Slip and Fall and Public Liability Claims in Hong Kong

The short answer: what you are actually claiming

If you are injured in a mall, a restaurant, a building's common areas or on someone else's premises, what you claim for is not the fall itself but the occupier's failure to discharge a statutory duty. That duty is the common duty of care, imposed by section 3 of the Occupiers Liability Ordinance (Cap. 314). Section 3(2) defines it:

Two phrases carry the weight. First, the standard is "reasonably safe", not absolutely safe. Second, safety is measured against "the purposes for which he is invited or permitted" to be there — a customer walking a mall concourse and the same customer in the mall's service mezzanine are not the same case.

Section 2(1) of the Ordinance (Cap. 314, version in force 20 September 2018) provides that "The rules enacted by sections 3 and 4 shall have effect, in place of the rules of the common law" to regulate the duty an occupier owes his visitors in respect of "dangers due to the state of the premises or to things done or omitted to be done on them". Note which sections it names: only 3 and 4. Section 5 (the landlord's duty) and section 6 (the term implied in a contract) stand on their own footing and are not among the common law rules that section 2(1) displaces. Sections 3 to 6 together are the duties this guide is about.

Who is protected: the Ordinance protects "visitors"

A claim you will often see is that the Ordinance merged the common law's separate standards for invitees, licensees and trespassers into a single standard. The section says the opposite. Section 2(2):

What the Ordinance unified is the nature of the duty — the common law once applied different standards of care to invitees and licensees, and now a single common duty of care applies. What it did not do is change who is protected. Who counts as an occupier and who counts as a visitor is still settled by the common law, and the section says in terms that this means the common law's invitees or licensees. A person on the premises without permission is not a "visitor" within the Ordinance at all; that person's position is a common law question outside this statute, which this guide does not cover.

Two extensions are worth knowing:

• Entry under a legal right counts. Section 3(6): "For the purposes of this section, persons who enter premises for any purpose in the exercise of a right conferred by law are to be treated as permitted by the occupier to be there for that purpose, whether they in fact have his permission or not." The opening words are not decoration: the deeming operates inside section 3 and does not by itself make such a person a visitor for the purposes of sections 2, 4 or 5.
• The Ordinance is not confined to "premises". Section 2(3)(a) extends the same rules to a person occupying or having control over "any fixed or movable structure, including any vessel, vehicle or aircraft"; section 2(3)(b) extends them to property damage, and expressly includes "the property of persons who are not themselves his visitors".

Who is the occupier: control, not title

The Ordinance does not define "occupier", because section 2(2) sends that question back to the common law. The practical test is control over the premises, not whose name is at the Land Registry. So a single fall may give you more than one possible defendant:

• the mall's operator and manager, for the concourse;
• the tenant shop or restaurant, for its own unit;
• the contractor, for a construction site.

Residential buildings add two statutory threads:

• Owners' corporations. Section 16 of the Building Management Ordinance (Cap. 344, version in force 13 July 2025) provides that once owners are incorporated, "the rights, powers, privileges and duties of the owners in relation to the common parts of the building shall be exercised and performed by … the corporation to the exclusion of the owners". Section 18(1)(a) requires the corporation to "maintain the common parts and the property of the corporation in a state of good and serviceable repair and clean condition". That is the statutory source of the OC's responsibility for common areas; a management company's responsibility usually comes from the deed of mutual covenant and its management contract.
• Landlords under a repairing tenancy. Section 5(1) of Cap. 314 reaches the absent landlord:

In other words: if the lease puts repair on the landlord and the danger is the landlord's failure to repair, the visitor can sue the landlord directly without first proving the landlord was an occupier. For failed lifts and crumbling staircases, that matters.

Section 5 carries three limits of its own, and a defendant landlord will plead them first:

• Section 5(4): "For the purposes of this section, a landlord shall not be deemed to have made default in carrying out any obligation to the occupier of the premises unless his default is such as to be actionable at the suit of the occupier…". So the visitor's route depends on the tenant being able to sue on the same failure.
• Section 5(3): where the premises are put to a use the tenancy does not permit, persons present solely because of that use are not deemed to be lawfully on the premises as regards that landlord.
• Section 5(5): if you are on the premises only by reason of exercising a right of way, the landlord is under no greater duty than the occupier.

How an occupier escapes: four gates

Most public liability cases turn not on whether a duty exists but on whether it was discharged or displaced. Section 3 gives the occupier four routes. Read each to the end.

