I've quoted the essential facts of the incident in question. The landlord is only liable to your fiancée if the landlord was negligent and the landlord's negligence was the proximate cause of the injury she suffered. If the landlord was negligent then what the landlord is liable to pay is compensation for the actual harm suffered by your fiancée suffered as a result. Here that would be any cost of cleaning the clothes if she had to take them the cleaners and reimbursement of medical costs she incurred as a result of the negligence. As others have already pointed out, she cannot win anything for injuries she might have suffered but didn't nor can either of you successfully sue for damages for incidents that might occur but have not yet happened.
In order to determine whether the landlord was negligent it would be important to know whether the landlord had been informed of that particular pile of dog waste and if so, how long the landlord knew before your fiancée slipped in it. It is also important to know how regularly the landlord's employees check the grounds for this sort of thing and when the last check was done before the incident where your fiancée slipped and fell. Bear in mind that the landlord is not required to have the property in perfect condition nor is the landlord required to clean up this stuff the moment it happens. What the landlord must do is follow reasonable procedures to eliminate the potential risks. A reasonable schedule of inspection and fairly prompt clean up of issues found, for example, would tend to meet the landlord's responsibility. The law does not fix a definite schedule for what the landlord must do, i.e. there is no specific black letter rule that says it must be done every 2 hours or whatever. The trier of fact — the jury, or the judge if there is no jury — would decide what is reasonable based on all the evidence presented. Note that to find out much of what is needed to really pursue this matter would require extensive discovery in the litigation, and that isn't cheap.
Even if the landlord was negligent, the landlord may defend based on any negligence of your fiancée in failing to avoid a hazard she saw or should have seen had she been paying proper attention. So if that pile of dog waste was in a spot that made it readily visible to people walking by then she should have seen it and avoided it. If she failed to do that then she was also negligent. In that circumstance under Georgia's comparative negligence scheme the trier of fact must then determine the degree of fault for each party. If the trier of fact decides that your fiancée was at least 50% at fault for the slip and fall, she recovers nothing. If the trier of fact determines that your fiancée was less than 50% negligent but was at least somewhat negligent then her damages will be reduced by the degree of her fault.
So, given the cost it would take to properly litigate this your fiancée would need to have some significant damages to make it worthehile. So far it is not clear that she has any damages beyond cleaning clothes and cost of a doctor's visit (if she actually did go to a doctor over this). It is not at all clear the landlord was negligent in the first place. But even if the landlord was negligent, there is a very real possibility that your fiancée would be determined at least 50% at fault and in that case she'd get nothing.
Slip and fall lawsuits aren't a lottery where you win huge amounts for very little in actual damages. So far I'm not seeing enough here to justify the cost and trouble to sue the landlord. But your fiancée may of course consult a personal injury lawyer about it. Most will give free initial consultations. Just don't get your hopes up very high that the lawyer will tell you there is a great case to be had here. Small incidents like this are generally things not worth pursuing.
Thank you very much for your response, a conversation and understanding is all I have been asking for here. I had a similar conversation with her highlighting some of your points when it happened. Priority one at the time, getting her calm and relaxed. She wasn't out of control by any means but emotional nonetheless. Got her cleaned up, took care of her clothes in the other bathroom, and that gave her time to decompress. No dry cleaning costs because they weren't necessary. Frankly, dog mess is stinky mud - no big deal. I'm sure you might agree with that. Where we do have an issue in this situation and forgive me if I forgot to include it before, we sent 4 requests into the office informing them they were out of bags for residents to use to clean this stuff up. I love my fiance however I won't ever forget that she's human. So when she told me she fell in dog mess, my instinctive curiosity was she might be full of what she claimed to have stepped in so I challenged her on it. Take me outside, show me where you fell. She couldn't find it at first although we went to the exact area she swore to have fallen in. Keep in mind, we are in Georgia and we're in the brunt of fall so there are leaves blowing and flying around everywhere. Just when I was about to write her off, she found it and showed me. Her shoe print in it and all. Okay, now this is plausible and couples well with us making multiple pleads to the office to get this stuff cleaned up. Now, I appreciate the irony as much as I'm sure that you do that she happened to be the one who fell on what she predicted. Hence my initial skepticism. So either my fiance is gone girl or the math actually adds up. Continuing to look around the property, we realized that we're walking around what feels like a feces infested minefield that requires the skills of a hopscotch champion to navigate without stepping into them. It would be easier to just teach our dog to do their business in the middle of the street and pick it up from there and avoid it all together. But that wouldn't work because my neighbors drive like idiots... regardless of the speed bumps. So! We have the documentation to show that we have notified them repeatedly, there is arguable justification on how she fell. Despite the fact that she has no permanent damage or is unable to work. There is a civil argument that can be made against the property for neglecting the information and notifications they have been given. And yes, I took her to my chiropractor where he has captured information and collected payments that, frankly, is otherwise useless of a judge or attorney's time and infinitely worse, ours. So, again, what we are caring about here is we are trying to be good neighbors and residents by letting them know of a problem that we assume they are unaware of because the problem has both been sitting and piling up for weeks at a time and they ignore their responsibility to do anything about it. They were extremely condescending and patronizing when we took this problem to them and as I am sitting here writing this response, the problem has still not been taken care of. Ultimately, that's the solution we are after. Education, understanding of rights and someone to teach them that next time someone slips and falls on a pile of dog mess, they might not be so fortunate for that person to be someone who can hit the chiropractor drive thru for a few visits and be fine. It could be an 80 year old elderly woman who might require several thousands of dollars in repair costs. Do you see where we are now? The motivation here is about others and ourselves. If there was any financial gain for us to get from this, we are simply only interested in being able to move out of the property, fine and early termination fee free, and go find a better experience where people are treated better and folks live up to the responsibilities they are legally and financially required to obey. That's it. Attorney's however can't pay their bills and put their kids through college nor can they maintain escrow nesteggs going around fighting for principle alone, not would we ever ask one to. With that said, in all fairnesses on the table and being justly considered. What are the realistic chances an attorney can take this story, strongly worded, with documentation, photos, and date / timestamps into a negotiation targeting settlement instead of a courtroom yet not afraid to go there if need be with what we have here? We are quickly learning with our story from other residents that there are several situations where they are getting the short end of the stick and they just take it on the chin. It appears that NO ONE is standing up to these people for fear of losing their place to live. My fiance and I have the luxury of not having to be that paranoid. We can afford to move at any time therefore we can afford to speak up. That reality has this property management company in a very uncomfortable position for them. Hence we have earned bargaining power. Does it feel like enough to you guys for an attorney to step and pay for their time with the story? I don't know but that's what I'm asking. If an attorney can get us fine free out of the lease, put some coin in their pockets for their time and we all walk away happy, great! If not, great! If an attorney has the wherewithal to build a case against what we have just learned to be a legal lease agreement with a reported $1B property management company that has more than 50 employees thus raising the punitive damage ceiling to a greater capacity AND the attorney brings in a larger pot for us to divide amongst ourselves, then great! I'll buy the first round when the judgement is signed.
