Commercial Snow Removal Liability in the Lehigh Valley

When a winter storm hits the Lehigh Valley, the stakes for commercial property managers are incredibly high. A slip-and-fall lawsuit can cost a business thousands of dollars, not to mention the lost revenue if customers cannot safely access the storefront.

Since 2015, Sombra's has provided commercial snow removal across the Lehigh Valley. Here is how professional snow management can reduce winter hazards and preserve a record of the work.

Pre-Treatment as a Baseline

By the time snowflakes are accumulating, it is already too late to prevent the initial layer of ice. Professional snow management starts 12 to 24 hours before the storm hits.

Specialized meteorological feeds are monitored continuously. When a freeze event is incoming, crews are dispatched to apply liquid or granular pre-treatments to parking lots and walkways. This creates a barrier that prevents ice from bonding to the asphalt, making the actual plowing much cleaner and drastically reducing slip hazards.

Zero-Tolerance Walkway Clearing

A plowed parking lot means nothing if the sidewalk leading to the door is a sheet of ice. Dedicated walkway crews armed with snow blowers, shovels, and calcium chloride (which is safer for concrete than standard rock salt) address every surface.

Walkways cleared to the bare pavement are the standard. "Good enough" is not a threshold that holds up in a liability claim.

Comprehensive Documentation

If a slip-and-fall claim is filed against a property, the first thing the insurance company asks for is the snow log.

Sombra's provides commercial clients with time-stamped logs of when crews arrived, what services were performed, what materials were applied, and when they left. The log gives the property manager and insurer a record of what happened and when.

Property managers in the Lehigh Valley benefit most from securing contracts in October, well before the first blizzard arrives.