Gate one: warning (section 3(4)(a))

The operative words are "without more". Putting out a "Caution Wet Floor" sign is not, by itself, an answer; the question is whether in all the circumstances the warning was enough to enable the visitor to be reasonably safe. One small sign on a large wet area, a sign placed past the point where people have already walked, lighting too poor to read it — each can make a warning inadequate. Conversely, where the warning genuinely was enough, the duty has been discharged.

Gate two: independent contractors (section 3(4)(b))

This is the provision that frequently decides mall slip cases:

Outsourced cleaning, maintenance and fitting-out are the norm in Hong Kong malls and estates. Where the danger arises from a contractor's faulty execution of "construction, maintenance or repair", the occupier can argue it chose and supervised reasonably. This is not an automatic immunity: the occupier must establish two things — that it acted reasonably in entrusting the work, and that it took "such steps (if any) as he reasonably ought" to satisfy itself both that the contractor was competent and that the work had been properly done.

Read the parenthesis. "(if any)" means that where no steps were reasonably called for, the second limb is satisfied by none; it is not a free-standing evidential burden. Read the opening words too, because they cut the other way: the provision reaches only faulty execution of "construction, maintenance or repair". Routine mopping, or a floor left wet after cleaning, is not obviously any of the three — and if it is not, gate two never opens at all. Practical consequence: an injured claimant often needs to consider joining the contractor as a defendant too.

Gate three: risks willingly accepted (section 3(5))

This gate is higher than "you saw the sign". Section 3(5) sends the question back to the ordinary principles of voluntary assumption of risk. Section 7(3) of the Control of Exemption Clauses Ordinance (Cap. 71) adds a directly relevant rule, but it comes with its own opening condition: "Where a contract term or notice purports to exclude or restrict liability for negligence a person’s agreement to or awareness of it is not of itself to be taken as indicating his voluntary acceptance of any risk."

That rule bites only where there is an exemption term or notice — and, as gate four below sets out, section 2(2) of Cap. 71 confines sections 7 to 12 to business liability. In a non-business setting such as a fall at a friend's home, section 7(3) is unavailable, and whether awareness of a notice indicates acceptance of risk is left to the common law.

Gate four: exclusion by agreement — and the ceiling on it

Section 3(1) reads in full:

So the Ordinance itself permits an occupier to extend, restrict, modify or exclude the duty. That is the half most readers have never been told.

But there is an external ceiling, and it comes from a different Ordinance. Section 2(1) of the Control of Exemption Clauses Ordinance (Cap. 71, version in force 13 December 2018), in defining "negligence", expressly captures the Cap. 314 duty:

And section 7(1) provides:

So: where Cap. 71 applies, the "management accepts no liability" notice at the mall entrance cannot exclude liability for personal injury.

That ceiling is itself limited in three ways, and all three need to be read to the end. First, section 2(2) confines sections 7 to 12 to business liability. Second — and this sits at the very end of the same subsection — even business premises have a carve-out:

Third, and this is the limit that bites on the landlord thread above, Schedule 1. Paragraph 1 opens "Sections 7, 8 and 9 do not apply to—" and its second limb is:

A tenancy is a contract creating an interest in land. So section 7 does not reach an exclusion written into the lease itself — and the section 5(1) landlord route above runs on exactly such a tenancy. (Paragraphs 2 to 4 of the same Schedule further exclude sections 7(2) and (3) from marine salvage, towage, charterparties and carriage of goods by sea, and section 7(1) and (2) from contracts of employment except in favour of the employee.)

The practical effect: fall in a mall, shop or restaurant and section 7(1) blocks the notice at the door — a notice is not a contract, so Schedule 1 paragraph 1(b) does not touch it; fall in a friend's home and there is no business liability, Cap. 71 section 7 does not apply, and section 3(1)'s power to exclude has no external ceiling. For premises entered for recreational or educational purposes — parks, pitches, school grounds — you first have to ask whether granting that access falls within the occupier's business purposes.

One thing Cap. 71 does not say. Nowhere in the Ordinance is there a provision applying it to the Crown. Cap. 314 section 7 states in terms that "This Ordinance shall bind the Crown"; section 38 of the Small Claims Tribunal Ordinance states "This Ordinance binds the Crown". Cap. 71 has no counterpart, and the word "Crown" does not appear in it at all. Its section 2(1) does define "business" to include "the activities of a public body, a public authority, or a board, commission, committee or other body appointed by the Chief Executive or Government" — but defining "business" is not the same as binding the Crown. How far section 7(1) constrains the Government in its own capacity as occupier is therefore a question this guide does not assert either way, and it is a live one wherever the premises are public.

