Fort Lauderdale Swimming Pool Accident Lawyer
A gate was open or nobody was watching, and a few minutes at a pool turned into the worst day of your life. 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.
Swimming Pool Accident claims in Fort Lauderdale
The owner will say somebody should have been supervising, and will mean you. Meanwhile you are at a bedside, being asked about long-term care, and nobody has told you whether the gate, the alarm or the fence met code. Finding out what was required and what was actually there is our job, and we start the day you call.
Florida's Residential Swimming Pool Safety Act sets barrier requirements for residential pools, including fencing, self-closing and self-latching gates and door alarms, and a pool that does not meet them is the starting point of most claims involving a young child. Hotel and condominium pools sit under different rules again: depth markings, drain covers meeting the federal standard, and whatever the property's own rules promised. Where a child gets into a pool that should have been enclosed, the property owner's liability does not depend on the child having been invited, because Florida recognizes that a pool attracts children who cannot appreciate the danger.
Broward has more residential pools than almost anywhere, and most claims involving a young child start with a barrier that did not meet the statute. Florida requires a four-foot barrier with no gap a child can get through and gates that self-close and self-latch out of reach. A trespassing child is still a claim.
What to do after a swimming pool accident in Fort Lauderdale
- Photograph the barrier before anybody fixes it. The fence, the gate, the latch, the gap under it, the door from the house, the alarm if there is one. Photograph from a child’s height as well as your own. A pool that was not enclosed properly gets enclosed properly within days of an incident, and the version that existed on the day stops existing. Include something for scale, because heights and gaps are measured rather than described.
- Test the gate on camera. Film the gate closing and latching, or failing to. A self-closing gate that does not swing shut, or a latch a child can reach, is the whole case in eleven seconds of video, and it is the single most persuasive thing a family can produce. Do it before anybody adjusts the hinge.
- Write down who was there and what they were doing. Who was supposed to be watching, who else was in the water, whether a lifeguard or attendant was on duty and where they were standing. Get names and numbers the same day. At a hotel, community or rental pool these people scatter within hours and are extremely hard to find later.
- Take the whole record of what was promised. The listing, the rules posted at the gate, the association bulletin, the booking confirmation, whatever the property said about supervision, hours and safety. Screenshot rather than bookmark, because listings and websites get edited after an incident and the version that persuaded somebody to book is the one that matters.
- Get the neurological picture even if the child seems fine. A child pulled out and resuscitated frequently looks recovered within days, and oxygen deprivation shows up later as problems with attention, memory, behavior or learning. A baseline assessment now is useful medically and is evidence, the deadline runs whether or not anybody has connected the symptoms yet, and having it done commits you to nothing.
Where these happen in Fort Lauderdale
The three settings these claims come from in Broward sit under different rules, and the first question is always which one you are in.
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Residential pools behind houses
The largest category by far, and the one the Residential Swimming Pool Safety Act was written for.
- A barrier at least four feet high with no gap, foothold or gap underneath
- Gates opening outward, self-closing and self-latching, with the release out of a child’s reach
- Where there is no fence, whether an approved cover, door alarms or a pool alarm was in place instead
- Whether the owner knew children were nearby, which is what the doctrine turns on
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Condominium, hotel and club pools
Broward has an unusual density of these, and they answer to public pool regulation on top of ordinary premises duties.
- Depth markings, drain covers meeting the federal standard and required safety equipment
- Supervision the property advertised, and whether it was actually provided
- Posted hours and rules, against what the property allowed to happen
- An association, a management company and a maintenance contractor, each with its own policy
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Short-term rentals
A house rented by the week to a family with young children, where nobody involved lives there.
- The listing as it appeared when it was booked, which gets edited afterward
- What was said or not said about fencing, alarms and supervision
- An owner and a management company who are usually different parties
- Whether the property met the barrier requirements at all, which nobody checked
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Waterfront and canal edges
Broward is cut through with waterways, and a claim does not have to involve a pool at all.
