Fort Lauderdale Negligent Security Lawyer
Somebody attacked you on property that belonged to a business, and that business is telling you it was nothing to do with them. 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.
Negligent Security claims in Fort Lauderdale
The owner will say a criminal did this, not them, and that they cannot be responsible for what a stranger chose to do. Meanwhile you are the one recovering, and nobody has told you what the lights, the cameras, the gate or the locks were supposed to be, or what had already happened at that address. Florida answers a lot of that by statute, and finding out is our job from the first call.
A negligent security claim says a property owner knew or should have known that people were being attacked on or around its premises and did too little about it. Proving it means the crime history for that address and the surrounding blocks, prior incident reports, and what security existed against what the risk called for. Florida changed this area in 2023, creating a presumption against liability for multifamily residential properties that meet defined security requirements, including lighting, locks and a documented crime prevention assessment. Whether a property actually met them is a question of fact and frequently the whole case.
Broward negligent security claims are filed in the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit. Most arise at apartment complexes, at parking structures downtown and near the port, and along the beach nightlife corridor. Florida sets required security by statute for some of these properties. Most claims must be filed within two years.
What to do after a negligent security in Fort Lauderdale
- Send a written request to preserve the video, today. To the property owner and to the management company, naming the date, the time window and the cameras you think saw it. Ask them to confirm in writing that they have preserved it. Systems at apartment complexes, stores and garages record to a loop and overwrite in days. A police request covers what the police need, which is not the same as what your claim needs, so send your own even if officers have already been there.
- Photograph the place at the same hour it happened. Lighting is the single most common failure in these cases and it cannot be judged in daylight. Go back at the same time of night, or send somebody, and photograph what is lit and what is not, the gate, the fencing, the doors and where the cameras are mounted. Photograph what each camera can actually see from where it sits, which is frequently narrower than the property will later claim.
- Write down the police report number and every name. The report number is what everything else is retrieved with later. Take the names and numbers of anybody who saw it, anybody who helped, the staff who were on and the manager who appeared afterward. Residents and employees at these properties turn over fast, and somebody who would have said the gate had been broken for a year becomes unfindable within months.
- Do not give a recorded statement to their insurer. They will call early, sound sympathetic and ask what you were doing there, what time it was and whether you had been drinking. Every one of those questions is aimed at the share of the blame rather than at helping you. You are not obliged to give a recorded statement to somebody else’s insurer, and there is no version of this where doing it early helps.
- Get treated, and say plainly what it has done to you. The physical injuries get documented because a hospital documents them. What frequently goes unrecorded is the part that lasts longest: not being able to go back, not being able to be out after dark, sleep that does not return. Say it to a doctor and let it be written down. It is part of the claim rather than something private that gets left out of it.
Where these happen in Fort Lauderdale
Broward produces these cases in four distinct settings, and each is judged against a different standard.
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Apartment complexes
The largest category by volume, and since 2023 the one with a written checklist attached to it.
- Perimeter and pool gates left broken, with the work orders that prove how long
- Parking lots below the lighting level the statute names, measurable with a meter
- Cameras at entry and exit points, and whether footage was retrievable for thirty days
- Deadbolts, window locks and peepholes, which are either fitted or are not
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The beach and nightlife corridor
A dense strip of bars, clubs and hotels where the risk concentrates at closing time.
- What a venue does about capacity, alcohol service and the walk back to a car
- Calls for service at the address, which build the foreseeability record
- Hotel key control, corridor access and who could reach a guest floor
- Security staffed on paper against security actually on the shift
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Parking structures downtown and near the port
Buildings where the design itself is part of the claim.
- Sightlines, blind corners and stair towers nobody can see into
- Where the light actually falls, as against where the fixtures are mounted
- Whether vehicle and pedestrian access was controlled at all after hours
- A private operator running a structure for a public body, which puts both in the claim
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Convenience stores and gas stations
The most heavily regulated properties in this practice, and the easiest to measure.
- The camera system, drop safe, entrance notice, window sightline and height markers
- Parking lot lighting at the statutory level, at eighteen inches above the surface
- The after-hours cash policy and the silent alarm
- Whether a previous violent crime there triggered a further measure that was never added
What causes them
- A perimeter or pool gate that had been broken for months, with the repair requests to prove it
- Parking lot lighting that was dark, burned out, or never met the level the statute sets
- Cameras that were dummies, or were real and had not recorded for a year
- No camera at the entry and exit points, which is where identification actually happens
- Exterior doors propped, or hardware that let them close without latching
- A vehicle control gate stuck open, or an access fob system nobody maintained
What these attacks actually do
Gunshot wounds
The most common catastrophic outcome in these files. A single round can require multiple surgeries, leave permanent nerve or organ damage, and produce a lifetime of consequences from an injury that took a second. Retained fragments, chronic pain and repeated reconstruction are ordinary rather than unusual.
These claims are valued on what the treating doctors say is still ahead rather than on what has been billed, which after a shooting is nearly always the larger half.
Stab and slash wounds
Frequently underestimated because the entry looks small. Tendon and nerve damage to a hand or arm can end a working life in a trade, and abdominal wounds carry surgical consequences that continue for years. Scarring is its own head of loss and it is one juries take seriously.