Two further provisions matter to tenants and their customers:

• Section 4(1) of Cap. 314: where an occupier is bound by contract to permit strangers to the contract to enter, the duty of care owed to them "cannot be restricted or excluded by that contract, but (subject to any provision of the contract to the contrary) shall include the duty to perform his obligations under the contract, whether undertaken for their protection or not, in so far as those obligations go beyond the obligations otherwise involved in that duty." In other words: section 4(1) does not only set a floor beneath which the duty cannot be cut down — it can also enlarge the duty an occupier owes a stranger to the contract, beyond the ordinary common duty of care, where the occupier's own contractual obligations go further. That enlargement is not unlimited: section 4(2) provides that a contract does not have this enlarging effect over independent-contractor work — faulty construction, maintenance or repair by someone other than the occupier, his servants or persons under his direction — unless the contract expressly says so; and section 4(5) confines the enlargement to obligations undertaken, or renewed by agreement, after the Ordinance's commencement.
• Section 6(1): where people enter under a right conferred by a contract with the occupier — a cinema ticket, a gym membership, a paid attraction, a car park — then so far as the duty depends on a term implied in that contract by reason of its conferring the right, that duty "shall be the common duty of care". Section 6(2) applies the same to fixed and movable structures. A paying entrant does not get a weaker standard because the relationship is contractual.

What the claimant must prove

On the balance of probabilities, four things:

• The defendant was the occupier of the premises (or a landlord under section 5 with a repairing obligation);
• You were a visitor — invited or permitted, or entering under a right conferred by law within section 3(6);
• The common duty of care was breached — the occupier did not take, in the words of section 3(2), "such care as in all the circumstances of the case is reasonable";
• Causation and damage — the breach caused your injury.

Section 3(3) tells the court to weigh the degree of care ordinarily to be looked for in such a visitor, and gives two examples pointing in opposite directions:

The most common practical failure is being able to prove only "I fell there", and not what the danger was, how long it had been there, and how the occupier should have found it. Those three questions are exactly what cleaning and inspection logs, complaint records and CCTV answer.

Limitation: it is not simply "three years"

The single sentence most likely to make someone abandon a live claim is "three years from the accident, and after that it is gone". The Limitation Ordinance (Cap. 347, version in force 9 July 2020) does not say that.

Personal injury. Start with section 27(1), which sets the scope — and settles the "property damage" question further down:

The working words are "consist of or include": it is enough that personal injury is one head of the claim. Section 27(2) then says:

And section 27(3):

Section 27(4) then supplies the period, and it runs from the later of two dates:

"Date of knowledge" is not a matter of common sense; section 27(6) defines it item by item:

"Significant" is itself defined, in section 27(7):

For someone who thought it was only a bruise and learned a year later it was permanent, or who never knew who the occupier actually was, this can be decisive.

Fatal cases. Section 28(3):

Note also the harder bar in section 28(2): no fatal accidents action lies at all if, at the date of death, the injured person could no longer have maintained an action. Section 28(2) itself closes with a clause that locks section 30's discretion out of exactly this gate:

In other words: if the deceased's own action was already time-barred under section 27, that bar cannot be opened by section 30's discretion — section 30 can extend the time limit in section 27 or 28 itself, but it cannot be used to revive a deceased's already-barred cause of action in order to reopen the section 28(2) gate.

Section 28(3) governs the family's own action under the Fatal Accidents Ordinance — not the deceased's own cause of action. If the deceased could already have sued for the injury before dying, that cause of action does not vanish on death; it survives for the benefit of the estate by virtue of section 20 of the Law Amendment and Reform (Consolidation) Ordinance (Cap. 23) — this is what "estate claims" below refers to. Its clock is not section 28(3); it is section 27(5):

In other words: 3 years from the date of death, or the personal representative's date of knowledge if later — the same length as the family's own clock under section 28(3), but a separate one. One expiring does not tell you anything about the other. Section 28(3) alone will not show whether the estate claim is out of time.

Property damage. Section 4(1)(a): actions "founded on simple contract or on tort" shall not be brought after 6 years from the date the cause of action accrued. That 6 years does not apply to the ordinary case this guide is about. One fall that both injures you and breaks your glasses produces a claim that includes personal injury, so section 27 governs the whole action and section 27(2) disapplies section 4 — the glasses run on the same 3 years under section 27(4) as the injury does. Six years is the right answer only for a claim in which no personal injury is claimed at all.

