West Palm Beach slip and fall lawyer

Shalhoub Law Injury & Accident represents people injured in falls in stores and other businesses in West Palm Beach and throughout Palm Beach County. That includes proving the owner knew, or should have known, about the hazard under Florida’s slip and fall statute. Attorney Paul R. Shalhoub spent years defending insurance companies before he began representing injured people, and he handles every case himself, from the first call through trial.

Falling in a store is not the same as proving the store is responsible for it. One short Florida statute decides almost every one of these cases, and most of what you will read online about slip and fall claims does not mention it.

What separates a winning case from a losing one is almost always proof of how long the hazard had been on the floor. Two Florida appellate decisions turn on exactly that — in one the injured person lost, in the other she won — and the difference between them came down to evidence that existed for about ten minutes. Photographs of the floor, taken before anyone cleans it up, are the most valuable thing an injured person can produce.

Attorney Paul R. Shalhoub tried a slip and fall against Walmart to a jury verdict at six times the offer the company made shortly before trial. He also spent the early part of his career at an insurance-defense firm, which is where he learned how these claims get taken apart.

Florida Statute 768.0755 governs every slip and fall on a spill, a liquid or a dropped object inside a business. It is two subsections long. Here it is, complete.

768.0755 Premises liability for transitory foreign substances in a business establishment.

(1) If a person slips and falls on a transitory foreign substance in a business establishment, the injured person must prove that the business establishment had actual or constructive knowledge of the dangerous condition and should have taken action to remedy it. Constructive knowledge may be proven by circumstantial evidence showing that:

(a) The dangerous condition existed for such a length of time that, in the exercise of ordinary care, the business establishment should have known of the condition; or

(b) The condition occurred with regularity and was therefore foreseeable.

(2) This section does not affect any common-law duty of care owed by a person or entity in possession or control of a business premises.

Read the statute on the Florida Legislature’s site

Read subsection (1) again slowly. The burden is on you. It is not enough that you fell, that you were hurt, or even that the floor was genuinely dangerous. You have to prove the business knew about the hazard, or should have known about it, and failed to deal with it.

That was not always the law. In 2001 the Florida Supreme Court held in Owens v. Publix Supermarkets, 802 So. 2d 315, that a foreign substance on the floor created a rebuttable presumption of negligence and shifted the burden to the store to show it had exercised reasonable care. The Legislature removed that burden shift, first in 2002 and decisively with this statute in 2010. Any page telling you the store has to prove it was careful is describing law that was repealed fifteen years ago.

The five things you have to prove

Laid out in order, because the second and third are where cases are won and lost:

1. The defendant is a business establishment. The statute reaches businesses. A condominium common area, a private home or a public sidewalk is governed by different rules.
2. A transitory foreign substance caused the fall. Something that does not belong there, as opposed to a permanent feature of the building.
3. The business had actual or constructive knowledge of it. Someone knew, or should have known.
4. It should have taken action to remedy it. A separate clause in the statute, not a restatement of the third.
5. The ordinary negligence elements the statute leaves alone — duty, breach, causation and damages — plus control of the premises. Florida courts describe a premises claim as a negligence claim with the added elements of possession or control and notice of the dangerous condition.

What a “transitory foreign substance” actually means

The statute uses the phrase without defining it, so the definition still comes from Owens, which remains good law on this point. The Court described it as “any liquid or solid substance, item or object located where it does not belong.” A puddle of water, a grape, spilled detergent, a dropped hanger, tracked-in rain. All of it qualifies.

Subsection (2) matters more than people think

The second subsection preserves every common-law duty a property owner already had. Florida courts describe the effect precisely: proof of the breach element is “statutorily constrained” by this section. The duty to maintain the premises in a reasonably safe condition did not go anywhere. That distinction is what allows a case to proceed on a theory the statute does not cover, such as a floor that was dangerous by design rather than because something was spilled on it.

The clearest way to understand this statute is to compare a case that was lost with one that was won, because the difference is almost entirely about evidence that existed in the first few minutes.

The case that was lost: a grape, and no footprints

In Oliver v. Winn-Dixie Stores (Fourth District, No. 4D19-291, 19 February 2020) a customer slipped on a squished grape in dirty liquid with a speck of color in it. The store produced an employee affidavit and four time-stamped surveillance stills showing he had walked that exact spot at 6:54, 7:01, 7:03 and 7:10 p.m. and each time the floor was clean and dry. She fell at 7:23.

What sank the claim was what the floor did not show. There were no cart tracks, no footprints, no track marks through the liquid — only her own slip mark. Summary judgment for the store was affirmed. The court noted the contrast with an earlier case where wheel tracks through a liquid did establish duration.

The case that was won: a big puddle with a source

In a July 2026 decision, the Fifth District reversed summary judgment for Publix where the customer slipped in what she described as a pile of water about four feet by four feet, her husband saw a leaking float device in the aisle, and a store employee was in the immediate vicinity (Christie v. Publix Super Markets, Fifth District, Case No. 5D2025-1184, 17 July 2026).

Three facts did the work: the size of the puddle, an identifiable source for it, and an employee nearby. Florida courts are more willing to find constructive knowledge when staff were in the area, because a jury can reasonably infer that someone should have seen a visible hazard.

