Boynton Beach · Palm Beach County

Boynton Beach Premises Liability Lawyer

You were hurt somewhere you had every reason to feel safe, and it turns out the owner already knew there was a problem. We can take it from here. Call 833-370-8692 for a free consultation. You pay us nothing unless we win. Our Boynton Beach personal injury lawyers have taken these cases across Palm Beach County since 1993.

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$1.38 million Broward County jury verdict, propane explosion.

Prior crime At the same address establishes foreseeability.

Palm Beach County Our Boynton Beach office takes these claims anywhere in the county.

In Palm Beach County

Premises Liability claims in Boynton Beach

The property will call it unforeseeable, and its insurer will look for a way to make it your own fault for being there. Meanwhile you are dealing with the injury, the time off, and a management company that has stopped returning calls. Proving what they were told before it happened is our job, and we start the day you call.

South Palm Beach County is dense with apartment complexes, plazas and managed communities, and properties like those generate exactly the paperwork these claims need: incident reports, work orders for broken gates and failed lighting, and complaint histories. Where an owner and a management company are separate businesses, both may be responsible and both carry separate insurance.

Short answer

A Boynton Beach premises claim is decided by what the property knew beforehand. For a fall in a store, Florida requires proof the business had actual or constructive knowledge of the hazard. Cases arising here are generally filed in the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit at the South County Courthouse in Delray Beach, and camera footage at most local properties is overwritten within a month.

What to do after a premises liability in Boynton Beach

Report it to the property, and ask for the report number. Tell a manager, a leasing office or hotel front desk what happened and where, and ask for the incident report number before you leave. Properties write these reports for their own insurer rather than for you, and a report you never see is far harder to obtain three months later than a number you wrote down that day.
Photograph the condition before somebody fixes it. The spill gets mopped, the broken step gets patched and the dead light gets a new bulb, often within hours. Photograph the thing itself, then stand back and photograph where it sits, so there is a record of what a person walking there could actually see. If lighting is part of it, go back and photograph at the same hour of night.
Ask about the cameras this week. Most systems on apartment complexes, garages and retail properties overwrite themselves somewhere between 14 and 30 days. A written request that the footage be preserved, naming the date, the time and the camera location, costs nothing and can be sent long before anybody decides whether to bring a claim. After the overwrite there is nothing to ask for.
Find out who owns it and who runs it. The owner and the management company are usually separate businesses with separate insurance, and on a residential property there may be an association and a security contractor as well. Photograph any posted management sign and keep the lease, the folio number or the receipt. Naming the wrong company in month one costs months.
Get treated, and tell them where it happened. Say that you fell on a wet floor at a named store, or that you were attacked in a named garage. The medical record is the earliest independent account of what happened, and a chart that says only that you have a shoulder injury is worth much less later than one that says how you got it.

Where these happen in Boynton Beach

South Palm Beach County has an older population than the rest of the state and a built environment arranged around it, which changes both where people get hurt and which records answer the question.

The Congress Avenue plazas and grocery stores

The retail spine running from Boynton Beach Boulevard down through Delray, where the everyday fall claims in this area come from.
- Sweep and inspection logs, which either document a gap at the right time or were never kept
- Produce, freezer and entrance areas, where the same falls happen at the same stores repeatedly
- Prior incident reports at that location, which is how constructive knowledge is actually established
- Video held by a corporate risk department rather than by the store manager you spoke to
Care facilities and senior living communities

Assisted living and skilled nursing properties across the south county, where a fall is rarely the first sign that something was wrong.
- Fall risk assessments and care plans, which frequently identify the exact risk that then materialized
- Staffing records for the shift, which are the answer to whether anybody was actually available
- State inspection and complaint history for the facility, which is public and is worth reading before anything else
- Call bell and monitoring logs, showing how long somebody waited
Community clubhouses, pools and walkways

The managed communities across Boynton, Delray and Lake Worth, where common areas are maintained by an association and run day to day by somebody else.
- Pool gates, latches and fencing, which are checked against a code rather than debated
- Walkway level changes, settled pavers and lighting on paths people use after dark
- Association minutes and work orders showing a complaint that predates the injury
- A management agreement that decides which of the two companies was responsible for what
Medical office and dialysis parking lots

