Fort Lauderdale Drowning Accident Lawyer
Someone went into the water and did not come out of it the same, and you are being told it was nobody’s fault. We can take it from here. Call 954-522-5800 for a free consultation. You pay us nothing unless we win. Our Fort Lauderdale personal injury lawyers have taken these cases across Broward County since 1993.
Drowning Accident claims in Fort Lauderdale
You are being asked about long-term care, or about a funeral, by people who have already decided this was an accident. Whether a gate, a drain cover, a depth marking, a warning sign or a certified lifeguard was required at that water, and whether it was there, is a question with a documented answer. Getting it is our job, and it starts the day you call.
Broward puts three completely different kinds of water beside one another and each answers to somebody different. There is guarded ocean beach patrolled by municipal ocean rescue with towers, flags and posted hours, and open sand a short walk from it. There is a residential canal and Intracoastal network running behind a large share of the county's housing, with seawalls, docks without ladders and unlit edges. And there are several hundred hotel, resort and building pools, each a public swimming pool under Florida law with a permit behind it. Establishing which body controlled the water is the first job, and where that body is a city or a county the notice deadlines start running immediately.
Broward drowning claims are filed in the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit. The county combines guarded ocean beach with an enormous canal and Intracoastal network and several hundred building and hotel pools. Which body controlled the water decides the deadlines, and a public one carries written notice requirements.
What to do after a drowning accident in Fort Lauderdale
- Write down the timeline while anybody still remembers it. What time you last saw them, what time somebody noticed, what time anybody went in, what time compressions started, what time help arrived. Approximate is fine and written down today is worth more than exact and remembered next month. This timeline is what every expert on both sides will work from, and the only fixed points in it are the dispatch record and the hospital chart.
- Get names before people leave. Guests, staff, the person who pulled them out, anybody who was already in the water, the attendant or guard and where they were standing. At a hotel, resort, apartment or public facility these people scatter within the hour and are close to unfindable a month later. A first name and a phone number is enough to work from.
- Photograph the water and everything around it. The drains and their covers, the depth markings, the signage, the rescue equipment where it hangs or does not, the lighting, the ladders, the surface of the deck. Drains get re-covered and signs go up within days, and none of it is sinister, and all of it removes the state of the facility on the day.
- Ask who holds the permit, and write down the answer. A public pool operates under a permit from the Department of Health, and the permit names who is responsible for it. Asking at the front desk before anybody has spoken to a lawyer usually produces a straight answer. Asking two weeks later usually does not.
- Do not let anybody settle the medical picture early. Where somebody survived, nobody honest can tell you the outcome in the first weeks. Imaging, monitoring and repeated assessment over months are what establish the injury. An offer that arrives while a child appears to have recovered is priced on that appearance, and a release signed then cannot be reopened when the deficits emerge.
Where these happen in Fort Lauderdale
Broward puts guarded ocean, unguarded canal and permitted pool water within a few blocks of each other, and each answers to somebody different.
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Guarded ocean beach
Stretches patrolled by municipal ocean rescue, with towers, a flag system and posted hours.
- What the flags were showing, and whether known conditions were communicated
- Whether the entry point was inside the guarded stretch or a short walk outside it
- Posted hours against the time somebody entered the water
- A city or county operator, which brings notice deadlines and a damages cap from day one
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Canals and the Intracoastal
A residential canal network running behind a large share of the county’s housing.
- Seawall edges and docks with no ladder, so anybody in the water has no way out
- Unlit edges where a drop is invisible after dark
- Which body is responsible for a given stretch, which is frequently more than one
- Boat traffic in water people also swim in
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Hotel and resort pools along the beach
A dense corridor of permitted public pools, busy and open late.
- The Department of Health permit, and whether operation matched what it was granted on
- Depth markings, underwater lighting and water clarity after dark
- Rescue equipment on the wall it is supposed to hang on
- Attendants advertised by a property against attendants actually provided
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Apartment and condominium amenity decks
Pools serving five or more units, which makes them public pools under Florida law.