Disability (infancy or unsoundness of mind). Section 22(1) allows the action to be brought within a period running from when the person ceased to be under the disability or died, whichever first occurred, "notwithstanding that the period of limitation had expired". Section 22(2) shortens that period from 6 years to 3 for personal injury and fatal accident claims:

Section 22(1) also carries provisos. The one most likely to matter here is (a): the section does not affect a case where the right of action first accrued to some person, not under a disability, through whom the person under a disability claims.

The court's power to override. Section 30(1) confers a general discretion:

— the section 27 or 28 provisions prejudice the plaintiff, and a decision under the subsection would prejudice the defendant — the court may direct that those provisions shall not apply to the action, or shall not apply to any specified cause of action to which the action relates. Section 30(3) is not a closed list: the court "shall have regard to all the circumstances of the case and in particular to" six matters — the length of and reasons for the delay, the extent to which the evidence has become less cogent because of it, the defendant's conduct after the cause of action arose, any disability of the plaintiff arising afterwards, how promptly and reasonably the plaintiff acted once he knew, and what steps he took to obtain medical, legal or other expert advice.

How to read this section. Do not treat "three years" as a hard wall, and do not treat section 30 as a safety net. Section 30 is a discretion, not a right, and section 30(3)(b) says in terms that the court weighs how much weaker the evidence has become through delay — overwritten CCTV and faded memories cut against you. The correct behaviour is still to move quickly; the correct understanding is that if you think you are already out of time, you should ask a solicitor before giving up.

What can be claimed, and contributory negligence

Once breach is established, the recoverable heads are broadly those in any personal injury claim: pain, suffering and loss of amenity; medical and rehabilitation costs; past and future loss of earnings; care and transport costs; property damage (the glasses or phone broken in the fall). Fatal cases add estate claims (limitation is section 27(5) above, not section 28(3)), dependency, funeral expenses, and bereavement damages under section 4 of the Fatal Accidents Ordinance (Cap. 22, version in force 16 May 2025). Section 4(3) fixes the figure:

That $253,500 is not fixed. Section 4(5) lets the Legislative Council amend subsection (3) by resolution to vary the sum specified — a far lower-friction route than a full amending Ordinance, and the figure can change at any time.

Section 4(1) itself carries an opening proviso, narrow in scope but worth recording:

In other words: if the deceased had already sued in his own lifetime and already recovered a sum for "loss of the deceased's society" under section 20C(1) of Cap. 23, a bereavement claim under section 4 cannot then be brought. That only arises where the deceased's own claim was pursued and succeeded before death — a narrow trigger — but where it does apply, the bar is total, not a proportionate reduction.

Note that section 4(2) restricts bereavement damages to a closed, strictly ordered list of claimants (spouse, then children, then spouse notwithstanding separation, and so on down to brothers and sisters), each of whom must survive the deceased by at least 30 days; and section 4(4) requires the sum to be divided equally where two or more qualify, "(subject to any deduction falling to be made in respect of costs not recovered from the defendant)".

Contributory negligence. If you were also at fault, damages are reduced proportionately. The provision is section 21(1) of the Law Amendment and Reform (Consolidation) Ordinance (Cap. 23, version in force 15 February 2017):

Note the colon. Subsection (1) does not end there; a proviso follows:

Limb (a) sits on this guide's central theme: apportionment does not rescue a claim that meets a contractual defence, and section 3(1) of Cap. 314 is precisely what lets an occupier create one where Cap. 71 does not reach.

Two further points. First, the statutory concept is "fault", which section 21(10) defines as "negligence, breach of statutory duty or other act or omission which gives rise to a liability in tort or would, apart from this section, give rise to the defence of contributory negligence" — wider than negligence alone. Second, section 21(2) requires the court to record the undiscounted figure as well:

So a judgment shows both what the claim was worth and what was deducted — useful when testing whether a settlement offer is reasonable.

Government and public premises: there is no "no special immunity"

Falling in an LCSD park, an FEHD market or a government building is not identical to falling in a private mall. Section 7 of Cap. 314 reads in full:

The Ordinance does bind the Crown — but only so far as Cap. 300 makes the Crown liable in tort. So "the Government is equally bound, with no special immunity" is not accurate: there is a binding, and there is a ceiling, and the ceiling is in Cap. 300. Section 7 names the provision to go to — section 4 — so section 4 has to be read subsection by subsection.

