Boynton Beach · Palm Beach County

Boynton Beach Slip and Fall Lawyer

One second on a wet floor can cost you a broken bone, weeks off your feet, and a store that has already decided it was your own fault. 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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§ 768.0755 Requires proof of actual or constructive knowledge.

14 to 30 days How soon surveillance video is routinely overwritten.

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

In Palm Beach County

Slip and Fall claims in Boynton Beach

The store has written its own version of what happened, and its insurer will want a recorded statement from you before you have seen a specialist. Meanwhile you are working out how to pay for the first scan, how long you will be off your feet, and whether anybody even kept the video. Getting hold of that proof is our job, and we start the day you call.

Grocery and retail properties along Congress Avenue and the surrounding plazas produce most of the falls we handle in south Palm Beach County. Florida requires proof that the business knew or should have known, which makes sweep logs, inspection sheets and surveillance footage the whole case. Chain stores keep those records; getting them preserved before the cycle overwrites is the urgent part.

Short answer

A Boynton Beach slip and fall claim turns on proving the business knew about the hazard or should have known, not simply that you fell. Two years to sue for most falls on or after March 24, 2023. South Palm Beach County has an older population than most of the state, and a fall that would bruise a younger person here routinely breaks a hip.

What to do after a slip and fall in Boynton Beach

Report it before you leave. Tell the manager or whoever is on duty, and ask for a written incident report. Ask for a copy of it. A fall that was never reported becomes a fall the business says it has no record of, and that argument is made in almost every one of these files.
Photograph the hazard, not just the injury. The spill, the missing handrail, the broken tile, the unlit stairwell, and photograph it wide enough to show where it is in the room. A mop and bucket arriving is the end of the evidence. So is a repair. Both usually happen within the hour.
Get names. Anyone who saw it, and anyone who came over afterward. Staff turn over, particularly in a seasonal market, and a witness with no contact details is not a witness.
Get examined the same day if you can. Head injuries, spinal injuries and internal bleeding routinely present late, and the gap between the fall and the first medical record is the first thing an adjuster points at. Going to be checked is not an admission that you are badly hurt.
Do not give a recorded statement. The property is entitled to investigate. You are not required to be recorded doing it. That call usually comes within a day or two, while you are still working out how bad it is, and what you say in it is permanent.

Where these happen in Boynton Beach

South county is built around plazas, associations and 55 and over communities, which is why so many of these claims run against a management company rather than a store. It also means the injuries are more serious than the same fall elsewhere.

Plazas along Congress Avenue and Boynton Beach Boulevard

The strip plaza is the shape of retail here, and a fall in one is frequently the landlord’s problem rather than the shop’s.
- Walkways, lots and level changes usually sit with the landlord under the lease
- Maintenance is often a third company again beyond that
- Prior incidents at the same plaza we can get and are what establish foreseeability
Grocery and pharmacy

The everyday fall, and the best documented one.
- Tracked-in rain, produce misting and freezer condensation drive most of them
- Chains keep recorded inspection schedules that independent stores never generate
- The gap in a sweep log is worth more than a photograph of the spill
55 and over communities and condominium associations

A fall in a clubhouse, a walkway, a pool deck or a stairwell is a claim against the association and usually its management company.
- The association carries insurance for exactly this and no neighbor pays out of pocket
- Board minutes and work orders frequently show the hazard had already been raised
- Reserve studies and vendor contracts say who was supposed to be maintaining it
Medical offices, clinics and rehabilitation centers

A large share of what we see happens on the way into or out of an appointment.
- Entry mats, thresholds and unmarked level changes at the door
- Building services are usually a separate company from the practice
- Wet floors from equipment and cleaning during opening hours
Restaurants and their entrances

Tile at a doorway, a ramp built to look level, and a lot that drains toward the front step.
- Independent restaurants rarely keep an inspection log, so the case is built from witnesses and prior complaints
- Health inspection history is public and sometimes records the same condition
- Cameras behind a counter often cover the door by accident
Sidewalks and public property

