Negligent Security Claims in Florida

Businesses and property owners owe the people they invite in reasonable protection against foreseeable criminal acts. When an assault, robbery, shooting, or sexual attack happens where crime was predictable and precautions were absent, the victim's claim runs against the property, its management company, and sometimes its security contractor.

Foreseeability is the battleground: prior crimes on the property, calls for service, the surrounding area's crime history, and what the owner actually knew. The failures are usually mundane and documented. Cameras that stopped recording months ago. Lighting knocked out and never replaced. A gate that has been propped open all year. A security patrol on paper that never appears on the logs.

These cases arise where people and cash and darkness meet: apartment complexes, hotels and motels, bars and nightclubs, gas stations, convenience stores, shopping center parking lots, and garages.

The 2023 reform created a presumption against liability for owners of multifamily residential property, but only for owners who substantially implement every item on a statutory security checklist.^[1] The list is specific:

• Security cameras at entry and exit points, with footage retrievable for at least 30 days.
• Parking lot lighting averaging 1.8 foot-candles per square foot, illuminated dusk to dawn.
• Lighting in walkways, laundry rooms, and common areas from dusk to dawn.
• 1-inch deadbolts on every dwelling unit door.
• Locking devices on windows, sliding doors, and other exterior openings.
• Locked pool gates with key or fob access, and peepholes on windowless unit doors.
• A crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) assessment, no more than three years old, performed by trained law enforcement or a certified practitioner, with the property in substantial compliance with it.
• Employee crime deterrence and safety training, current for every employee.

The burden of proving substantial implementation sits on the owner. That architecture defines the modern apartment case: the owner claims the shield, and the discovery tests every item on the list.

A presumption is not immunity. It belongs only to owners who actually did the work, and the checklist is demanding enough that many did not. The camera retention lapsed. The lighting was never measured, let alone maintained at 1.8 foot-candles. The CPTED assessment exists, but the property ignored its recommendations, and substantial compliance with the assessment is part of the requirement. Maintenance records, work orders, vendor invoices, and the cameras' own uptime logs answer whether the shield was earned.

Just as important: the presumption covers multifamily residential property. Hotels, bars, nightclubs, gas stations, retail lots, and garages remain governed by ordinary premises liability principles, where foreseeability and reasonable precautions decide the case without any statutory safe harbor.

One more HB 837 change shapes trial strategy: in negligent security cases, the jury must now consider the fault of all persons who contributed to the injury, including the criminal who committed the act.^[2] Defendants use that rule to point the verdict form at an empty chair. Answering it means proving the owner's failure was a genuine cause: the attack happened because the property made it possible, not merely while the property stood nearby.

Negligent security victims carry some of the heaviest injuries in civil law: gunshot wounds, traumatic brain injuries from beatings, the lasting psychological harm of sexual assault, and deaths that become wrongful death claims for the families left behind. Florida places no cap on compensatory damages in these cases, and the psychological injuries are as compensable as the physical ones.

The lawsuit deadline is generally two years under Florida's post-2023 statute of limitations, with wrongful death claims running two years from death. The evidence deadline is far shorter: camera footage cycles out in weeks, and the 30-day retention the statute requires of apartment owners means a preservation letter in month one can be the difference between proof and silence.

A criminal prosecution may run alongside the civil claim. It punishes the attacker. The civil case is the one that reaches the property owner whose choices set the stage, and the two proceed independently.