You fell at a store in a shopping plaza, and the question sounds easy: who do you sue? You could drive there right now and point at the sign. Then a letter arrives from an insurance company you have never heard of, and it says something that reads like a riddle: our insured does not own, operate, manage, or control the premises where you allege you were injured. You fell inside their building, ten feet from their registers, and someone is telling you that the store you can see with your own eyes is, legally speaking, somebody else. Welcome to the entity maze. Almost every commercial property in Florida is really several companies stacked on one address, and sorting out which of them answers for your injury is the first real fight in the case.
Untangling owners, tenants, managers, and contractors is premises work I take on directly, and as a member of the National Association of Premises Liability Attorneys I bring a heavy premises trial background to it. I represent injured people, not insurance companies. I am a trial lawyer whose foundation was built in the courtroom as a public defender, where I tried case after case and cross-examined witnesses constantly, and that skill matters when four companies are each swearing under oath that the dangerous condition was somebody else’s job. An insurer tends to pay fair value once it sees I will take the case to a jury, and I will. I stay on your case personally, from the first call through trial.
One address, four companies
Picture an ordinary strip mall, the kind with a grocery anchor, a nail salon, and a sandwich shop. To you it is one place. On paper it is usually a small crowd. One company owns the land and the buildings, and it is often a limited liability company named after the address itself, formed for the single purpose of holding that parcel. A second company operates the store you shopped in, as a tenant under a lease. A third company manages the property, collecting rents, hiring vendors, and deciding when the parking lot gets resurfaced. And a fourth company, sometimes a fifth, handles the floor cleaning, the landscaping, or the security under a service contract. The crew that mopped near where you fell may work for a company headquartered three states away.
Any one of those companies, or any combination of them, may be the one that answers for your injury, and each of them carries its own insurance. None of this is sinister on its own. Owners structure property this way for taxes, for lending, and for liability protection, and the law allows all of it. But the structure has a consequence for you: the name on the sign, the name on the deed, and the name on the insurance policy can be three different names, and the injured person standing in the parking lot has no way to tell.
| Company | What it does | Why it may answer for your injury |
|---|---|---|
| Property owner | Holds the land and buildings, often through an LLC named after the address itself | Duties that stay with ownership, especially the structure and any common areas it kept for itself |
| Tenant or operator | Runs the business you actually visited, under a commercial lease | Control of its own sales floor and whatever else the lease hands it |
| Management company | Collects rents, hires vendors, schedules inspections and repairs | Whatever the management agreement puts in its hands, from the parking lot to the lighting |
| Maintenance or security contractor | Cleans floors, maintains the grounds, or provides guards under a service contract | The specific work it was paid to do, in the specific areas its contract covers |
Each company typically carries its own liability insurance, and one company’s policy often protects another through additional insured provisions demanded by the lease. The lineup varies from property to property; the pattern does not.
I began my career as an Assistant Public Defender in Tampa, and I am one of a small number of Florida attorneys trained as a forensic lawyer-scientist. Most injury lawyers send a claim to the name on the sign and wait. I pull the property records, the corporate filings, and the contracts, because reading documents and physical evidence line by line is the core of how I have worked for years. The insurance company is hoping for a lawyer who gives up after the first we-are-not-responsible letter. I do not, I am not afraid to try a case, and I go the distance for the people I represent. I am a member of the National Association of Premises Liability Attorneys, a national group of attorneys focused on these cases. Learn more about my background.
Why the wrong target burns your two years
Florida gives an injured person two years to bring a negligence claim, and that sounds like plenty until you watch how it actually gets spent: weeks of treatment, months of records and insurance back-and-forth, and an investigation that has to finish before a suit can be filed responsibly. Now add the maze. You send your claim to the store. The store’s insurer takes six weeks to answer and then declines, saying the entry area is a common area outside its tenant’s control. You write to the property owner your internet search turned up, and it turns out that company sold the parcel two years ago. All the while, the company that actually held the duty and the policy sits in silence, because no rule requires the right defendant to raise its hand and volunteer. The clock does not pause while you guess.
Every month spent knocking on the wrong door is a month the right door stays shut. If the maze eats enough of the two years, a claim that should have been strong can die of nothing more than a misdirected envelope. That is the ordinary mechanics of how these structures work against a person handling a claim alone.
The lease decides who answers for the exact spot
The deed tells you who owns the dirt. The lease tells you who promised to take care of it, and in a commercial premises case the lease is often the more important document. Commercial leases carve up a property the way a family carves up chores, except with lawyers involved. The tenant may take full responsibility for everything inside its walls while the landlord keeps the sidewalks, the parking lot, and the entryways. Or the lease may hand the tenant the whole parcel and leave the owner as little more than a name collecting rent. Buried further in are indemnification clauses, which are promises about who reimburses whom when someone gets hurt, and insurance clauses that require one company to carry coverage protecting another.
In how these fights usually go, control is what carries the duty. A lease that hands one company exclusive control of the spot where you fell can point the case at that company and away from the others. You will never see that lease from the outside. The companies have all read it. That asymmetry, they know who is responsible and you cannot, is the whole game in the early months of a claim, and it is why the polite finger-pointing letters work so well against an unrepresented person.
One limit is worth carrying with you, though: the paperwork can divide responsibility among the companies and it can add defendants to your case, but Florida does not always let an owner simply sign its duty to the public away. Certain responsibilities to the customers a business invites in, particularly over common areas, tend to stay with the owner no matter what the contracts say. So the lease is where the untangling starts, not where it ends. The residential version of this fight, who answers for a broken stair or a dark walkway at a rental complex, has its own page on apartment and landlord liability. And when the injury came from a crime rather than a condition, the same maze appears with a security contractor in the middle of it, which is the territory of negligent security.
