Fort Lauderdale 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 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.
Premises Liability claims in Fort Lauderdale
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.
Broward has the garages, complexes, hotels and bars where these cases arise, and it also has the records that prove them. Police call histories for a specific address we can get, and a pattern of prior incidents at the same property is what converts an owner’s claim that nobody could have predicted this into a documented risk they chose not to spend money on.
A Broward premises liability claim asks what the property already knew. For a fall in a store, Florida requires proof the business had actual or constructive knowledge of the hazard. For an attack, it is the prior incidents at that address. Camera systems here commonly overwrite in 14 to 30 days, so the evidence deadline arrives long before the two-year filing deadline.
What to do after a premises liability in Fort Lauderdale
- 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 Fort Lauderdale
Broward packs hotels, garages, plazas and pool decks into a narrow strip between the beach and the interstate, and the kind of property somebody was hurt on decides which records exist and how fast they disappear.
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The beach and Las Olas hospitality corridor
A1A, the beach hotels and the bar and restaurant blocks running inland generate injuries after dark, when a property has the fewest staff on and the most people on it.
- Assaults in hotel lots and side streets, where the useful question is what had happened at that address in the previous two years
- Falls on lobby and pool deck surfaces that are wet every day and treated as normal
- Venues that kept serving somebody, which is a separate and narrower claim under Florida law
- Camera coverage that exists at the front entrance and stops at the property line
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Airport, port and downtown parking structures
A garage is the classic negligent security setting because it is dark, largely unstaffed and predictable to anybody who watches it for a week.
- Lighting that can be measured with an instrument and compared against the property’s own plans
- Gates and access control that were reported broken and left in that condition
- Stairwells and elevator lobbies where the sightlines are the whole issue
- Rental car and valet lots, where the operator and the property owner are separate businesses with separate policies
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Grocery stores and retail plazas
Federal Highway, Commercial Boulevard and Oakland Park Boulevard carry the plazas where most of the fall cases in this county happen.
- Inspection sweep logs, which either exist and show a gap or do not exist at all
- Produce, freezer and entrance mats, which are where the same falls repeat at the same stores
- Tracked-in rain, which is a Broward constant and therefore hard to call unforeseeable
- Footage that a store manager can preserve in a minute and that nobody preserves after a month
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Pools, decks and rentals
Hotel pools, condominium decks and short-term rental properties across the county, where the barrier rules are measurable rather than a matter of opinion.
- Gates, latches and fence heights, which are checked against a code rather than argued about
- Drain covers, depth markings and surfaces that were resurfaced with the wrong material
- Balcony and walkway railings in older buildings, where the corrosion is usually in a permit file already
- Short-term rentals where an owner, a manager and a platform each disclaim the other two
What causes them
- Assaults and shootings at properties where the same thing had happened before and nothing changed
- Lighting well below what the property’s own plans called for, which is measurable with an instrument after the fact
- Exterior gates and door locks reported broken and left that way for months
- 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
The injuries we see, and what each one turns on
Head injuries
A fall onto a hard floor and an assault both produce the same category of injury, and both are frequently underplayed at the emergency room because a normal CT scan gets read as a clean result. What follows shows up in memory, concentration, sleep and temper, and the people around somebody usually notice before they do. These are proved with neuropsychological testing and treating records rather than the scan taken that day.
Spine and back injuries
Herniations and fractures from a fall, and from being knocked to the ground. The standard defense is age: nearly every adult spine shows wear on imaging, and the argument is that the fall found it rather than caused it. What answers that is a clear picture of before and after, which is why the first medical visit carries more weight than the last one.
Hip and orthopedic fractures
Hips, wrists, shoulders and ankles, several of which need hardware and then a second operation to remove or revise it. In an older adult a hip fracture is rarely just a fracture, and the year that follows it often includes a loss of independence that no bill records.
