Practice areas / Negligent security
Negligent security claims
when the crime was a stranger's and the conditions were the owner's
A negligent security claim examines whether a property owner failed to take reasonable precautions against foreseeable crime.
Evidence can include prior incidents, police calls, cameras, gates, lighting, and staffing. The property's history is central to whether the crime was foreseeable.
What Florida law actually says
A property owner can be liable for a third party's criminal act when the crime was foreseeable and the security response to that risk was unreasonable.
Foreseeability is proven with records: prior crimes, prior complaints, prior police calls to that address.
Florida gives certain residential owners a presumption against liability if they adopted specific security measures (Fla. Stat. 768.0706). The checklist of what existed that night is decisive in both directions.
What gets secured first
The crime history for the address and the surrounding block, which is public
What actually worked that night: cameras, gates, locks, lighting, patrols, staffing
The security contract and the guard company's logs, because the duty often runs through them
Prior complaints to management, in writing, from tenants and guests who saw it coming
Asked in the first phone call
The attacker was never caught. Is there still a case?
Yes. The civil claim is against the property, not the criminal, and it does not require an arrest or a conviction.
What kind of places do these claims involve?
Anywhere the public is invited: apartment complexes, hotel and mall parking, gas stations, bars, ATMs. The common thread is a property that profited from your presence and skipped the protection.
Nothing on this site is legal advice. The deadlines and standards described here are general, they have exceptions, and they change. Florida rewrote several of them in 2023. Do not use this site to calculate your own deadline.