The subsection that makes the Government answerable is section 4(2), not section 4(1)(c). Limb (c) of section 4(1) is expressly a common-law limb — "any breach of the duties attaching at common law to the ownership, occupation, possession or control of property" — but Cap. 314 section 7 does not route the occupier's ss.3–5 duties through the common law; it says in terms that section 4 of Cap. 300 "shall apply in relation to duties under sections 3 to 5 of this Ordinance as statutory duties". That is section 4(2)'s territory: "Where the Crown is bound by a statutory duty which is binding also upon persons other than the Crown and its officers … the Crown shall … be subject to all those liabilities in tort … to which it would be subject if it were a private person." A fall in a government building, a park or a market travels along that limb — the statutory-duty limb, not the common-law property limb.

The same section states further limits, and the first one everyone reaches for does not actually apply here. The proviso to section 4(1) — no proceedings lie against the Crown under limb (a) for an act or omission of a servant or agent unless that act or omission would, apart from the Ordinance, have given rise to a cause of action against the servant or agent personally — is expressly confined to proceedings brought "by virtue of paragraph (a)"; it has no bearing on a section 4(2) statutory-duty claim. What does apply: section 4(4), which carries across to the Crown any enactment that "negatives or limits the amount of the liability of any Government department or officer of the Crown" for the tort in question, applied as it would have applied had the proceedings been against that department or officer directly. Section 4(5) excludes anything done or omitted while discharging responsibilities of a judicial nature. And most concrete of all:

Section 4(6)(b) provides that the subsection "shall continue in force until a day to be appointed by the Governor by Proclamation in the Gazette and shall then expire"; no such day appears in the consolidation, so the exclusion stands. The practical effect: a fall on a government-owned pier, dock or harbour structure is not caught by section 4 at all — and Cap. 314 section 7 gives no more reach than section 4 gives. Finally, section 26 preserves the Crown's right to rely on "the law relating to the limitation of time for bringing proceedings against public authorities".

Procedurally, one concrete rule. Section 13(1) of the Crown Proceedings Ordinance (Cap. 300, version in force 12 December 2019):

That is: when you sue the Crown, the named defendant is the Secretary for Justice, not the department. Note the two limits built into the words: the rule is about the Crown, and about proceedings instituted under Cap. 300. A statutory body that is not the Crown is sued in its own name, and this rule says nothing about it.

As for the belief that suing a public body requires advance notice under some ordinance: Hong Kong law has no general pre-action notice requirement applicable to public liability claims, and there is none in the Public Bus Services Ordinance (Cap. 230). Whether an individual public body's own constituting ordinance imposes one is a question about that ordinance and outside this guide.

(In passing: there is no "Public Omnibus Ordinance" or 《公共汽車條例》 in Hong Kong law. Cap. 230 is the Public Bus Services Ordinance. If a name of that shape is half-remembered, its likely source is section 2A of Cap. 230, which preserves the Ordinance's original title, the Public Omnibus Services Ordinance 1975 (59 of 1975).)

Common scenarios

1. Malls and retail

Typical dangers: spills, floors still wet after cleaning, curled mats, broken tiles, stock stacked in walkways.

What is fought over: how long the danger was there, whether an inspection regime existed, and whether it was actually followed. Cleaning logs and CCTV are central. If cleaning is outsourced, section 3(4)(b) will be raised — so establish early who the contractor is and how it was selected and supervised, and hold the occupier to the words of the provision, which reach only "construction, maintenance or repair". Routine mopping may not be any of the three, and if it is not, the defence is not open on its own terms.

Where entry is under a ticket or membership — a cinema, a gym, a paid attraction, a car park — section 6(1) adds that so far as the duty depends on a term implied in that contract, the duty is the common duty of care.

2. Building common areas

Typical dangers: lift failures, deteriorated staircases, missing or broken handrails, damaged lobby floors, inadequate lighting, emergency lighting that fails during a power cut.

Who to sue: the owners' corporation (Cap. 344 sections 16 and 18(1)(a)), the management company (under the DMC and management contract), and a landlord under a repairing tenancy (Cap. 314 section 5(1)). Committee minutes, repair quotations and complaint records often establish that the danger was already known.

3. Restaurants

Typical dangers: grease at the kitchen or service line, wet washrooms, steep or slick staircases, sharp table edges.

