Fort Myers 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 Fort Myers personal injury lawyers have taken these cases across Lee County since 1993.
Slip and Fall claims in Fort Myers
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.
The worry we hear most after a fall is that it will come down to your word against the store’s. It rarely does, and finding the proof is our job rather than yours. Florida asks for evidence that the business knew about the hazard, and that evidence is nearly always in their own paperwork rather than in anybody’s memory: the sweep log, the inspection sheet, the incident report, the footage. We start asking for it the day you call, because in a Lee County store that footage is routinely erased inside a month.
A Fort Myers slip and fall claim turns on proving the business knew about the hazard or should have known, not simply that you fell. You have two years to sue for most falls on or after March 24, 2023. The surveillance that proves it is commonly erased within 14 to 30 days, so the evidence deadline arrives first.
What to do after a slip and fall in Fort Myers
- 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 Fort Myers
Lee County falls arrive from a narrow set of places, and the property type usually decides what evidence exists. A national grocery chain runs documented sweep schedules. A beachfront resort does not, and a homeowners association may have nothing at all.
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Grocery and big box, along Cleveland Avenue and Colonial
The US-41 corridor carries most of the county’s grocery and big box traffic, and the falls there follow the rain.
- A storm puts fifty people through one entrance in ten minutes, and the mat by the door is the whole defense
- Produce misting, freezer condensation and deli spills account for most of the rest
- National chains keep real inspection records, which is the best evidence a fall case can have
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Retail centers: Bell Tower, Edison Mall, Gulf Coast Town Center
A fall at a shopping center is frequently not the store’s problem at all.
- Common areas, walkways and lots usually sit with the landlord under the lease
- Maintenance is often contracted out to a third company again
- The lease is the document that settles who held the duty
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Beach resorts and hotels on Estero Island
It is pool decks, tiled lobbies, and the walk in from a parking lot in flip-flops.
- Hospitality turns staff over constantly, so witness details taken on the day are worth more here than anywhere in the county
- Records are thinner than a national retailer’s
- Rebuilding since the 2022 storm season has left many surfaces newer than the drainage under them
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Condominium and HOA common areas
Lee County has a very large share of association-governed housing, so a fall in a stairwell or a pool area is a claim against the association rather than against a neighbor.
- The association carries insurance for exactly this, and no owner pays out of pocket
- Board minutes usually show whether the problem had already been raised
- The management company is frequently a second responsible party
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Sidewalks and public property
A cracked or lifted public sidewalk is a claim against a city or the county, and those run under their own rules.
- A written notice has to be presented before suit
- Worth pursuing, and easy to lose on the procedure rather than the facts
- Which is a reason to ask early rather than late
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Construction and reconstruction sites
Southwest Florida has had years of continuous rebuilding, and an active site beside a walkway produces hazards that were signed for on paper and not in reality.
- Debris, temporary surfaces and unmarked level changes
- A general contractor and a subcontractor, with separate policies
- A site safety file that exists whether or not anyone volunteers it
What causes them
- 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
- Cracked or lifted sidewalk and lot surfaces, and unmarked level changes
The injuries we see, and what each one turns on
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.
Head and brain
A fall backward onto a hard floor produces the concussions and traumatic brain injuries we see most, and the imaging taken on the day is frequently normal. What follows is memory, concentration, sleep and mood, reported by the people around the injured person before the injured person notices it. Those cases are proved with neuropsychological testing and with treating records, not with the first scan.
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 Lee County
A fall case is documentary. What decides it is rarely what anyone remembers and almost always what was written down before anyone was thinking about a lawsuit, which means most of the work is getting to records before they age out.
- The incident report the property wrote on the day, which frequently contradicts the position it takes months later
- Sweep, inspection and floor-care logs, including the gaps in them, which is where constructive knowledge is proved
- Surveillance footage, routinely overwritten on a 14 to 30 day cycle and gone for good once it is
- Prior incidents at the same address, which turn one wet floor into a condition that occurred with regularity
- The lease and the maintenance contract, where a shopping center or an association is involved, to establish who held the duty
- Association board minutes and work orders, which often show the hazard was raised before it hurt anyone
- Employee names and schedules for that shift, taken before a seasonal workforce has turned over
- The treating records from Lee Health, whose trauma center at Lee Memorial is where the serious falls in this county go
A written preservation demand in the first days is what stops most of that disappearing. It is the single most useful thing that happens early in one of these cases, and it costs you nothing.