What that means for the ten minutes after you fall

The difference between those two outcomes is evidence that only exists briefly. If you are physically able, or if someone with you is:

• Photograph the substance before anyone cleans it. Wide shot and close-up.
• Photograph the edges of it. Drying rings, dirt, melting, discoloration and footprints or cart tracks through it are how duration gets proven.
• Photograph the source if you can see one — a leaking cooler, a dripping ceiling tile, a case of product, a float or dispenser.
• Photograph who is nearby, including employees and where they were standing.
• Report it before you leave and ask for the incident report number. Do not give a recorded statement about how it happened.
• Keep the shoes you were wearing, unwashed. Footwear becomes a defense argument.
• Get the names of witnesses, including other customers, not just staff.

Surveillance video is usually the whole case, and most systems overwrite themselves within days. A written demand to preserve it, sent to the store and its corporate owner quickly, is the single most useful thing that can happen in week one.

“It was open and obvious”

This is the most common response, and it is more limited than it sounds. Florida law treats it as two separate duties: a hazard being obvious can discharge a property owner’s duty to warn about it, but it does not by itself discharge the duty to maintain the premises in a reasonably safe condition. Those are different obligations, and a case can survive on the second even when the first is conceded.

“You were partly at fault”

Section 768.81(6) provides that a party found more than 50 percent at fault for their own harm recovers nothing. At or below that line, your recovery is reduced by your percentage rather than barred. Expect arguments about your footwear, your phone, whether you were looking where you were going, and whether you had any reason to be in that part of the store.

“Another customer caused it”

This one is underappreciated. A store can point at the customer who dropped the item and ask the jury to assign fault to that person, even though they are not a defendant. In Safonte the jury assigned 40 percent to Publix and 60 percent to the customer who dropped the yogurt. Combined with the 50 percent bar, apportionment is a real risk that has to be planned for from the beginning.

A negligence claim that accrued after 24 March 2023 must be filed within two years under section 95.11(5)(a). Claims that accrued on or before that date remain governed by the previous four-year rule. Claims against a government body follow section 768.28 instead and are shorter still.

Four years is still printed on Florida law firm websites, including pages ranking for this search in West Palm Beach. Someone relying on that for a 2024 fall would be a year and a half late.

A fall onto a hard floor from standing height is not a minor mechanism of injury, particularly past about sixty.

Paying for treatment before the case resolves

Unlike a car crash, there is no personal injury protection coverage in a slip and fall. That is one of the most practical differences between the two, and people are often caught out by it. Health insurance generally pays, subject to a lien that has to be dealt with out of any recovery. Where there is no health coverage, some providers will treat on a letter of protection, agreeing to wait for payment until the case ends. Those arrangements are now subject to specific Florida requirements about disclosure, and they should be discussed with a lawyer before they are signed rather than afterward.

Pre-existing conditions

Arthritis, an old back injury or prior surgery is not a defense to a claim, though it will be argued as one. Florida law allows recovery for the aggravation of a pre-existing condition. The way to protect that is to tell every doctor your complete history. Records that look like a concealed history do far more damage than the history itself.

Florida changed its civil discovery rules effective 1 January 2025, and the change is genuinely useful to injured people. No competing page we reviewed mentions it.

Under Rule 1.280(a) of the Florida Rules of Civil Procedure, once a case is filed each side must make initial disclosures without waiting for anyone to ask. For a defendant store that includes the people likely to have information about the incident, the documents and electronically stored information it may rely on, and — the part that matters most — a copy of any insurance policy under which an insurer may be liable to satisfy a judgment.

The deadline is 60 days after service of the complaint, and the rule says plainly that a party is not excused from disclosing because it has not finished investigating. Knowing what coverage exists early changes how a case is valued and negotiated, instead of being something you learn a year in.

An honest answer, because this is widely misrepresented online.

Florida does not allow a separate lawsuit against the store for destroying evidence. The Supreme Court of Florida settled that in Martino v. Wal-Mart Stores, 908 So. 2d 342 (Fla. 2005), a case about a shopping cart and a videotape, litigated by West Palm Beach lawyers. The Court chose sanctions and an evidentiary presumption over an independent cause of action.

What that leaves is still meaningful. If evidence is lost or destroyed, a court can impose discovery sanctions, and where the loss genuinely hinders your ability to make out your case, a rebuttable presumption of negligence can apply. Whether a store has a duty to preserve footage before a suit is filed, absent a statute, rule or court order, is contested in Florida — which is precisely why a written preservation demand goes out early. The demand is what creates the obligation to argue about later.

If you have already asked a store for its footage and been refused, say so on the first call. It changes what has to happen next, and how fast.

Call (561) 208-5058 Free case review

Nobody can tell you from a web page, and a firm that offers a number before seeing your medical records and the store’s evidence is guessing. What can be said honestly is what moves it: how badly you were hurt and whether the injury is permanent, whether you were treated promptly and consistently, how strong the constructive-knowledge evidence is, how much fault a jury would assign to you, and what insurance exists.

Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Every case turns on its own facts, its venue and the coverage that actually exists.