Falls, dog bites, and unsafe property
These three Florida rules surprise people in opposite directions. Slipping in a store is much harder to win than most expect. A dog bite is much easier. And a 2023 law handed apartment complexes a shield that did not exist before.
Slipping on a spill in a store: falling is not enough
The most common misunderstanding in Florida injury law is that falling in a business means the business owes you money. It does not. Fla. Stat. 768.0755(1) opens with “If a person slips and falls on a transitory foreign substance in a business establishment” — a spill, in plain words — and then requires the injured person to prove “that the business establishment had actual or constructive knowledge of the dangerous condition and should have taken action to remedy it.”
“Constructive knowledge” is where these cases are won or lost, and the statute gives exactly two routes to it, provable by circumstantial evidence:
- The condition existed long enough that the business should have known about it in the exercise of ordinary care.
- The condition happened regularly and was therefore foreseeable.
That is why the useful evidence in a fall case is time-stamped: how long the spill was there, when the floor was last inspected, whether the sweep log was kept, whether the same leak had been reported before. Subsection (2) preserves other common-law duties of a person in possession or control of business premises, so the statute is not the whole of the law. It also does not reach every fall in a shop: a broken stair, bad lighting, or an uneven floor is not a transitory foreign substance, and those claims run under ordinary premises-liability law instead of this knowledge test. The provision was created in 2010, and HB 837 did not change it.
Dog bites: strict liability, with a sign exception
Florida is unusually strict here. Fla. Stat. 767.04 makes the owner of a dog that bites a person — in a public place, or lawfully in a private place — liable “regardless of the former viciousness of the dog or the owners' knowledge of such viciousness.” There is no free first bite in Florida.
Two limits. The award is reduced by the bitten person's own share of fault. And the statute contains a genuinely odd exception, quoted directly:
“However, the owner is not liable, except as to a person under the age of 6, or unless the damages are proximately caused by a negligent act or omission of the owner, if at the time of any such injury the owner had displayed in a prominent place on his or her premises a sign easily readable including the words ‘Bad Dog.’”
Read that exception carefully
A readable “Bad Dog” sign, prominently displayed, can defeat the claim — but not if the bitten person is under 6 years old, and not if the owner's own carelessness caused the bite. The section has not been amended since 1997.
Hurt by a criminal on someone else's property
Two 2023 changes reshaped negligent-security claims, both from HB 837.
1. The criminal now gets a share of the blame
Fla. Stat. 768.0701 requires that in a claim against an owner, lessor, operator, or manager of commercial or real property, brought by a person lawfully on the property who was injured by a third party's criminal act, “the trier of fact must consider the fault of all persons who contributed to the injury.” The attacker's share reduces what the property owner pays — even though the attacker is usually judgment-proof.
2. Apartment complexes can earn a presumption against liability
Fla. Stat. 768.0706 gives the owner or principal operator of a multifamily residential property a presumption against liability for third-party criminal acts on the premises, if the property substantially implements a listed set of security measures. The list includes security cameras at entries and exits with retention of recordings, lighting requirements for parking lots and common areas from dusk until dawn, deadbolts on unit doors, window and exterior-door locking devices, locked gates on pool fences, and peepholes. It also requires a crime prevention through environmental design assessment and employee crime-deterrence training.
We are deliberately not printing the checklist as a checklist
768.0706 contains precise figures — a specific lighting level, a specific deadbolt length, specific dates by which assessments and training had to happen. Those details decide cases, and we would rather send you to the statute than paraphrase a number. Read 768.0706 on the Legislature's own site before relying on any version of the list, including a version copied from a law firm.
Questions
Do I automatically have a case if I slip and fall in a Florida store?
No. For a fall on a transitory foreign substance — a spill — Fla. Stat. 768.0755(1) requires proof that the business had actual or constructive knowledge of the dangerous condition. Constructive knowledge can be shown with circumstantial evidence that the condition existed long enough that the business should have discovered it with ordinary care, or that it occurred with regularity and was therefore foreseeable.
Is Florida a one-bite state for dog bites?
No. Under Fla. Stat. 767.04 a dog owner is liable for a bite regardless of the dog's prior viciousness or the owner's knowledge of it. The award is reduced by the bitten person's comparative fault, and a prominently displayed, easily readable 'Bad Dog' sign can relieve the owner of liability except where the bitten person is under 6 years old or the owner's own negligence caused the injury.
Can I sue an apartment complex after being attacked there?
It is harder than it was before 2023. Fla. Stat. 768.0706 gives a multifamily residential property a presumption against liability for third-party criminal acts if it substantially implements the security measures listed in that statute, and Fla. Stat. 768.0701 requires the jury to assign a share of fault to the criminal, which reduces what the property owner pays.