Who would handle your case
Being hurt in Fort Myers 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.
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Brian H. Malamud Senior Trial Attorney More than twenty-five years on the Wolf & Pravato trial team. Brian Malamud has handled your kind of case many times over, and he knows early which parts of it are going to decide it. Full profile → -
Alazay Ventura-Coffey Trial Attorney On his first day as a sworn attorney, Alazay Ventura-Coffey co-chaired a Broward County jury trial that returned $1,387,060.58. He has built every case that way since. Full profile →
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 call comes early, and it is recorded
- Somebody rings within a day or two, sympathetic and easy to talk to, and asks for a recorded statement while you are still working out how badly you are hurt. You are not required to give one. Anything you say about how you were feeling that week is quoted back months later, when you know a great deal more about the injury than you did then.
- 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
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.
Medical care, past and future
Everything already billed, and what the treating doctors say is still coming. Future care is where these claims are won or lost, because it is the part that has to be proved rather than added up.
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.
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 verdictOur 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 filedEvery 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 Myers
A Lee County fall is filed in the Twentieth Judicial Circuit at the Lee County Justice Center, and that is the courthouse this office works in. The circuit a case would be tried in shapes what an insurer offers to settle it, because carriers keep records of which firms in a county actually try cases.
Richard Pravato is one of 861 lawyers Board Certified by The Florida Bar in Civil Trial law, out of a membership over 109,000. The certification is about trial experience rather than advertising spend, and it is the part of a firm’s record that an insurance company checks.
Nothing is charged for the first conversation and nothing is charged at all unless there is a recovery. If we do not think you have a claim, we would rather tell you now than a year from now.
Fort Myers slip and fall questions
I fell at a store on Cleveland Avenue and nobody would give me an incident report. What now?
It happens often and it is not fatal. Write down what you remember the same day, including who you spoke to and what time it was, and keep the receipt if you have one, because it timestamps you on the property. Most national chains generate an internal report whether or not they hand you a copy, and that document we can get. What matters more is that the footage still exists, which is why the demand to preserve it needs to go out in days rather than weeks.
The employees who helped me have left. Does that hurt my case?
It makes moving quickly more important, but the case does not rest on them. Incident reports, sweep logs and surveillance do not leave when staff do, and former employees can be located and deposed. Fort Myers runs a heavily seasonal workforce, so this comes up in a large share of our fall files and it is planned for rather than reacted to.
I fell in the common area of my condo. Do I have to sue my neighbors?
No. A claim over a common area runs against the association and usually its management company, and the association carries insurance for precisely this. Your neighbors are not paying it out of pocket. Association records often help as well, because board minutes and work orders frequently show the hazard had already been reported.
How long do I have to bring a Fort Myers slip and fall claim?
Two years from the fall for most claims arising on or after March 24, 2023, under Fla. Stat. § 95.11, and generally four years for falls before that date. A fall on public property carries a separate written notice requirement with its own timing. The evidence deadlines are much shorter than any of these: surveillance is commonly overwritten within 14 to 30 days.
Where would my case be filed?
In the Twentieth Judicial Circuit at the Lee County Justice Center in Fort Myers. The Twentieth also covers Charlotte and Collier, but each files in its own courthouse, so a Lee County fall stays in Fort Myers. Most cases resolve without a trial, though which courthouse a case would be tried in is part of how an insurer values it.
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 store made me fill out an incident report. Was that a mistake?
No, reporting it was the right thing to do. What matters is what you wrote. People routinely understate their injuries in the first hour because adrenaline masks them, and that report gets read back later. Ask for a copy of anything you signed, and do not give a recorded statement to their insurer afterward.
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 1825 Colonial Blvd, Fort Myers, FL 33907.