- Anti-entrapment equipment, and secondary protection at pools built before 1993
- Water clouded by filtration nobody maintained, so the bottom cannot be seen
- Permit and inspection history, including any repeat violation
- An association, a manager and a pool contractor, each with separate coverage
What causes them
- A facility operating without a current permit, or against the conditions the permit was granted on
- Lifeguards on duty without current certification, or advertised and not actually provided
- Drain covers missing, damaged, or not meeting the entrapment standard
- No secondary protection at an older pool with a single main drain
- Depth markings worn away, painted wrong, or absent where the bottom changes
- Rescue equipment missing from the wall it is supposed to hang on
What oxygen deprivation actually does
Hypoxic brain injury, which is the outcome that decides these cases
The brain is damaged by the absence of oxygen rather than by any impact, and the damage is done in minutes. What follows is not a single injury but a range of outcomes running from no lasting effect to a person who will need care every day for the rest of a long life.
Where somebody is left in the middle of that range, the effects show up as trouble with attention, memory, processing speed, mood and self-control, and they show up months later rather than at discharge. Nobody connects them because the discharge note said the child was doing well.
The survivor is frequently the larger case
This is the part families find hardest to hear and it is worth saying plainly. A child resuscitated at the edge of a pool may live sixty more years needing help with everything, and that claim is built on decades of care rather than on what happened that afternoon. It needs a life care plan and an economist alongside the liability work, and it takes time to assemble properly.
Lung injury that arrives after everyone has relaxed
Water in the lungs sets off inflammation that can worsen over the following hours and days, long after somebody has been sent home apparently fine. Anybody who was under and needed help getting out belongs in front of a doctor the same day, whatever they say about feeling all right.
What Florida law requires you to prove
Which chapter governed the water
The full detail sits on our Florida drowning page rather than being repeated in each market. The short version is that a pool serving five or more units is a public swimming pool under Fla. Stat. § 514.011, needs a permit to operate, and answers to equipment and certification requirements a private home does not. Establishing which category the water fell into is the first thing that happens.
The deadline, and the shorter one for public water
Most claims from an incident on or after March 24, 2023 carry two years under Fla. Stat. § 95.11, running from the date of death where somebody died later. Where a city, county or school board controls the water, Fla. Stat. § 768.28 requires written notice first, blocks suit until the agency has had its six months, and caps what a public body pays at $200,000 for one person and $300,000 for one incident.
The supervision argument, and where the line sits
Fault is divided under Fla. Stat. § 768.81, and since 2023 somebody found more than half responsible recovers nothing. Every drowning defense is built on the idea that an adult should have been watching. It reduces a recovery rather than ending one, and it does not answer whether the facility carried the equipment, the certification and the permit it was operating under.
The full statutory detail, and the parts that differ by claim type, sit on our statewide drowning accident page rather than being restated in every market.
How we prove it in Broward County
A Broward file is built from a timeline fixed by other people’s records and a set of documents the operator holds.
- The dispatch record and responding units’ run reports, which fix the only reliable times
- The emergency room chart, including the first recorded rhythm and oxygen level
- Names and numbers for everybody present, taken the same day
- The Department of Health permit file and inspection history where a pool is involved
- Certification, schedule and training records for anybody who was supposed to be watching
- Photographs of the water, drains, depth markings, signage and rescue equipment before anything improves
- Written identification of the responsible agency where public water is involved
- Imaging and monitoring records where somebody survived
Where a city or county may be responsible for the water, get that settled in the first weeks. The notice requirement runs on its own clock and does not wait while somebody works out which agency owns a stretch of seawall.
Who would handle your case
Being hurt in Fort Lauderdale is hard enough without working out the legal side on your own. The trial lawyers below have handled drowning accident 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.