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 Broward County
Almost everything that decides one of these cases is held by the property, and most of it we can get. The reason to move quickly is that the two items which matter most are also the two that are gone first.
- The incident report the property wrote for its own insurer, which is why the report number is worth asking for on the day
- Camera footage from the property and from every business with a view of the same spot, most of it overwritten inside a month
- Inspection and sweep logs, cleaning schedules and the work orders around the date
- Police call histories for the exact address, which is the heart of a negligent security claim and we can get
- Prior incident reports and prior complaints about the same condition at the same property
- Light meter readings taken at the same hour of night, compared against the property’s own lighting plan
- The management agreement and the governing documents, which decide who was responsible for what
- Building permit and inspection history where a structure, railing or walkway failed
A preservation letter naming the date, the time and the camera location is the single most useful thing that happens in the first week of a Broward property case, and it can go out before anybody has decided whether to bring a claim at all.
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 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.
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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 →
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.
- The incident report is written, and you never see it
- It is prepared for the property’s insurer and it will be described as privileged. Asking for the number on the day you report is what makes it findable later. What goes in it matters, because a report written by a manager who has decided you were not looking where you were going becomes the first version of events on file.
- The footage was overwritten
- Sometimes true, frequently a decision. Systems keep 14 to 30 days as a rule, and the property knew you were hurt on day one. A preservation request sent inside that window is routine; the same request in month three becomes an argument about what was destroyed and when, which is an argument worth having but a poor substitute for the video.
- The hazard is described as open and obvious
- The theory is that you should have seen it, and it is the most common defense in the practice. It is answered with the physical facts: what the lighting actually measured, where the sightlines went, what was in your hands, and whether the property had put anything there to warn people. Open and obvious is also not a complete defense in Florida where the owner should have anticipated the harm anyway.
What a claim can include
Medical care, past and future
Everything already billed, and what the treating physicians say is still ahead. Future care is what an early offer never includes and it is what decides whether a settlement holds up in five years.
Lost income and lost earning capacity
Wages missed, and separately what somebody can no longer earn. A person who goes back in a lighter role at less money has a loss a pay stub does not show on its own.
Pain, and what daily life has become
Sleep, mobility, and the things somebody used to do without thinking about them. It is proved with the account of the people around the injured person as much as with records.
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.
Our client was servicing propane tanks behind a Pompano Beach bakery when they exploded, burning his arms and face.
Broward County jury verdictA 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 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 premises case is filed in the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit at the Broward County Courthouse, which is the courthouse this office has worked in since 1993. Where a case would actually be tried shapes what a commercial carrier offers, because insurers keep their own records of which firms in a county take these to a jury and which settle everything.
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 premises liability questions
The store says there is no video. Is that the end of it?
Not necessarily, and it is worth testing rather than accepting. Neighboring businesses, garages and municipal cameras frequently cover the same spot from a different angle. What the store said internally also matters: if a request to preserve reached them and the footage went anyway, that is a different conversation from footage that had already cycled. Either way the answer arrives faster the earlier somebody asks.
I was attacked at an apartment complex. Does the arrest matter to my claim?
It matters very little, and that surprises people. A criminal case punishes the attacker and rarely compensates anybody, and the attacker usually has nothing. The civil claim asks a different question: whether the property already knew this address had a problem and chose not to spend money on it. That is answered from the property’s records and the police call history, not from the criminal file.
I did not report it that day. Have I lost the case?
No, though it makes the early work more important. People walk away embarrassed and stiffen up overnight constantly, and nothing in Florida law requires a same-day report. What it means in practice is that the footage, the sweep logs and any witness has to be chased immediately, because the property now has a version of events and you are building yours from the outside.
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.
How do you prove the owner knew it was dangerous?
Mostly with their own documents and public ones. We ask for police call histories for the address, prior incident and injury reports, complaints from tenants or guests, work orders for broken gates and lights, and any security assessment the owner commissioned. A pattern in those records is what foreseeability actually looks like.
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.