Miami 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 844-643-7200 for a free consultation. You pay us nothing unless we win. Our Miami personal injury lawyers have taken these cases across Miami-Dade County since 1993.
Slip and Fall claims in Miami
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.
People who fall in a Miami-Dade building are usually told the same thing: it was somebody else’s responsibility. Working out whose it actually was is our job rather than yours, and it is almost never the end of the claim. The management company, the janitorial contractor, the garage operator and the association all keep their own records, and what decides a case usually sits with a company you never dealt with. Those records we can get once somebody knows to ask for them.
A Miami slip and fall claim turns on proving the business knew about the hazard or should have known. In Miami-Dade the party who holds that proof is often not the business you walked into: a management company, a janitorial contractor, a garage operator or an association board. You have two years to sue, and roughly two weeks before the footage is overwritten.
What to do after a slip and fall in Miami
- 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 Miami
Miami-Dade falls come off a different building stock from anywhere else in the state. This is a county of high-rise lobbies, parking structures, hotel decks and association-run towers, and the records that decide a claim here are usually generated by somebody other than the business you walked into.
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Condominium towers and association common areas
No county in Florida has more association-governed housing, so a fall in a lobby, a garage, a stairwell or a pool deck is a claim against the association and its management company.
- Miami-Dade runs a building recertification program that generates structural and maintenance reporting on older towers
- Where a walkway or a stair has been written up in it, the paperwork answers the knowledge question before anyone argues about it
- Reserve and engineering studies are a further written record of the same areas
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Downtown and Brickell office towers
Polished stone lobbies, and a wet season that puts a rainstorm through the front door most afternoons from June onward.
- A tower is rarely one defendant: an owner, a property manager, a janitorial contractor, often a separate garage operator
- Each carries its own policy and keeps its own logs
- Working out who actually held the duty is the first job in a downtown fall
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Malls and retail: Aventura, Dolphin, Bayside, Lincoln Road
At a mall the common areas, the food court and the parking decks usually belong to the landlord rather than to the store.
- A fall at a mall is frequently a claim against a party whose name was nowhere near the receipt
- Open-air retail adds weather and adds pedestrian volume
- Decorative surfaces at Lincoln Road and Bayside were often never slip-rated
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Hotels, resorts and pool decks
From South Beach to the airport corridor, hospitality is a large share of what we take here.
- Pool surrounds, tiled lobbies, and the walk in from a valet stand in the rain
- Housekeeping records are usually thinner than a national retailer’s
- Staff turn over quickly, so witness details taken on the day matter more than they would at a grocery chain
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Grocery and pharmacy across the county
The everyday fall, and generally the best documented one.
- National and regional chains run recorded inspection schedules
- Produce misting, freezer condensation and tracked-in rain drive most of them
- Where a real sweep log exists, the gap in it is what proves the case
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Airport, transit and public property
Claims from Miami International, the county transit system and public sidewalks all run against government entities.
- A claim against one runs under different rules from a claim against a business
- A written notice has to be presented before suit
- Worth bringing, and easy to lose on the procedure rather than on the facts
What causes them
- Recently mopped floors with no sign, or a sign put out after the fall
- Produce, deli and freezer aisles, where the spill is routine and so is the schedule that should catch it
- Broken, uneven or missing floor tile, and transitions between two surfaces
- Stairs with no handrail, a loose handrail, or treads worn smooth
- Lighting out in a stairwell, a parking structure or a walkway
The injuries we see, and what each one turns on
Spine and back
Herniated and bulging discs, fractures of the vertebral bodies, and nerve root compression that presents as pain down an arm or a leg rather than in the back itself. Age is the standard defense here: nearly every adult spine shows degeneration on imaging, and the argument is that the fall found it rather than caused it. What answers that is the difference between how someone functioned before and after.
Orthopedic
Hips, wrists, shoulders and ankles, because those are what a person lands on or catches themselves with. These are the injuries most likely to need surgery later rather than sooner, which matters: an early offer is priced on physical therapy bills, and the operation that follows is not covered by a settlement already signed.
Facial injuries and dental damage
A fall forward onto a hard edge takes teeth, breaks orbital and nasal bones and leaves scarring somewhere a person cannot cover. Dental work of this kind is rarely one procedure and rarely holds for life, so the claim has to be built on what a treating dentist says the next thirty years look like rather than on the bill for the first repair.
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 Miami-Dade County
What decides a Miami-Dade fall is usually a document held by a party the injured person never dealt with: a management company, a janitorial contractor, a garage operator, an association board. Getting to those before they age out is most of the work.