Properties whose visitors are, by definition, already unwell, and where the walk from the car is part of the hazard.
- Surfaces, curbs and ramp transitions at drop-off points, which are frequently the actual defect
- Lighting on early morning and late afternoon appointments in winter
- Landlord and tenant responsibilities in a multi-suite building, which are set out in the lease
- Maintenance contracts held by a property manager rather than by the practice you were visiting

What causes them

Cameras installed as a deterrent that were never recording, or recording nothing usable
Guard coverage reduced or removed after a documented incident on the property
Spills and tracked-in water in stores, lobbies and food courts, left without a cone or a mop
Stairs, railings and walkways that were failing before anybody fell on them
Balcony and railing collapses in older buildings where the corrosion was already documented

The injuries we see, and what each one turns on

Gunshot and stab wounds

The injuries in a negligent security case are frequently catastrophic, and the medical picture is complicated by surgeries that continue for a year or more. The claim itself, though, is not about the attack. It is about what the property knew before it.

Crush injuries and amputations

Falling objects, machinery, gates and elevator failures, which produce injuries that turn a claim into a life care case: equipment, home modification and decades of work somebody will not do.

The part nobody photographs

People attacked on a property they lived on or worked at frequently cannot go back to it, and that is a real loss even where the physical injuries heal. It is compensable, and it is proved with treating records and with the account of the people who see somebody every day.

What Florida law requires you to prove

What the property owed you depends on why you were there

Florida sorts people on a property into categories, and the duty follows the category. A customer, a hotel guest, a tenant and a delivery driver are generally invitees, owed reasonable care to keep the place safe and a duty to inspect for dangers the owner should have found. A social guest is owed less, and a trespasser less again. The first fight in many of these cases is which category you were in, which is worth settling early because everything else follows from it.

A fall in a store has its own statute

Where somebody slips on a transitory foreign substance in a business establishment, Fla. Stat. § 768.0755 requires the injured person to prove the business had actual or constructive knowledge of the substance. Constructive knowledge is shown by how long it had been there or by the fact that it happened regularly enough to be foreseeable. That is a records question rather than an argument, and it is why the inspection sheets and the camera footage decide these cases.

Security claims, the 2023 change, and the deadlines

In 2023 Florida created a presumption against liability for multifamily residential properties that substantially comply with a defined set of security requirements, including lighting, locks, gates, cameras and a documented crime prevention assessment. Whether a property actually met them is a question of fact and is frequently the whole case. Separately, most Florida negligence claims arising on or after March 24, 2023 carry a two-year deadline under Fla. Stat. § 95.11, and fault is shared under Fla. Stat. § 768.81, where a person found more than 50 percent responsible recovers nothing.

The full statutory detail, and the parts that differ by claim type, sit on our statewide premises liability page rather than being restated in every market.

How we prove it in Palm Beach County

The evidence that decides a south county case is rarely dramatic. It is a log, a work order or an inspection report, and the difficulty is knowing which one to ask for and asking before it is routinely purged.

What we go after, and when

The incident report and its number, which is why asking on the day is worth the awkwardness
Camera footage from the property and from the neighboring units in the same plaza
Sweep logs, inspection sheets and cleaning contracts covering the hours before the fall
Fall risk assessments, care plans, staffing records and call bell logs where a care facility is involved
The facility’s state inspection and complaint history, which is public and can be read immediately
Association minutes, work orders and the management agreement for a community property
Prior complaints about the same condition, which is what turns a single incident into a documented pattern
The lease or the management agreement in a multi-tenant building, which decides who owed the duty

Where an older adult was hurt, the medical work matters as much as the property work. A hip fracture at 78 is not the same injury it is at 40, and the year after it frequently includes a loss of independence that no invoice records.

A setting a premises liability claim in Boynton Beach typically arises from

Who would handle your case

Being hurt in Boynton Beach is hard enough without working out the legal side on your own. The trial lawyers below have handled premises liability claims across Florida since 1993, and one of them will take yours from the first call to the last check. They will tell you what your case is worth and why, and they will be straight with you about the parts that are hard.

How insurance companies handle these claims

A property claim is handled by a commercial carrier rather than an auto adjuster, and on a large property there is often a risk manager involved from the first day.

