Every negligent security case comes back to one question: was the crime foreseeable? Answer it well and the owner’s duty follows. Answer it poorly and the case fails, however terrible the injury. This page is about how that question is really decided in Florida, and why it is the part of these cases I am built for.
The rule, and the exception
Florida starts from the position that a property owner has no duty to protect anyone from another person’s crime. The exception swallows a great deal of that rule: where a special relationship exists, a business toward its customers, a landlord toward tenants, a hotel toward guests, the owner owes reasonable care, and when crime is foreseeable, reasonable care includes reasonable security. So foreseeability is the hinge that turns no duty into a duty.
Foreseeability is decided in the record of prior crime, and pulling that record apart is exactly what I spent my career doing in criminal courtrooms. I read police reports, crime data, and arrest records the way most injury lawyers never learn to, so I can show what a property owner knew, or should have known, about the danger on the site before you were ever harmed. When you can prove a pattern of prior incidents, you prove the owner had every reason to act and chose not to. I represent injured people, not insurance companies, and as a former public defender who tried numerous cases and cross-examined witnesses constantly, I am willing to put a case in front of a jury, which is often what finally moves an insurer to pay fair value. I handle your case personally, from the first call through trial. Learn more about my background.
Prior similar crimes
The main way Florida courts measure foreseeability is prior crime. They look at whether crimes like the one that hurt you happened on or near the property before, how many times, how recently, and how close by. A single remote incident is weak; a steady pattern of similar crimes the owner knew about is strong. The closer the prior crimes are in kind, time, and place to your attack, the more foreseeable yours becomes.
The two ways foreseeability is proven
Foreseeability is the question every negligent-security case turns on, and Florida courts let it be proven in two overlapping ways. The first is prior similar crimes. When there have been earlier assaults, robberies, or shootings at the property or in its immediate area, those incidents put the owner on notice that it was happening and could happen again, and the closer they are in kind, place, and time, the stronger the notice. Courts have long recognized this duty to guard against foreseeable criminal acts, including in Hall v. Billy Jack’s, Inc., 458 So. 2d 760 (Fla. 1984), and in the residential setting in Czerwinski v. Sunrise Point Condominium, 540 So. 2d 199 (Fla. 3d DCA 1989). The second is the totality of the circumstances, which looks beyond a tally of past crimes to the whole picture, the nature and location of the property, its condition, the broken gate or the dark lot, and everything a reasonable owner would have seen. A case can be built on either, and the strongest cases use both, showing that the danger was not a freak event but something the owner had every reason to anticipate.
The evidence that proves it
Foreseeability is assembled from records: police reports and calls for service at the address, area crime data, prior insurance claims for criminal acts, and the property’s own incident logs. These show what the owner knew or should have known. Pulling them, reading them, and turning them into a clear pattern is the heart of the work, and it is the work my criminal practice trained me to do.
How the history gets proven
Proving foreseeability takes real digging, because the property owner rarely volunteers the record of what happened before. The prior-crime picture is built from police call and incident data for the address and the surrounding blocks, from the owner’s own records of complaints and past incidents, from prior lawsuits and insurance claims, and from what residents, employees, and neighbors know. The condition of the property is documented before it can be quietly repaired, the gate that never worked, the lighting that was out, the cameras that recorded nothing. Assembling this history is often the difference between a case the defense can call a random act and a case that shows a landlord who knew exactly what its property was and did nothing. This is exactly the kind of investigative work these cases demand, and it is where they are won.
Foreseeability is not enough on its own
Proving the crime was foreseeable opens the door; it does not finish the case. Florida law also requires causation, that the inadequate security was a cause of the harm, and the Florida Supreme Court held in Sanders v. ERP Operating Ltd. Partnership, 157 So. 3d 273 (Fla. 2015), that the injured person carries the burden of proving it. So the case has to show not only that better security was owed, but that it would likely have prevented or lessened what happened.
Why this is my kind of case
A negligent security case is, at bottom, a crime reconstructed and a record read closely, then turned toward the question of what the owner should have done. That is the same material I work with on the criminal side, the reports, the patterns, the way crimes unfold. Pointed at a victim’s case, it is a real advantage, and it is why I built this part of my practice.
Deadlines
For an injury on or after March 24, 2023, Florida generally gives you two years to bring the negligence claim against the property owner under Fla. Stat. 95.11. A separate claim against the attacker for the assault or battery carries a longer four-year window. Crime scene evidence and video are often gone within weeks, so the real deadline for preserving proof comes long before the legal one.
Foreseeability is the whole game in a negligent-security case, and proving it is investigative work I take seriously. I pull the crime history for the property and the area, I get the owner’s own records of what it already knew, and I document the conditions before they can be fixed, because the defense wants to call a foreseeable attack a random one. I represent injured people, not property owners, and I build the record that shows the danger was known and the owner chose not to answer it.
Common Questions
What does foreseeability mean in a negligent security case?
It means the crime was predictable enough that a reasonable owner should have guarded against it. Florida courts look mainly at prior crime: whether similar crimes happened on or near the property, how often, how recently, and how close. The more a pattern existed, the stronger the duty to provide security.
How do you prove a crime was foreseeable?
Chiefly through prior-incident evidence: police reports and calls for service at the property, crime data for the immediate area, prior insurance claims, and the owner's own records of earlier incidents. Read together, they show what the owner knew or should have known about the risk.
Does the property owner have to prevent every crime?
No. The duty is reasonable care, not a guarantee of safety. The question is whether the owner took the security steps a reasonable owner would have taken given a foreseeable risk, not whether any crime was theoretically possible. Truly random, unforeseeable acts are harder to pin on an owner.
Is it enough to show the property had bad security?
Not by itself. Florida law also requires causation: that the inadequate security was a cause of the harm, meaning reasonable measures would likely have prevented or reduced it. The Florida Supreme Court has held the injured person carries that burden, so the proof has to connect the failure to the crime.
Why does your criminal background help prove foreseeability?
Because foreseeability is built from crime records, and reading them is what I do. Police reports, incident histories, and the patterns inside them are familiar territory from my criminal practice, which lets me build the foreseeability case the way few injury lawyers can.
Related: Negligent security overview, The HB 837 presumption, Apartment assaults and shootings, Bar and nightclub violence, and About Rory Safir.
This page is general information about Florida negligent security law, not legal advice, and it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Foreseeability and causation in Florida negligent security claims are governed by case law, including Sanders v. ERP Operating Ltd. Partnership, 157 So. 3d 273 (Fla. 2015), applied with Fla. Stat. 768.81 and 95.11. The duty arises from special relationships recognized in Florida tort law. Every case is different, and past results do not guarantee a similar outcome. The hiring of a lawyer is an important decision that should not be based solely on advertisements.