- The incident report written on the day, which frequently reads differently from the position taken months later
- Janitorial and floor-care contracts, and the logs the contractor kept rather than the ones the tenant did
- Surveillance footage, on a 14 to 30 day overwrite cycle in most buildings and permanently gone after it
- Association records: board minutes, work orders, and reserve or engineering studies on the building
- Recertification and inspection filings on older buildings, which are public and which nobody has to hand over
- The lease and the common-area maintenance terms, where a mall or an office tower is involved
- Prior incidents at the same address, which turn a single wet floor into a foreseeable condition
- Treating records from Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial, where the serious falls in this county go
A written preservation demand in the first days is what keeps most of that available. It goes to every party that might hold a piece of it, not only to the business whose name is on the door, and it costs you nothing.
Who would handle your case
Being hurt in Miami 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.
- They ask you to sign a medical authorization
- The form handed over is usually a blanket release covering your entire medical history rather than the body part you injured. That is how a shoulder claim turns into a file about a knee you hurt in 2009. Authorizations can be limited to what is actually at issue, and they should be.
- An offer arrives before the treatment finishes
- Early money is priced on the bills that exist today, and the surgery a treating doctor recommends three months from now is not among them. A release signed at that point closes the claim for good. There is no reopening it because the injury turned out to be worse than the first offer assumed.
- The file is built around your share of the blame
- Expect the argument that you were on your phone, wearing the wrong shoes, or should have seen it. It is worth real money to them under Fla. Stat. § 768.81, and past the halfway mark it is worth the entire claim, so it is made in almost every file whether or not the facts support it.
What a claim can include
Lost earnings and lost capacity
Wages missed while treating, and separately the difference between what you could earn before and what you can earn now. Those are two different claims and the second is usually the larger one.
Pain, suffering and loss of enjoyment
Not calculated from a formula, whatever anyone tells you. It is argued from what the injury actually took away, which is why the detail of an ordinary week before the fall matters.
Scarring and disfigurement
A permanent mark from a fall, a surgical scar or a graft is its own head of damages and is valued separately from the treatment that caused it. It matters more where somebody cannot cover it and more again where their work puts them in front of people.
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 Miami
A Miami-Dade fall is filed in the Eleventh Judicial Circuit at the Miami-Dade County Courthouse, which is where this office litigates. Which circuit a case would be tried in is part of how an insurer prices it, and carriers track which firms in a county actually try cases.
The firm is led by a Board Certified Civil Trial lawyer, a certification held by 861 attorneys in Florida against a membership over 109,000. Insurance companies keep their own records of which firms in a county actually try cases, and that record moves an offer further than anything a firm can say about itself.
There is no charge to ask. Our fee comes out of what we recover and nowhere else, and if the answer is that you do not have a case, that is the answer you will get.
Miami slip and fall questions
I fell in my condo building. Am I suing my own association?
In practical terms you are claiming against its insurance, which the association carries for exactly this and which every owner has already paid for through assessments. Your neighbors are not writing a check. In Miami-Dade there is often more documentation than owners expect as well, because building recertification and reserve studies generate written records about the condition of common areas.
I fell in a mall common area, not inside a store. Who is responsible?
Usually the landlord or its management company rather than the retailer, because common areas, food courts and parking decks are typically carved out of a store's lease. Sometimes a janitorial contractor is responsible again beyond that. The lease and the maintenance contract are what settle it, and they we can get.
The building says a cleaning contractor was responsible, not them. Is that the end of it?
No, and it is one of the more common answers we get in a downtown or Brickell tower. An owner does not discharge its duty by hiring somebody, and in most of these files more than one party ends up on the claim. It is a reason to identify every contractor early rather than to accept the first name offered.
How long do I have to bring a Miami 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 at the airport, on transit or on a public sidewalk carries a separate written notice requirement with its own timing. Surveillance is commonly overwritten within 14 to 30 days, which is the deadline that actually bites first.
Where would my case be filed?
In the Eleventh Judicial Circuit at the Miami-Dade County Courthouse. Most cases resolve without a trial, but the courthouse a case would be tried in is part of how an insurer values it, and Miami-Dade is a venue carriers pay attention to.
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.
Can I still bring a claim if I was looking at my phone?
Possibly, but your share of fault matters more than it used to. Since March 2023 Florida bars recovery entirely for anyone found more than 50 percent responsible, and reduces it proportionally below that. It is worth an honest conversation about the facts early rather than discovering the problem 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 1111 Brickell Avenue, 11th Floor, Miami, FL 33131.