A cracked or lifted public sidewalk is a claim against the city or the county, under its own rules.
- A written notice has to be presented before suit
- Worth pursuing, and easy to lose on procedure rather than on facts
- Which is a reason to ask early rather than late

What causes them

Broken, uneven or missing floor tile, and transitions between two surfaces
Stairs with no handrail, a loose handrail, or treads worn smooth
Lighting out in a stairwell, a parking structure or a walkway
Pool decks and entryways where the surface was never rated for wet use
Cords, pallets, stock and cleaning equipment left in a walkway

The injuries we see, and what each one turns on

Facial injuries and dental damage

A fall forward onto a hard edge takes teeth, breaks orbital and nasal bones and leaves scarring somewhere a person cannot cover. Dental work of this kind is rarely one procedure and rarely holds for life, so the claim has to be built on what a treating dentist says the next thirty years look like rather than on the bill for the first repair.

The fear that comes after

People who have fallen badly once stop doing things: stairs, wet floors, going out alone. It is a recognized consequence rather than a personality change, it shows up in treating records when somebody asks about it, and it is one of the largest parts of what an older client actually loses. Adjusters do not raise it and it goes unclaimed unless somebody documents it early.

Soft tissue, and why it is not minor

Torn rotator cuffs, meniscus tears and ligament damage do not show on an X-ray and are routinely written off by adjusters as strains. They are also the injuries most likely to become permanent when they are not properly diagnosed early, and a torn shoulder in someone who works with their hands is a claim about earnings, not about pain.

What Florida law requires you to prove

Florida makes you prove something most states do not

Under Fla. Stat. § 768.0755, a person who slips on a transitory foreign substance in a business has to prove the business knew about it or should have known. It is not enough that the floor was wet and you fell.

Should have known is proved with circumstantial evidence: that the condition had been there long enough that ordinary care would have caught it, or that it happened with enough regularity to be foreseeable. That second route is the one people overlook, and it is why an inspection log with a gap in it is often worth more than a photograph.

Two years, and it now runs from the fall

For falls on or after March 24, 2023, the deadline to sue is two years under Fla. Stat. § 95.11. Earlier falls generally keep the older four-year deadline. A claim against a city or county carries its own written notice requirement on top, and those deadlines are different again.

Being partly at fault, and the line at 50 percent

Under Fla. Stat. § 768.81, a person found more than 50 percent responsible recovers nothing. At or under half, the recovery is reduced by that share. Expect the argument that you were on your phone, wearing the wrong shoes, or should have seen it, because that argument is worth real money to the other side and past the halfway mark it is worth the entire claim.

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

How we prove it in Palm Beach County

Most of these files are won on somebody else’s paperwork, and a good share of it belongs to a company the injured person never dealt with.

What we go after, and when

The incident report written on the day, which frequently contradicts the position taken months later
Sweep, inspection and floor-care logs, and the gaps in them
Surveillance footage, commonly overwritten inside 14 to 30 days
Association records: board minutes, work orders, vendor contracts and reserve studies
The lease and the common-area maintenance terms, where a plaza landlord is involved
Prior incidents and complaints at the same address
Public health inspection history, where a restaurant is involved
The treating records from Bethesda Hospital East, where the serious falls in this part of the county go

A written preservation demand in the first days is what keeps that available, and it goes to the management company and the contractor as well as to the business itself.

A setting a slip and fall 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 slip and fall 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 fall claim is handled by an adjuster working from a file and a set of instructions, and the instructions are consistent enough that the sequence is predictable. Knowing what is coming is worth more than any argument you could make on the call.

