By Jay Wasserman
Every day in Florida, people are seriously hurt doing something completely ordinary: walking through a grocery store, crossing a hotel lobby, stepping off a curb in a shopping plaza. A wet floor with no cone, a broken stair, a parking lot pothole hidden in the dark, and suddenly an ordinary errand becomes a fractured hip, a torn rotator cuff, or a head injury. Then comes the surprise most people never see coming: Florida law does not make a business automatically responsible just because you fell on its property. Slip and fall cases are among the most commonly filed, and most commonly lost, injury claims in this state, because the law puts a specific burden on the injured person that casual claimants never meet.
A word of caution before anything else: slip and fall cases are won or lost on evidence that starts disappearing within hours. The spill gets mopped, the broken tile gets patched, and surveillance video is recorded over, sometimes in a matter of days, unless someone demands in writing that it be preserved. Meanwhile, the two-year clock to file suit is already running, and anything you tell the store’s insurance adjuster, or post on social media, can be used to shrink your claim. Report the fall, photograph everything, get medical care, and get counsel involved before the evidence is gone. The window to build these cases is short.
This guide explains how premises liability actually works in Florida: what a property owner owes you, the statute that makes floor-surface cases uniquely difficult, the deadlines and comparative fault rules that changed in 2023, what your claim may be worth, and the steps that protect it from day one.
What a Florida property owner owes you
Florida premises liability turns on your legal status on the property, because that status defines the duty owed to you:
- Business invitees, customers, patients, and others invited onto property for the owner’s benefit, are owed the highest duty: the owner must use reasonable care to maintain the premises in a safe condition, correct dangers it knows or should know about, and warn of concealed hazards it could not yet fix.
- Licensees, social guests and others present for their own purposes with permission, are owed a duty to warn of known dangers that are not obvious.
- Trespassers are generally owed only the duty not to be harmed intentionally or wantonly, with special rules protecting children drawn to hazards like pools and equipment.
Most real-world cases involve invitees, and the duty question is rarely the fight. The fight is over what the owner knew, and when.
Section 768.0755: the statute that decides most slip and fall cases
If you slipped on a transitory foreign substance, a spilled drink, a puddle, a dropped grape, condensation from a cooler, in a business establishment, Fla. Stat. § 768.0755 controls your case, and it is the reason these claims are harder than people expect. The statute requires the injured person to prove that the business had actual or constructive knowledge of the substance and should have taken action to remedy it. Falling is not enough; even proving the floor was wet is not enough. You must prove the business knew about the hazard, or that it should have known, and the statute defines how constructive knowledge is shown:
- Time. The condition existed long enough that a business exercising ordinary care should have discovered it. Evidence like track marks through the spill, a puddle that had spread wide, or a substance that had dried at the edges tells a jury the hazard sat there for a while.
- Regularity. The condition occurred with regularity and was therefore foreseeable, such as a cooler that had leaked for weeks or a store entrance that always flooded in rain.
This is why the first days matter so much. Surveillance footage showing when the spill happened and how many employees walked past it, sweep logs showing when the aisle was last inspected, and incident reports about prior falls are the difference between proving constructive knowledge and losing on summary judgment. None of that evidence is in your control, and none of it has to be volunteered; it has to be demanded and preserved. Hypothetically: a shopper in a Boca Raton supermarket slips on a puddle of leaked freezer condensation and shatters her wrist. The store’s own maintenance tickets show the freezer had been leaking intermittently for a month, and video shows the puddle sitting untouched for forty minutes while three employees passed it. Those facts line up with both time and regularity, which is exactly why counsel sends a preservation letter before the video cycle erases them.
Falls caused by conditions other than transitory substances, broken stairs, missing handrails, uneven pavement, inadequate lighting, follow ordinary negligence principles: the owner is liable for dangers it created or should have discovered and fixed through reasonable inspection and maintenance.
The 2023 changes: two years to sue and the 50 percent bar
House Bill 837, signed in March 2023, rewrote two rules that now shape every premises case:
- The statute of limitations is two years. General negligence claims accruing after March 24, 2023, including slip and fall claims, must be filed within two years of the injury under Fla. Stat. § 95.11, half the time injured people had before. The deadlines and their exceptions are covered in our guide to Florida’s personal injury statute of limitations.