Fault is moved onto you by degrees: You were on your phone, you were wearing the wrong shoes, you had had a drink. Every percentage point is money off the claim and past 50 percent it ends it. This is why the scene photographs and the camera footage matter more than a recollection, and why both depend on how early the work started.
The attack is called unforeseeable: It is the whole defense in a negligent security case and it is answered with documents rather than with argument. Police call histories for the address, prior incident reports, tenant complaints and work orders for gates and lights that were reported broken are what show a risk the owner already knew about. A pattern in those records is what foreseeability actually looks like.
You are pointed at the wrong company: The owner says the management company ran security. The management company says the owner controlled the budget. The association says the common area is not its responsibility. All three can be answered from the governing documents, the management agreement and the work orders, and the practical consequence of getting it wrong is a claim filed against a company with no policy.

What a claim can include

Psychological injury after an attack

Treatment, and the practical cost of not being able to return to a place you lived or worked. Both are recoverable and both need to be documented while they are happening.

Life care costs after a catastrophic injury

Equipment, home modification, attendant care and the replacement schedule for all of it, set out by a professional so it is a number rather than an argument.

What a family may recover after a death

Funeral and medical expenses, lost support and services, and the losses the statute assigns to particular survivors. Who may claim is decided by statute rather than by agreement within a family.

What we have recovered

Verified matters this firm has handled on premises liability claims. Figures are gross recoveries, before attorney fees, costs and medical liens come out of them.

ConfidentialDiving injury at a short-term rental

A serious neck injury from a dive off the dock of a Fort Myers Airbnb on the Caloosahatchee River, on a failure to warn of shallow, murky water.

Confidential settlement

$1.38 millionPropane explosion

Our client was servicing propane tanks behind a Pompano Beach bakery when they exploded, burning his arms and face.

Broward County jury verdict

Every verdict and settlement we publish, with the press coverage for the ones that were reported. No result predicts another case: every claim turns on its own facts, its own evidence and the insurance actually available.

Another setting a premises liability claim in Boynton Beach arises from

Why Wolf & Pravato in Boynton Beach

A case arising in Boynton Beach is generally heard at the South County Courthouse in Delray Beach rather than downtown West Palm Beach, and the firm’s office on East Gateway Boulevard is a short drive from it. For a client who is already dealing with an injury, the difference between a local office and one at the other end of the county is a practical one rather than a marketing point.

Fewer than one percent of Florida lawyers are Board Certified in Civil Trial law: 861 of them, against a Bar membership over 109,000. Richard Pravato is one, and has been since 2004. Carriers price a claim partly on who is holding it, which is the practical reason that matters to somebody deciding who to call.

A consultation costs nothing, and neither does the case unless we recover money for you. Where we do not believe a claim is worth bringing, we will tell you plainly rather than take it on and let it drift.

Call 833-370-8692 Free consultation. No fee unless we win.

Questions

Boynton Beach premises liability questions

My mother fell in an assisted living facility. Is that a premises case?

It may be both a premises claim and a claim about the care itself, and the distinction decides what has to be proved and on what timetable. What is worth doing straight away is the same either way: request the fall risk assessment, the care plan and the incident report, and read the facility’s state inspection and complaint history, which is public. That history often shows the same issue reported by somebody else.

The insurer says my mother’s injuries are just her age.

They argue it constantly in this part of the county and it is answerable. Florida compensates the aggravation of a pre-existing condition, and what separates one from the other is the record: what she could do the week before, what she could do afterward, and what her own doctors say about the difference. Prior imaging and treatment history are the evidence, and they generally help rather than hurt.

Do I have to go to West Palm Beach for this?

Usually not. A case from Boynton Beach is normally handled at the South County Courthouse in Delray Beach, which serves the southern end of the circuit, and the firm has an office on East Gateway Boulevard here. Most of what happens in a premises case is records work rather than court appearances anyway, and none of that requires you to travel.

What if I was hurt by a physical condition rather than a crime?

That is ordinary premises liability, and the same principle applies: what did the owner know, and when. Defective stairs and railings, inadequate pool barriers, falling objects and failed walkways all turn on inspection records, work orders and prior complaints about the same defect.

The person who attacked me was arrested. Why sue the property owner?

Because a criminal conviction rarely compensates a victim, and the attacker usually has nothing. The civil claim asks a different question: whether the property owner already knew this address had a problem and failed to take reasonable steps. That is a question about their records, not about the attacker.

The questions that come up on every kind of claim, deadlines, fees, recorded statements and fault, are answered on our Florida injury claim FAQ.

Tell us what happened

A lawyer will listen, tell you what Florida law does with those facts, and be straight with you about whether it is worth bringing. We are at 1375 E Gateway Blvd, Boynton Beach, FL 33426.

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