• ✓You must prove the business knew — or should have known. Under Fla. Stat. § 768.0755, an injured person who slips on a transitory foreign substance in a business establishment must prove the business had actual or constructive knowledge of the dangerous condition and should have remedied it. Actual knowledge means someone there knew. Constructive knowledge is proven by circumstantial evidence showing either that the condition existed for a length of time such that the business should have discovered it, or that the condition occurred with regularity and was therefore foreseeable. That second path matters: a cooler that leaks every week, or an entry that floods every time it rains, is a foreseeable condition, not an accident.
• ✓Why you were on the property changes what you were owed. Florida sorts visitors into categories, and the category sets the duty. An invitee — a customer in a store or plaza during business hours — is owed the highest duty: reasonable care in maintaining the property, plus warning or repair of hazards the owner knew of or should have discovered through reasonable inspection. A licensee, present with permission but not for the owner’s business benefit, is owed warning of known dangers. A trespasser is generally owed only that the owner refrain from willful or wanton harm. Most Hialeah shopping and grocery falls involve invitees — the strongest position, and worth establishing early.
• ✓Two years to file, and partial fault does not end your claim. For negligence claims accruing on or after March 24, 2023, the deadline is generally two years from the date of injury (Fla. Stat. § 95.11). Under Florida’s modified comparative negligence rule (Fla. Stat. § 768.81), you can recover if you were 50% or less at fault, reduced by your share — but more than 50% bars you completely. In fall cases the defense builds its whole strategy around that bar: the hazard was open and obvious, you were distracted, your shoes were wrong. And two years is the filing deadline, not the evidence deadline — the video runs out long before.

• •Spills left in supermarket and bodega aisles. Liquids, produce, broken jars, and melted ice left on a hard floor — the classic transitory foreign substance. How long it sat is the whole case, and the video answers it.
• •Leaking coolers, freezers, and refrigerated cases. Condensation and equipment leaks that pool in the same spot week after week. A hazard that recurs with regularity is foreseeable — a direct route to constructive knowledge under § 768.0755.
• •Rain tracked into entryways and tile floors. South Florida downpours turn polished tile into a hazard at every doorway. Missing mats, no wet-floor signage, and no inspection routine are the failures that make it actionable.
• •Broken pavement and curbs in plaza parking lots. Cracked asphalt, uneven thresholds, wheel stops, and unmarked height changes across strip-plaza and shopping-center lots cause trip falls that break wrists, ankles, and hips.
• •Inadequate lighting in lots, stairwells, and corridors. A hazard you cannot see is a hazard you cannot avoid. Burned-out fixtures in a parking area or back stairwell turn a minor defect into a fall.
• •Warehouse floor hazards on Hialeah’s west side. In the industrial and warehouse district, the hazards look different: loading-dock edges, dock plates, hydraulic and oil spills, shrink-wrap and banding debris, pallet rubble, and uneven or damaged concrete in forklift traffic lanes.

1. Letting the video cycle out. The footage that would show how long the spill sat there is often preserved only for the few minutes around your fall — or not at all — unless a lawyer demands the full window be kept before the system overwrites it.
2. “We had no notice of it.” The core defense: nobody knew, and it had not been there long enough for anyone to find it. Cleaning and inspection logs, or the suspicious absence of them, are how that claim gets tested.
3. “It was open and obvious.” Arguing you should have seen and avoided the hazard yourself — every point of fault they push onto you cuts what they pay under Florida’s 50% bar, and past it, pays nothing.
4. A recorded statement while you are still in pain. An early call that sounds like paperwork, engineered to get you to say your shoes were slick, that you were on your phone, or that you feel fine.
5. A fast, small check. An offer that arrives before the MRI does — closing your claim for a fraction of what a surgical injury actually costs.

The single most valuable thing you can do is get a lawyer involved before the store’s footage loops and its logs go into a file you cannot reach.

• ✓We demand preservation of the video immediately. A preservation letter goes out fast, demanding the store keep the full surveillance window — not just the seconds around your fall, but the period before it that shows how long the hazard sat there — before the system overwrites it.
• ✓We go after the cleaning and inspection logs. Sweep sheets, inspection schedules, and the incident report are where constructive knowledge lives. Logs that show a hazard was missed — or logs that do not exist at all — are powerful evidence.
• ✓We prove regularity where the hazard repeats. Prior incident reports, repair records, and maintenance history on the same cooler, the same doorway, or the same stretch of pavement establish that the condition occurred with regularity and was therefore foreseeable — the second statutory path to constructive knowledge.
• ✓We identify every responsible party and policy. In a plaza or warehouse, the tenant, the property owner, a management company, and a janitorial or maintenance contractor may each owe a duty and each carry separate coverage.
• ✓We solve the medical-bill problem — without PIP. Because no-fault does not apply here, we work with your health coverage, arrange treatment through a letter of protection where appropriate, and pursue any med-pay the premises carries, so you can get care while the claim is pending.

Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome; every case depends on its own facts, injuries, and available insurance coverage. Results shown are prior matters handled by the firm and are not a prediction about your case.