- Seawalls and dock edges with no barrier on a property let to families
- Docks without ladders, so somebody in the water cannot get out
- Unlit edges where the drop is invisible after dark
- What the property said about children and the water
What causes them
- A barrier that was missing, too low, or had a gap a small child could get through
- A gate that did not self-close, or a latch a child could reach
- A door from the house to the pool with no alarm and no self-closing device
- Supervision that was promised and not provided, at a hotel, club or camp
- A drain or suction outlet without a compliant cover
- Depth markings missing, worn away or wrong for the actual depth
What a drowning or near-drowning actually does
Why a near-drowning is usually the more serious outcome
The word makes it sound like the good ending, and in the cases we handle it frequently is not. A child pulled out and resuscitated may live for sixty more years with a hypoxic brain injury, which is a larger claim than a fatality and a far harder life. These cases are valued on decades of care rather than on the incident, which means they need a life care plan and an economist alongside the liability work.
Hypoxic brain injury
Oxygen deprivation damages the brain without any blow to the head, and the effects often appear weeks or months later as difficulty with attention, memory, behavior, mood or learning. Nobody connects it at the time because the child was discharged looking well. Neuropsychological assessment measures what was actually affected, and a baseline taken early is worth more than an argument made late.
Drain and suction injuries
A missing or non-compliant drain cover can hold a swimmer under or cause severe internal injury. These are equipment cases rather than supervision cases, they are provable from the cover itself and the maintenance record, and both of those are replaced quickly after an incident.
What Florida law requires you to prove
The barrier the law actually requires
Florida’s Residential Swimming Pool Safety Act sets what a residential pool has to have, and it is specific enough to measure. Under Fla. Stat. § 515.29 a barrier must be at least four feet high on the outside, must have no gap or foothold that lets a young child crawl under, squeeze through or climb over, and must sit far enough back from the water that a child who does get past it does not fall straight in. Gates must open outward, be self-closing and self-latching, with the release on the pool side and out of a child’s reach. Most claims involving a young child start with a tape measure against that list.
The alternatives to a fence, and their numbers
A barrier is not the only option. Under Fla. Stat. § 515.27 a residential pool must have at least one approved safety feature: an approved safety pool cover, exit alarms on every door and window giving direct access to the pool rated at a minimum of 85 decibels at ten feet, self-closing and self-latching devices on those doors with the release no lower than 54 inches above the floor, or a pool alarm that sounds when something enters the water. Each of those is a fact somebody can check on the day, which is why the photographs taken in the first week decide so many of these cases.
A trespassing child is still a claim
Florida recognizes that a swimming pool draws young children who cannot appreciate the danger, so an owner can be liable even where the child had no permission to be there. That is the attractive nuisance doctrine and it exists for exactly this situation. What matters is whether the pool was enclosed as the law requires and whether the owner knew or should have known that children were around. "They should not have been on my property" is the first thing said in these cases and it does not end them.
Commercial and community pools answer to more
A hotel, club, condominium or public pool sits under public pool regulation as well as ordinary premises liability: depth markings, drain covers meeting the federal standard, safety equipment, water quality and whatever the property’s own rules promised about supervision and hours. Most 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 the pool belongs to a public body, notice and suit conditions under Fla. Stat. § 768.28 apply instead, along with the damages caps.
The full statutory detail, and the parts that differ by claim type, sit on our statewide swimming pool accident page rather than being restated in every market.
How we prove it in Broward County
These cases are decided by measurements and by a handful of records, and both start disappearing within days of an incident.