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Richard P. Pravato Founding & Managing Attorney Board Certified in Civil Trial Law by The Florida Bar since 2004, and by the National Board of Trial Advocacy. Injury cases exclusively since 1996. Full profile → -
Brett J. Yonon Senior Trial Attorney Selected to Florida Super Lawyers in 2024 and 2025. Nearly two decades in Florida courts, including a $3.5 million funeral home negligence verdict. Full profile →
What the insurer says about a drowning claim
The first letter in a drowning file usually says two things: that somebody should have been supervising, and that the facility met every requirement. Both are testable.
- Nobody was watching the child
- Said in almost every one of these cases and it is not the legal question. Florida divides blame rather than barring a claim, so even where an adult who was present carries part of it, that reduces a recovery instead of ending it. Whether the operator held a current permit, whether the drain met the standard and whether the guard was certified are separate questions with documented answers.
- We had a lifeguard on duty
- Then there is a certification, a schedule, a timecard and a training record, and Florida requires that certification to be current in lifeguarding, first aid and resuscitation from a recognized program. Whether somebody was in the chair is a different question from whether they were qualified to be in it, and both are answered on paper rather than by assertion.
- The pool was fully compliant
- That is a claim about a permit file, and permit files can be requested. They contain the application, the plans approval, the inspections, any violations and any enforcement. A facility with a history of the same violation is a very different case from one without, and neither side finds that out by arguing about it.
What a claim can include
Medical care, past and future
Everything billed already, and what the treating doctors say is still ahead. After oxygen deprivation the second half is usually far the larger.
A life care plan
Therapy, medication, equipment, supervision, schooling support and adaptations to a home, costed across a lifetime by a professional working from the treating doctors and converted to a present figure by an economist.
Lost earning capacity, including a child’s
Where a child is hurt young there are no wages to point at, so the loss is built from what that working life would reasonably have been. It is proved rather than asserted, and it is regularly the biggest number in the file.
Why Wolf & Pravato in Fort Lauderdale
A Broward drowning claim is filed in the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit at the Broward County Courthouse, with an estate opened in the probate division there where somebody died, and this firm has been on West Commercial Boulevard since 1993. Where a claim may run against a city, the notice work begins before anybody has finished deciding whether to bring one.
Richard Pravato has been Board Certified in Civil Trial law by The Florida Bar since 2004. The Bar lists 861 lawyers in the state holding it against a membership over 109,000. What it means in practice is that the other side knows the file can go in front of a jury, and files that can go to trial are priced differently from files that cannot.
The first conversation is free. We are paid out of the recovery or not at all, and if we do not think there is a claim worth bringing we will tell you that rather than take it.
Fort Lauderdale drowning accident questions
It happened at a city beach rather than a pool. Is that different?
Very. A claim against a city or county runs under the sovereign immunity statute, which requires written notice to the agency before suit, blocks the case for six months while it is considered, and caps what a public body pays at $200,000 for one person. Those steps have their own deadlines and they are shorter than the ordinary two years, which is why a beach case is worth asking about early.
My child got into the canal behind a rental house.
That is a claim and it is a substantial part of what we see in this county. The questions differ from a pool case: what barrier existed between the yard and the water, whether the dock had a ladder, what the lighting was, and what the property told a family with young children. Photograph all of it before anything is changed.
She survived. Is there still a case?
Frequently the larger one. A non-fatal drowning can leave lasting brain injury needing care for the rest of a life, and that claim is valued on decades of future medical need and lost capacity rather than on the bills already run up. The evidence about the water, the barrier and the response is the same either way.
It happened in a canal, a lake or at the beach, not a pool.
Open water cases turn on who controlled the access and what warning was given. Canals, retention ponds, quarries, seawalls and swimming areas all have somebody responsible for them, and where that is a city or a county the claim carries its own notice requirements and its own deadlines. Those are shorter than people expect, which is the reason to ask early rather than later.
The questions that come up on every kind of claim, deadlines, fees, recorded statements and fault, are answered on our Florida injury claim FAQ.
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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 2101 W Commercial Blvd, Suite 1500, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33309.