Slip & Fall Attorney in Tallahassee, FL

The knowledge requirement

For a fall caused by a substance on the floor of a business, Florida requires proof that the business had actual or constructive knowledge of the dangerous condition and should have remedied it.

Constructive knowledge is normally established one of two ways:

• The condition existed long enough that the business should have discovered it through ordinary care. This is why the age of a spill is so heavily litigated: dirt in it, cart tracks through it, dried edges, or footprints all evidence duration.
• The condition occurred with regularity and was therefore foreseeable, as with a leaking cooler, a persistently wet entryway, or a recurring problem in the same location.

This requirement is why surveillance footage often decides these cases outright. It shows when the hazard appeared, how many employees walked past it, and when anyone finally addressed it. It is also routinely overwritten within days or weeks, which makes an immediate preservation demand one of the most valuable steps available.

Beyond spills

Not every premises case involves a substance on the floor. Claims also arise from uneven or broken walkways, inadequate lighting, missing handrails, unmarked step-downs, falling merchandise, and negligent security where a foreseeable criminal attack occurred on poorly secured property. Some of these are governed by ordinary negligence principles rather than the stricter transitory-substance standard.

Your status on the property matters

Florida distinguishes among invitees, licensees, and trespassers, and the duty owed differs accordingly. A customer in a store is an invitee and is owed the highest duty: to maintain the premises in a reasonably safe condition, and to warn of dangers the owner knows about that are not obvious.

The open and obvious defense

Expect the defense to argue that the hazard was open and obvious, and that you should have seen it. This does not automatically defeat a claim, but it feeds directly into comparative fault, and under Florida’s modified comparative negligence rule, being found more than 50 percent responsible bars recovery entirely.

What these cases turn on

Premises claims are usually decided on evidence that exists for a very short time. The hazard itself is cleaned within minutes. Surveillance video at most businesses is overwritten on a cycle measured in days or weeks. A written incident report made before leaving the property, photographs of the hazard and the area around it, the names of employees and witnesses, and a prompt medical record are what a claim is later built from.

Footwear is nearly always raised by the defense, as is the argument that the hazard was open and obvious. Both are answerable, and both are far easier to answer with contemporaneous evidence than with recollection.

The two-year statute of limitations applies to claims accruing on or after March 24, 2023. The deadline that binds in practice is often much shorter, because a demand to preserve video has to reach the property owner before the footage cycles.