Head injury from a beating
Blunt force to the head produces the same brain injury a crash does, and it goes undiagnosed more often here because the visible wounds get the attention in the emergency room. Trouble with memory, attention, mood and self-control appearing weeks later is the pattern, and neuropsychological assessment is what measures it.
What Florida law requires you to prove
Some properties answer to a written list
The two statutory checklists, the numbers in them and the foreseeability test that governs everywhere else are set out on our Florida negligent security page rather than being restated in each market. The short version is that convenience businesses and residential buildings of five or more homes each have a list of required or presumption-earning measures, and a list is something a property either satisfied or did not.
You have to have been lawfully there
Fla. Stat. § 768.075 sharply limits what a property owner answers for to a trespasser, and further where somebody was impaired. Being a resident, a guest, a customer or an invited visitor is documented early rather than assumed, because it is among the first things the defense tests.
The deadline, and the share of the blame
Most claims from an attack on or after March 24, 2023 carry two years under Fla. Stat. § 95.11. Fault is divided under Fla. Stat. § 768.81, and a public body brings its own notice requirements and a cap under Fla. Stat. § 768.28.
The full statutory detail, and the parts that differ by claim type, sit on our statewide negligent security page rather than being restated in every market.
How we prove it in Broward County
A Broward case is built out of two record sets: what happened at that address before, and what the property did about it.
- A written preservation request for the video, sent within days and confirmed in writing
- Calls for service and incident reports for the address and the surrounding blocks, going back years
- The property’s own incident log, resident complaints and work orders for lights, gates and doors
- Security contracts, post orders and shift logs where guards were provided
- Photographs taken at the same hour of night, showing what was lit and what a camera can see
- Light meter readings against the level the applicable statute names
- The crime prevention assessment where a residential property claims the statutory presumption
- Medical records including treatment for the psychological injury
Send the preservation letter before anything else. In this county the systems at apartment complexes and garages commonly overwrite inside a week, and the same request sent two weeks later gets a truthful answer that nothing survives.
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 negligent security 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. Brett Yonon is who this firm puts on a catastrophic injury or a death in the family, and he has tried those cases to verdict. Full profile →
What the property and its insurer will say
Every one of these files gets the same first letter, and it says two things: a criminal did this, and the property had nothing to do with it. Both are answerable.
- A criminal did this, not us
- The claim was never about the criminal. It is about whether a business that knew people were being attacked at its address did something reasonable about it, and Florida writes that duty into statute for some properties and leaves it to foreseeability for the rest. The attacker is usually named too, and is usually the party with nothing to pay with.
- Nothing like this had ever happened here
- Testable, and frequently wrong. Calls for service, incident reports and arrest records for the address and the surrounding blocks are public, and the property’s own incident log and resident complaints come out in discovery. A property that had been told about the same problem repeatedly is in a very different position from one that genuinely had not.
- We meet the statutory security requirements
- Then it is measurable rather than arguable. The statutes use numbers: foot-candles at a stated height, thirty days of retrievable footage, a deadbolt of at least an inch, a documented assessment no more than three years old. A light meter and a records request settle in a week what could otherwise be argued for a year.
What a claim can include
Medical care, past and future
Everything billed already and everything the treating doctors say is still ahead, which after a shooting or a serious beating is usually far the larger half.
Treatment for the psychological injury
Counseling and psychiatric care, past and ongoing, and the cost of what somebody had to change about their life in order to feel safe.
Lost income and lost earning capacity
Time away while recovering, and where the injury is lasting, the difference between the working life somebody had and the one now available to them.
What we have recovered
Verified matters this firm has handled on negligent security claims. Figures are gross recoveries, before attorney fees, costs and medical liens come out of them.
A young client was shot during a violent crime at a Miami-Dade apartment complex.
Confidential settlementEvery 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.
Why Wolf & Pravato in Fort Lauderdale
A Broward negligent security claim is filed in the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit at the Broward County Courthouse, and this firm has been on West Commercial Boulevard since 1993. Where a complex, a management company and a security contractor are pointing at each other, working out which of them controlled the failure is done from contracts and work orders rather than from a phone call.
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 negligent security questions
The police never caught who did it. Does that end my claim?
No, and it is the position in a large share of these cases. The claim against the property is about the gate, the lighting, the cameras and the access control, none of which depends on identifying the attacker. An unsolved case can even strengthen the argument about the cameras, because a property whose system would have identified somebody and did not is answering for that failure.
I was a guest, not a resident. Can I still bring a claim?
Yes. Florida limits what an owner answers for to a trespasser, but an invited guest is not a trespasser. What matters is that you were lawfully there, and a text from the resident who invited you, a gate log or a visitor pass settles it. It is worth establishing early because it is among the first things the defense will test.
How can the property be responsible for what a criminal did?
Because the claim is not about the criminal. It is about whether a business that knew people were being attacked at its address did something reasonable about it. Florida writes that duty into statute for convenience stores and for apartment buildings of five or more homes, and everywhere else it turns on what was foreseeable there. The person who attacked you is answerable too, and is usually the party with nothing to pay with.
The police are still investigating. Should I wait?
No. The two run separately and the civil deadlines do not pause for a criminal case. More urgently, the camera footage that would show what happened, and what the lighting and access control actually were, is usually overwritten within days. A written preservation request goes out now. Nothing about it interferes with the police investigation.
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.