Florida slip and fall cases are governed by a combination of state statutes and court decisions. Liability comes down to three questions: what duty the property owner owed you, what they knew or should have known about the hazard, and how fault is allocated between the parties.
Florida Premises Liability Law and the Duty of Care
Premises liability is a property owner’s responsibility for injuries caused by unsafe conditions on their property. Whether an owner owes you anything, and how much, depends partially on why you were on the property in the first place. Florida sorts visitors into three categories that determine the standard the owner has to meet: invitees, licensees, and trespassers.
Invitees
A customer shopping in a store, eating in a restaurant, or pulling into a gas station is an invitee, someone on the property at the owner’s express or implied invitation, usually for a purpose tied to the owner’s business. Invitees are owed the highest duty of care in Florida, which breaks into two obligations:
- Keep the property reasonably safe. The owner has to use reasonable care to maintain the premises, and that carries a duty to inspect for hazards rather than wait for someone to find them. A grocery store is expected to check its aisles for spills, not react only after a customer falls.
- Warn of concealed dangers. When a hazard isn’t obvious and you couldn’t reasonably spot it on your own, the owner has to warn you about dangers they knew about or should have known about.
As a customer, you’re owed both an actively maintained space and a warning about hazards that aren’t apparent. An owner who lets a known hazard go unfixed, or skips the reasonable inspections that would have caught it, has fallen short of that duty.
Licensees
A licensee is someone who is given permission to be on the property but is there for their own purpose. A neighbor you let cut across your yard, or someone you let park on your land for an event, is a licensee. Florida divides licensees into two groups. Uninvited licensees are owed less than invitees, meaning there’s no duty to inspect for unknown hazards, only a duty to warn of known dangers that aren’t obvious and to avoid willful or wanton harm. Social guests are treated differently. As invited licensees, they are owed the same duty of care as invitees under Florida law (Wood v. Camp, 284 So. 2d 691 (Fla. 1973)).
Trespassers
A trespasser enters the property with no permission or right at all. Property owners owe them the least, only expected to avoid intentionally or wantonly harming them. Children are an exception. Under the attractive nuisance doctrine, an owner can be liable when something likely to draw kids onto the property, like an unfenced pool, causes injury.
For a slip and fall at a store, restaurant, or other business, you were almost certainly an invitee, which puts you on the strongest footing.
Florida Law on Hazards and Owner Liability
Florida law ties liability to what the property owner knew or should have known about the hazard that caused your fall.
Spills
If you slipped on a spill or loose object, like a wet aisle, a freshly mopped floor with no sign, a leaking cooler, or tracked-in rainwater, the owner is at fault if they created it or it sat there long enough that an employee doing their job should have found and cleaned it. Florida Statute § 768.0755 governs premises liability for “transitory foreign substances” in a business establishment and puts the burden of proof on you.
How long a spill sat usually comes from the spill itself and the store’s records: cart tracks or footprints through it, dirt or dried edges, surveillance footage, and the store’s cleaning and inspection logs. Even in self-service areas like a drink station or salad bar, the same standard applies. You still need to show the store had actual or constructive knowledge of the specific spill and failed to act. Our attorneys can help obtain the store’s cleaning logs, inspection records, and surveillance footage before they are lost or destroyed.
Structural Defects
Florida’s reasonable care standard requires property owners to discover and remedy unsafe structural conditions within a reasonable time. If you fell because of a defect in the floor or structure, like uneven flooring, torn carpet, a loose mat, broken stairs, a pothole, or a poorly lit step, the owner is at fault if the condition was unsafe and they had time to fix it or warn you. A defect that sat for weeks or months is hard for an owner to disown, and maintenance and inspection records and earlier complaints establish how long it was there. Building code violations constitute prima facie evidence of negligence under Florida law.
Florida Legal Defenses in Slip and Fall Cases
Florida law recognizes several defenses a property owner can raise to limit or eliminate liability in a slip and fall case.
Lack of Notice
The owner argues that nobody on the property created the hazard, knew about it, or had time to find it. Under § 768.0755, the burden is on the plaintiff to prove actual or constructive knowledge — meaning the hazard existed long enough that a reasonable inspection would have caught it. Surveillance footage, cleaning and inspection records, and the physical state of the hazard itself are what establish that knowledge.
The Open and Obvious Defense
The owner argues the hazard was so visible that you should have stepped around it. In Florida, an obvious hazard cancels the duty to warn you, but not the duty to keep the property safe in the first place (Trainor v. PNC Bank, 211 So. 3d 366 (Fla. 5th DCA 2017)). A plaintiff can counter this by showing a reasonable person wouldn’t have noticed the hazard, or that a display or a crowd pulled attention away from the floor.
Comparative Negligence
Florida used to follow pure comparative negligence, where the jury lowered your award by your share of fault but never took it away entirely. House Bill 837 changed the rule on March 24, 2023. Now, under Florida Statute § 768.81, how much you recover depends on your share of the fault.
- At 50 percent or less, the jury lowers your award by your share. If your damages come to $100,000 and the jury puts you at 20 percent, you collect $80,000.
- Above 50 percent, you recover nothing.
Property owners and their insurance companies use the rule against you. They argue you were looking at your phone or ignored a posted wet-floor sign, because once your share passes half, you collect nothing. A jury can also assign you more of the fault for walking into a hazard you could plainly see, even when the owner failed to keep the floor safe.
Florida Law on Damages in Slip and Fall Cases
Florida law governs two categories of recoverable damages in a personal injury case under § 768.81. Economic damages cover measurable financial losses:
- Emergency care, surgery, physical therapy, and the rest of your medical bills.
- Future medical costs if you need ongoing treatment.
- The wages you lost, plus your reduced earning ability if you can no longer do the same work.
- Out-of-pocket costs like medical equipment or help around the house.
Noneconomic damages cover losses that have no receipt, like your physical pain and the activities you can no longer enjoy. Punitive damages are uncommon in slip and fall cases. Florida Statute § 768.72 requires clear and convincing evidence that the defendant was personally guilty of intentional misconduct or gross negligence before punitive damages can be awarded.
Florida’s Deadline to Sue after a Slip and Fall
The statute of limitations for slip and fall cases gives you two years from the date of the fall to sue, under Florida Statute § 95.11. House Bill 837 cut the window from four years to two for any injury on or after March 24, 2023.
Which deadline applies depends on the date of your fall.
- If you fell on or after March 24, 2023, you have two years to sue.
- If you fell before March 24, 2023, you have the old four years.
If you sue a government body, you have to follow the separate notice rules in § 768.28 and the deadline is different. Negligence claims against government entities have to be filed within four years under § 768.28(14), not two. The pre-suit notice requirement and the lawsuit deadline are independent obligations, so satisfying the notice requirement does not extend the time to file suit.
Speak With a Florida Slip and Fall Attorney
If you’ve been the victim of a slip and fall accident on someone else’s property, contact us today at (561) 655-2028 for a free consultation. If we take your case, you pay nothing unless we recover compensation.