The file is built around your share of the blame: Expect the argument that you were on your phone, wearing the wrong shoes, or should have seen it. It is worth real money to them under Fla. Stat. § 768.81, and past the halfway mark it is worth the entire claim, so it is made in almost every file whether or not the facts support it.
The gap in your treatment becomes the whole argument: Miss three weeks because of work, childcare or the cost of a co-pay and the file records it as evidence you were fine. Software scores these claims partly on how continuous the treatment was. Telling a doctor why you could not come in puts the reason in the record, where it answers the point instead of leaving it open.
Nothing moves until it has to: Delay is cheap for a carrier and expensive for somebody who is out of work. What changes the pace is a claim that is documented, on file, and in front of a firm the carrier knows will file suit rather than keep negotiating. Insurers track which firms in a county actually try cases, and it shows up in the offers.

What a claim can include

Scarring and disfigurement

A permanent mark from a fall, a surgical scar or a graft is its own head of damages and is valued separately from the treatment that caused it. It matters more where somebody cannot cover it and more again where their work puts them in front of people.

What you can no longer do

Not the diagnosis, the life around it: the stairs in your own house, lifting a grandchild, the round of golf, sleeping through the night. This is argued from the specifics of an ordinary week before the fall, which is why we ask about them early rather than at mediation.

Out of pocket and household costs

Travel to treatment, equipment, and help with the things somebody used to do themselves. Small individually, and routinely left out of a claim nobody documented.

What we have recovered

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

$95,000Hotel lobby slip and fall

Our client was leaving a restaurant through the lobby of the Westin Fort Lauderdale Beach Resort when she slipped on a freshly mopped floor and fractured her ankle.

Settlement after suit was filed

$300,000Restaurant slip and fall

A restaurant that ignored its own posted safety procedures broke an elderly client’s arm, then argued at trial that she had taken too much medication, then not enough, and finally that she caused the spill herself from fifteen feet away.

Miami-Dade 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 slip and fall claim in Boynton Beach arises from

Why Wolf & Pravato in Boynton Beach

A south county fall is filed in the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit at the South County Courthouse in Delray Beach, a few minutes from this office. Which courthouse a case would be tried in is part of how an insurer values it.

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 slip and fall questions

My father fell in his 55 and over community. Is he suing his neighbors?

In practical terms he is claiming against the association’s insurance, which every owner has already paid for through assessments. Nobody writes a personal check. Association records tend to help as well, because board minutes and work orders often show the condition had been reported before it hurt anyone.

I fell in the walkway of a plaza on Congress Avenue, not inside the shop. Who is responsible?

Usually the landlord or its management company. A tenant’s lease typically carves out the walkways, the lot and the level changes between them, and maintenance is often contracted out beyond that again. The lease and the maintenance agreement settle it, and both we can get.

My mother broke her hip. Is that different from an ordinary fall claim?

It is a different claim in everything but name. A hip fracture in an older adult usually means surgery, rehabilitation and a permanent change in what somebody can manage alone, and the value is in the care ahead rather than the bills behind. An early offer priced on the emergency room visit is the most common way these are underpaid.

The restaurant says it has no records at all. Does that sink it?

No, and it is common with independents. What replaces the log is witnesses, prior complaints, the public health inspection history for that address, and whatever a counter camera happened to catch of the door. The absence of a record is also an argument in itself where a business had no inspection routine to begin with.

Where would my case be filed?

In the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit at the South County Courthouse in Delray Beach for most Boynton Beach claims. It is the same circuit as downtown West Palm Beach and a different building, and which one a case sits in is decided by where the fall happened.

How quickly do I need to act?

Faster than the filing deadline suggests. Surveillance video is commonly overwritten within 14 to 30 days, and once it is gone, proving how long the hazard sat there becomes very difficult. A written preservation demand in the first days is often the single most valuable step in the whole case.

Why are slip and fall cases harder in Florida?

Because of Fla. Stat. § 768.0755. In many states, proving a dangerous condition existed is close to enough. Florida additionally requires proof that the business knew about it or that it had been there long enough that they should have. That extra element is what the case is usually fought over.

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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