A restaurant is plainly business premises, so Cap. 71 section 7(1) applies in full — a "no liability for any loss" notice on the wall cannot displace liability for personal injury. (Food poisoning sits in a different framework and is outside this guide.)

4. Construction sites (non-employee victims)

Typical dangers: falling objects striking passersby, inadequate hoardings, collapsing equipment.

The occupier is usually the contractor; the developer may also be an occupier. If you are an employee, your route is the Employees' Compensation Ordinance (Cap. 282) — see our work injury guide. The Occupiers Liability Ordinance's personal-injury duty runs to the visitor; its express extension to persons who are not visitors, under section 2(3)(b), is for damage to property, not personal injury, so a passerby struck by falling debris is not brought within that duty merely by being a passerby.

5. Public and quasi-public premises

See "Government and public premises" above. Note also the closing words of Cap. 71 section 2(2). What they address is an occupier's liability towards a person obtaining access for recreational or educational purposes, being liability for loss or damage suffered by reason of the dangerous state of the premises; that liability is not business liability unless granting that person such access for the purposes concerned falls within the occupier's business purposes — and where it is not business liability, section 7 does not reach it.

That is a condition, not a conclusion. Parks, pitches and school grounds sit within the sentence, but sitting within it does not mean section 7's protection is lost: where the occupier is in the business of granting such access — a commercial sports centre, a private school, a paid pitch booking — the liability remains business liability and section 7(1) still blocks the disclaimer. The business-purposes question has to be asked before there is an answer.

One prior question this guide does not assert either way: Cap. 71 contains no provision applying it to the Crown (contrast Cap. 314 section 7 and section 38 of the Small Claims Tribunal Ordinance). How far the Cap. 71 analysis reaches an LCSD park or a government school ground is therefore itself unsettled.

After an accident: in order

• Photograph and film immediately — the extent of the wet area, whether a sign was present and where, the lighting, the state of the floor, and your injuries.
• Get medical attention even if it seems minor. The closer the first medical record is to the accident date, the more persuasive it is — and it is also the starting point for whether the injury was "significant" under section 27(6)(a).
• Report to staff and ask for an incident report to be completed. Keep a copy.
• Ask for CCTV preservation in writing. Specify date, time window and location. This step is time-critical: footage is commonly overwritten within weeks.
• Take witnesses' names and phone numbers.
• Keep bills, receipts and sick leave certificates.
• Keep the shoes and clothing you were wearing. Sole tread and whether it was wet are routinely in issue.
• Consult a solicitor promptly — particularly if you are unsure who the occupier is, or suspect the cleaning or maintenance was outsourced.

Which court

• District Court. Section 32(1) of the District Court Ordinance (Cap. 336, version in force 18 August 2024):

Section 32(2) explains that “the amount of the plaintiff’s claim” means the amount the plaintiff claims after taking into account (a) any set-off or any debt or demand the defendant claims or may recover from the plaintiff; (b) any employees' compensation paid to the plaintiff under Cap. 282; and (c) any contributory negligence, that the plaintiff admits in his statement of claim. Above $3,000,000 the claim belongs in the Court of First Instance — subject to section 34, which lets a plaintiff abandon the excess so that the District Court has jurisdiction, at the price that the judgment "is in full discharge of all demands in the cause of action".

• Small Claims Tribunal. Section 5(1) of the Small Claims Tribunal Ordinance (Cap. 338, version in force 28 March 2025), read with paragraph 1 of the Schedule: any monetary claim founded in contract, quasi-contract or tort where the amount claimed is not more than $75,000. The proviso to paragraph 1 lists what the Tribunal cannot hear — defamation, maintenance agreements within section 14 of Cap. 192, licensed money lenders' recovery actions, matters within the Minor Employment Claims Adjudication Board or the Labour Tribunal, matters referred to the Estate Agents Authority, and costs-only proceedings — and personal injury is not among them.

This is not a question of which forum suits you better. Section 5(2):

So a $40,000 slip-and-fall claim is not a choice between the Tribunal and the District Court: it is not actionable in the District Court. The only openings are section 5(3), which allows such a claim to be brought in another court where it includes a claim for some other relief, redress or remedy other than costs, and section 7, under which the Tribunal may transfer proceedings. On representation, section 19(2) provides that no barrister or solicitor has a right of audience before the Tribunal except when acting as a claimant or defendant in person, and section 19(1)(d) excludes counsel and solicitors from the authorised representatives a party may bring.

Most public liability cases settle before or short of trial, and in practice the counterparty is the occupier's public liability insurer.