Premises Liability Lawyer Miami

Reviewed by the attorneys of JMM

Getting hurt on someone else’s property — a parking garage, an apartment complex, a store, a nightclub, a construction site you were lawfully near — raises a different set of legal questions than a car accident. Florida law asks why you were there, what the property owner knew or should have known about the danger, and whether the owner did enough to protect you. Jimenez Mazzitelli Mordes is a litigation firm that represents people injured on unsafe property across Miami-Dade, in English and Spanish. For background on what premises liability means in Florida, including visitor categories and the legal duties they carry, see our full guide.

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What is premises liability under Florida law?

Premises liability is the area of law that holds property owners and occupiers responsible when a dangerous condition on their property injures someone. It covers a wide range of situations — not just slip-and-fall accidents, but inadequate security that lets a foreseeable crime happen, broken stairs or railings, malfunctioning elevators, unsafe pools, falling objects, and more. What all of these share is the same basic legal question: did the person or business in control of the property act reasonably to keep it safe for the people who were legitimately there?

Your legal status on the property changes what the owner owed you

Florida law recognizes different categories of people on a property, and the property owner’s duty changes depending on which one applies to you:

• Invitees — people invited onto the property for a business purpose, like customers in a store or tenants in an apartment complex’s common areas. Property owners owe invitees the highest duty: to keep the property in a reasonably safe condition and to warn of dangers the owner knows about or should have discovered.
• Licensees — people who are on the property with permission but not for a business purpose, such as a social guest. The owner’s duty is generally to warn of known dangers that are not obvious.
• Trespassers — people on the property without permission. The owner generally owes a lesser duty, though Florida law still limits how a property owner may treat even an undiscovered trespasser, and separate protections apply to children under the “attractive nuisance” doctrine.

Most premises liability cases we handle involve invitees — shoppers, residents, guests at a business — which is the category carrying the strongest protections. Sorting out your status on the property is one of the first things we do, because it shapes the entire legal theory of the case.

Common types of premises liability cases we handle

“Premises liability” covers more ground than most people expect. Case types we see regularly in Miami-Dade include:

• Negligent security — when a property’s failure to provide reasonable security (adequate lighting, functioning locks and gates, security personnel where warranted) allows a foreseeable crime to happen to a guest, tenant, or customer.
• Structural and maintenance hazards — broken stairs, unsecured railings, crumbling walkways, and other conditions that develop when a property is not properly maintained.
• Elevator and escalator accidents — malfunctions and inadequate maintenance in buildings, parking structures, and shopping centers.
• Swimming pool accidents — inadequate barriers, missing safety equipment, or unsafe conditions at apartment, hotel, and community pools.
• Falling objects and inadequate lighting — merchandise, construction debris, or fixtures that fall due to poor securing or maintenance, and dimly lit stairwells, parking areas, or walkways that hide hazards.
• Slip, trip, and fall injuries — common enough, and governed by a specific Florida statute, that the constructive-knowledge standard that applies to those claims gets its own detailed treatment elsewhere on our site.

Negligent security: when the failure to protect you is the injury

Negligent security cases stand apart because the harm is usually caused directly by a third party — an attacker, a robber — not by the property owner. But the property owner can still be legally responsible if it knew or should have known about a foreseeable risk of crime on the property and failed to take reasonable steps to prevent it. Prior similar incidents on or near the property, inadequate lighting in parking areas, broken security gates, and insufficient security staffing are the kinds of facts that turn a criminal act into a premises liability claim against the property owner as well as the attacker. This is a well-established, separately developed area of our practice — see our negligent security case results and our explainer on what negligent security means under Florida law for more detail on how these claims work.

Florida’s comparative fault rule and the two-year deadline

Florida uses modified comparative negligence: your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault, and a person found more than 50% at fault recovers nothing. Property owners and their insurers routinely argue that an injured visitor was not paying attention, was somewhere they should not have been, or ignored a warning sign — all of which are attempts to shift fault onto you. Careful documentation of the hazard, the property’s condition, and how the incident happened is central to protecting the value of a premises liability claim.

Most premises liability claims based on negligence must generally be filed within two years of the date of injury. Some situations shorten or extend that window — including claims against a government entity, which carry separate and much shorter notice requirements — so having your specific case reviewed early matters.

What you generally need to prove in a premises liability case

Regardless of the specific scenario, most premises liability claims require showing that a dangerous condition existed, that the property owner knew or reasonably should have known about it, that the owner failed to fix it or adequately warn about it within a reasonable time, and that the condition caused your injury. What counts as “reasonably should have known” depends heavily on the facts — how long the hazard existed, whether similar problems had happened before, and what a reasonably careful property manager in that situation would have done.

Which situation is closest to what happened to you?

Common Miami premises liability scenarios and what we look at first

What happened	What we investigate first	Who may be responsible
You were attacked in a poorly secured parking garage or complex	Prior incident reports, lighting and camera maintenance records, security staffing history	The property owner or management company, along with the attacker
You fell down broken or unmarked stairs	Building code compliance, maintenance and inspection records, prior complaints	The property owner or the entity responsible for maintenance
An elevator or escalator malfunctioned	Maintenance contracts, inspection history, manufacturer recall records	The property owner and/or the maintenance contractor
You were hurt at an apartment, hotel, or community pool	Barrier and signage compliance, safety equipment, prior incidents	The property owner or management company

What to do after an injury on someone else’s property

Report the incident to the property owner, manager, or security staff and ask for a written incident report — do not rely on a verbal acknowledgment. Photograph the hazard itself before it is fixed or removed, along with the surrounding area, lighting, and any warning signs (or the absence of them). Get the names and contact information of anyone who witnessed what happened, and seek medical care even if the injury seems minor at first. Do not give a recorded statement to the property’s insurer, and do not sign anything, before talking to an attorney — evidence like security footage and maintenance logs can be routinely overwritten or discarded if no one preserves it early.

How we build a premises liability case

Because the key evidence in a premises case — security footage, maintenance and inspection records, prior incident reports — is often controlled by the property owner and can disappear quickly, early investigation matters. As a litigation firm, we prepare every case as though it may go to trial, because that is what protects its value when a property owner’s insurer decides how to respond. Some of the systemic-failure questions in these cases mirror what we look at in hospital negligence cases — did the institution in control of the space have adequate staffing and protocols — even though the underlying legal claims are different. For the wider picture of how we handle injury claims across Miami-Dade, see the personal injury attorneys serving Miami-Dade at our main hub.

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