The book
Hurt on Someone Else’s Property
The evidence race, the notice fight, the owner’s records, negligent security, and dog bites, in one plain-English book on the days and weeks after you are hurt on someone else’s property. Free to Tampa Bay residents hurt on someone else’s property, with the digital edition to read the moment you ask.
The insurance sits in layers
In the end, with rare exceptions, an injury claim is a claim against an insurance policy, and commercial premises insurance almost never comes as one simple policy with one simple number. Coverage tends to sit in layers. There is a primary policy, which answers first. Above it there may be an umbrella policy, extra coverage that only wakes up when the primary layer is exhausted, and umbrella policies can be many times the size of the primary. The management company may carry its own policy, the tenant almost certainly carries one, and the maintenance contractor another. Woven through all of it are additional insured endorsements, provisions that pull one company under the protection of another company’s policy because a lease or a contract demanded it.
Here is why the layers matter while your wrist is still in a cast. If a fall causes the kind of harm that changes a life, and the only coverage anyone mentions is a modest primary policy, the conversation about your claim gets squeezed into a container that was never big enough for it. Many people accept that container because they never learn a larger one existed. An adjuster who sends over a one-page summary showing a modest policy is telling the truth the way an iceberg tells the truth. Florida law gives you a better tool: under Fla. Stat. 627.4137, a claimant’s written request obligates an insurer to disclose its policies and their limits, in writing. I send that demand to every insurer in the picture, layer by layer, rather than accepting anyone’s summary.
How I untangle it
A premises lawyer pulls four threads, and none of them requires anyone’s permission. The first is the public property record, which shows who actually owns the parcel, when they bought it, and what else they own. The second is the state’s corporate filings, which show who stands behind a company name, who its officers are, and where it can be served with papers. The third is the lease and the service contracts, demanded early, because they say who promised to inspect, maintain, and insure the exact spot where you fell. The fourth is the written coverage demand under Fla. Stat. 627.4137 to every insurer at once.
At the same time, preservation letters go to every company in the picture, so the surveillance video cannot quietly vanish while they point at each other. The footage only gets protected if the letter reaches the company that actually controls the cameras. From there, the fall itself gets proven the way any floor case gets proven, with sweep logs, inspection records, and the science of the surface, which I cover on the slip and fall page. Run the four threads through each other and the maze turns into a map: this company owned it, this one controlled it, this one was paid to maintain it, and these policies stand behind each of them. The finger-pointing does not stop. It stops working, because now it happens in front of everyone at once, in writing, with every set of policies on the table. The claim stops being about finding somebody to answer and becomes a case about what the answer should be.
The deadline
For an injury on or after March 24, 2023, Florida gives you two years to file suit under Fla. Stat. 95.11(5)(a). The entity maze consumes exactly that resource, and the evidence is perishable in its own right: surveillance systems overwrite themselves, contractors change, and parcels get sold. The sooner the untangling starts, the more of your two years survives it. If the we-are-not-responsible letters have already started arriving, reach out and bring them with you, because those letters are themselves evidence of who is pointing where. See the premises liability overview for how the rest of the case fits together.
Common Questions
Who do I sue after a slip and fall at a shopping plaza?
Often more than one company. The owner of the parcel, the tenant that runs the store, the management company, and the maintenance or security contractor can all hold a piece of the responsibility, and which of them answers depends on who controlled the spot where you fell. The deed, the lease, and the service contracts decide that, not the sign on the building.
The store’s insurer says its insured does not own, operate, manage, or control the property. Is my case over?
No. That letter is one of the most common documents in commercial premises cases, and it usually means the duty sits with a different company at the same address, not that no one is responsible. The property record, the corporate filings, and the lease identify who actually held the duty, and the claim gets redirected to the right company.
Property owner or management company: who is liable in Florida?
It depends on what the management agreement and the lease actually assigned, because control of the dangerous spot is what generally carries the duty. A management company that agreed to inspect and maintain the parking lot may answer for a hazard there, but Florida does not always let the owner contract its own duty to the public away, especially over common areas. In practice, both often belong in the case, and the documents sort out the shares.
How do I find out how much insurance coverage there is?
Florida law entitles a claimant to a straight answer. Under Fla. Stat. 627.4137, a written request obligates an insurer to disclose its policies and their limits. Commercial coverage usually sits in layers, a primary policy, an umbrella above it, and separate policies for the tenant, the manager, and the contractors, so the demand needs to go to every insurer in the picture.
Can the owner escape by pointing at its maintenance contractor?
Pointing at a contractor can add a defendant, but it does not automatically subtract the owner. Contracts divide work and they divide fault, and yet certain duties to invited customers stay with the owner regardless of what the service agreement says. The practical answer is to put every company on notice at once and demand the documents, because finger-pointing loses its force when it happens in front of everyone in writing.
Related: Premises liability overview, Slip and fall, Apartment and landlord liability, Negligent security, and About Rory Safir.
This page is general information about Florida premises liability law, not legal advice, and it does not create an attorney-client relationship. The governing authorities include the common-law duty owed to business invitees, Fla. Stat. 768.81 (comparative fault), 95.11(5)(a) (the two-year limitations period), and 627.4137 (insurer disclosure of policy information on a claimant’s written request). Leases and service contracts allocate responsibility between companies, but some duties to the public cannot be fully delegated, and how that plays out depends on the facts of each case. 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.