- Fault over 50 percent ends the case. Florida now applies modified comparative negligence under Fla. Stat. § 768.81: your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault, and if a jury finds you more than 50 percent at fault, you recover nothing at all. Expect the defense to argue you were looking at your phone, wearing the wrong shoes, or ignoring an “open and obvious” condition, because under the new rule, pushing your share of fault past the midpoint is a complete win for them.
A note on “open and obvious”: Florida law says an owner generally need not warn of conditions so apparent that a reasonable person would notice and avoid them, but the duty to maintain the premises survives even for obvious hazards. An obviously broken staircase still has to be fixed; obviousness goes to your comparative fault, not automatically to a dismissal.
What compensation is available
A successful premises liability claim can recover economic damages, medical bills past and future, lost wages, and diminished earning capacity, and non-economic damages for pain, suffering, disability, disfigurement, and loss of enjoyment of life. Slip and fall injuries are frequently more serious than they sound: hip fractures in older adults, spinal disc herniations, and traumatic brain injuries from striking the floor are common, and the medical proof of causation, tying the injury to the fall rather than to age or prior conditions, is where the defense concentrates its fire. When a fall proves fatal, the claim proceeds under Florida’s Wrongful Death Act through our wrongful death practice. Where the property owner’s conduct rises to gross negligence, punitive damages may be available in rare cases.
The first steps that protect your claim
- Report the fall immediately to the manager or owner, and ask that an incident report be created. Do not leave without the incident being documented, and get the names of employees and witnesses.
- Photograph the scene before conditions change: the substance or defect, the surrounding area, the absence of warning cones, the lighting, and your footwear.
- Get medical care the same day. Gaps in treatment are the defense’s favorite exhibit, and injuries like disc damage and concussions often worsen over days.
- Send a preservation demand. Counsel should immediately demand in writing that the business preserve surveillance video, sweep and inspection logs, maintenance records, and prior incident reports. Video retention cycles are short, and once footage is gone, so is your best proof of notice.
- Say little, sign nothing. Do not give a recorded statement to the property insurer or sign medical authorizations before speaking with counsel, and keep the fall off social media entirely.
Frequently asked questions
Is a store automatically liable if I fall on its property? No. Florida is not a strict liability state. You must prove the business breached its duty of care, and for slips on transitory substances, § 768.0755 requires proof the business had actual or constructive knowledge of the hazard.
How long do I have to file a slip and fall lawsuit in Florida? Generally two years from the date of the fall for claims accruing after March 24, 2023. Claims against government entities require additional pre-suit notice, and a fall that causes death has its own two-year rule, so the safe course is to have counsel calendar your specific deadline early.
What if I was partly at fault for my fall? Your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault, and if you are found more than 50 percent at fault you recover nothing. This makes the evidence of the owner’s notice, and the fight over your own attentiveness, decisive.
The store says the hazard was “open and obvious.” Is my case over? No. Obviousness can excuse the duty to warn and increase your comparative fault, but the owner still owes a duty to maintain the premises in a reasonably safe condition. A visible hazard the owner left in place for months is still a maintenance failure.
Do I have to give the store’s insurance company a recorded statement? No, and you should not do so before consulting counsel. Adjusters are trained to lock you into details, about what you saw, where you looked, and how you feel, that will be used against you months later.
What is my slip and fall case worth? It depends on the severity and permanence of your injuries, your medical expenses and lost earnings, the strength of the notice evidence, and your share of comparative fault. Be skeptical of anyone who quotes a value before your medical picture and the owner’s records are known.
Talk to a Florida premises liability attorney
Slip and fall cases reward speed and punish delay: the notice evidence that wins them lives in the defendant’s cameras and logs, and it does not stay there long. The trial lawyers at KWBR have spent decades holding Florida property owners accountable through our premises liability and broader personal injury practices, and we know how to secure the video, the sweep logs, and the prior-incident history before they disappear. If you or a family member has been seriously hurt on someone else’s property, contact us for a free, confidential consultation, before the two-year clock gets any shorter.
This article is for general informational purposes and is not legal advice. The examples above are hypothetical illustrations, not real cases. Every claim turns on its specific facts; consult a qualified Florida attorney about your situation.