- Photographs of the barrier, the gate, the latch and the gap underneath, taken with something for scale
- Video of the gate closing and latching, or failing to, before anybody adjusts it
- Whether an approved cover, door alarms or a pool alarm existed where there was no compliant fence
- Permits, inspection records and any prior code enforcement history for the pool
- Maintenance and service records, including the chemical log at a commercial pool
- The listing, the posted rules and whatever the property promised about supervision
- Names and numbers of everyone present, taken the same day
- A neuropsychological baseline where a child was resuscitated, however well they seem
A pool that was not enclosed properly is enclosed properly within days, which is not sinister and is fatal to a case built later. The photographs taken in the first week are the ones that decide it.
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 swimming pool 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. 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 insurer says about a pool claim
Every argument in a pool case is some version of the same one: that the family should have been watching. It is the most painful thing to hear and it is not the legal question.
- The parents were not supervising
- Said in nearly every one of these cases, usually within the first week, and it is not the test. The barrier requirements exist precisely because supervision lapses, for a moment, in every family. Florida also divides the blame rather than barring a claim, so even where some responsibility rests with an adult who was present, it reduces a recovery instead of ending it. What decides the case is whether the pool was enclosed the way the law requires.
- The child was trespassing
- It does not end the claim. Florida’s attractive nuisance doctrine exists because a pool draws children who cannot appreciate the risk, so an owner can be liable to a child who had no permission to be there. The questions that matter are whether the barrier met the statute and whether the owner knew children were around, and both are answered from photographs and from what the neighbors say.
- The gate was working when we checked it
- Checked when, and by whom? A self-closing gate goes out of adjustment gradually and gets fixed within days of an incident, which is why video of it taken on the day is worth more than any inspection carried out afterward. The maintenance record shows when it was last serviced, and a gap in that record is its own answer.
What a claim can include
Medical care, past and future
Everything already billed and what the treating physicians say is still ahead, which after oxygen deprivation is usually the far larger half.
A life care plan where the injury is permanent
Therapy, medication, equipment, supervision, schooling support and home modification, costed over a lifetime by a professional working from the treating physicians and brought to present value by an economist.
Lost earning capacity, including a child’s
Where a child is injured young there are no wages to point at, so the loss is established from what their working life would reasonably have looked like. It is proved with evidence rather than asserted, and it is frequently the largest number in the case.
Why Wolf & Pravato in Fort Lauderdale
A Broward pool case is filed in the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit at the Broward County Courthouse, and this office has worked in it since 1993. Where the claim involves a child with a lasting injury, the liability work and the life care work run at the same time rather than one after the other, because both take longer than families expect.
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 swimming pool accident questions
The child was not supposed to be on the property. Does that end the claim?
No. Florida’s attractive nuisance doctrine exists precisely because a swimming pool draws young children who cannot appreciate the risk, so a property owner can be liable even where the child was trespassing. What matters is whether the pool was enclosed as the law requires and whether the owner knew children were around. The barrier requirements are the first thing we check.
There was no fence, but the doors had alarms.
Then the question is whether those alarms met what the statute requires, which is specific: exit alarms on every door and window with direct access to the pool, rated at a minimum of 85 decibels at ten feet. A self-closing device on those doors is an alternative, with the release no lower than 54 inches from the floor. Whether the alarms were fitted everywhere required, and whether they worked, are facts somebody can establish.
It happened at a hotel pool with a lifeguard on duty.
Then there is more to look at rather than less. A property that provides supervision has undertaken to provide it competently: where the lifeguard was, how many people were in the water, what the sightlines were and what the training and staffing records show. The hotel’s own incident report and its camera footage are the starting point, and the footage is on a short overwrite cycle.
The gate was broken. Does that decide the case?
It is usually central. Florida requires residential pools to carry specified safety features, and a barrier or self-latching gate that was not functioning goes directly to whether that obligation was met. Photographing it before it is repaired is the most useful thing anyone can do in the first days.
It happened at a holiday rental. Who is responsible?
Potentially the property owner, the management company and in some circumstances the platform, depending on who controlled the property and what they knew. A short-term rental does not escape the residential pool safety requirements, and the guest was lawfully there.
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.