and failed to fix or warn about it in a reasonable time.

You may hear defendants raise the "open and obvious" doctrine — the argument that a hazard was so plain that a careful person would have avoided it, so the owner owed no duty. Michigan's Supreme Court reshaped this defense in Kandil-Elsayed v. F & E Oil (2023): an open-and-obvious hazard no longer automatically defeats a claim. Instead, it factors into the comparative fault analysis. That's a meaningful shift, because a hidden mechanical defect inside an escalator is exactly the kind of danger a rider cannot see or appreciate.

Comparative Fault and the Filing Deadline

Michigan follows modified comparative negligence. If you were partly at fault — say, you were carrying a child on a stopped-then-restarted escalator — your recovery is reduced by your share of fault, and if you're found more than 50% responsible, non-economic damages like pain and suffering can be barred. Insurers exploit this constantly, so how the story is documented matters.

The statute of limitations for most Michigan personal injury claims is three years from the date of injury under MCL 600.5805. If a government entity owns the building — a courthouse, a public parking structure, a transit facility — special notice requirements and much shorter deadlines can apply. Waiting to call a lawyer can quietly forfeit the case.

What to Do If You're Hurt on an Escalator or Elevator

1. Get medical care right away. Crush and head injuries can look minor at first and worsen fast.
2. Report it and demand an incident report. Ask building or store management to document what happened and get a copy or report number.
3. Photograph everything — the equipment, the exact spot, any exposed defect, warning signs (or the absence of them), and your injuries.
4. Note the unit number. Escalators and elevators carry ID and inspection tags; photograph them.
5. Get witness names and numbers and look for nearby security cameras.
6. Preserve your shoes and clothing if they were torn or caught — they can be physical evidence.
7. Don't give a recorded statement to an insurer or sign anything before speaking with a lawyer.
8. Call an attorney quickly. Maintenance logs and surveillance footage get overwritten — a fast legal hold can preserve the proof.

Why These Cases Need a Real Investigation

The difference between a denied claim and a strong one is usually the evidence buried in service records, state inspection reports, and repair histories. We know how to demand those documents before they disappear, bring in engineering experts to reconstruct the failure, and sort out which company — owner, servicer, or manufacturer — actually caused the harm. You shouldn't have to untangle that alone while you're recovering.

Bottom Line

An escalator or elevator that injures a rider almost always failed because someone didn't do their job. Michigan law gives you a path to hold the responsible parties accountable — but the clock is running and the evidence is perishable. If you were hurt, get it looked at before the trail goes cold.

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