You’re staying at a hotel in Florida and looking forward to enjoying the beautiful weather and visiting the beach. As a visitor, you expect to have a good time and that the hotel will provide safe conditions for all their guests. However, hotel grounds can be dangerous for guests and even lead to injuries serious enough to warrant a trip to the hospital.
If you or a loved one slipped, fell, or tripped on the hotel’s property, you may have grounds to file a hotel premises liability lawsuit. With the help of an experienced hotel premises liability lawyer, you can hold the hotel accountable for its negligence.
What kinds of injuries happen because of slip-and-fall accidents at hotels?
Dangerous conditions that can lead to tripping or slip-and-fall injuries in Florida hotels often include:
- Slippery grounds near pools
- Puddles in lobbies or entryways
- Puddles or wet spots near vending and ice machines
- Floors wet from mopping without caution signs
- Construction in entryways, in rooms, and outside of the building
- Poorly designed staircases
- Puddles from the pool, the beach, or rainwater tracked into the building
A slip-and-fall accident might not seem serious at first. However, these falls can leave hotel guests with severe, long-lasting injuries and damage that could require multiple trips to the hospital, physical therapy, or surgery.
Was the hotel negligent?
One of the first questions a slip-and-fall victim usually asks our Florida attorneys is, “Is the hotel liable for my injuries if I slipped and fell on their property?” A successful hotel premises liability claim in Florida requires proof of the following elements:
- The hotel owed you, the invitee, a duty of care
- The hotel breached the duty of care owed to the invitee
- The breach of duty caused the injury
- You sustained actual damages as a result of the injury
Working with an experienced Florida hotel injury lawyer is the best way to move forward with your claim. They will carefully establish each of these elements in your case to hold the hotel accountable for their negligence and win compensation for your damages.
What are a hotel’s duties and responsibilities to guests?
As an invitee to a Florida hotel, it’s logical that you expect your stay to not only be enjoyable but to be safe as well. Under Florida premises liability law, hotels have a duty to guests to maintain the property in reasonably safe conditions.
This includes maintaining the property, amending dangerous conditions, and taking steps to protect guests by alerting them to known risks. For example, if it’s raining and there are puddles in the lobby from water that’s been tracked in, it’s reasonable to expect the hotel should quickly mop up the puddles and then put up a caution sign alerting guests to the fact that the floors may be damp.
Was the hotel in breach of its duties?
When a hotel fails to uphold its duty to keep guests safe, they are endangering their guests and in breach of their legal obligations. Following the same example from above, let’s say the hotel failed to clean up the puddles in a timely fashion and a guest slipped and injured themself. The hotel failed in its duty to maintain reasonably safe conditions for their guests.
According to Florida Statutes 768.0755, the hotel must have had knowledge of the dangerous condition and should have taken action to rectify the situation. This knowledge can be proven by showing that:
- The dangerous condition existed long enough that the business should have known of it, OR
- The condition was foreseeable due to the regularity of the occurrence of this type of condition
In successful hotel premises liability cases, the victim must experience some sort of injury caused by the hotel’s negligence in addition to proving that the hotel breached their care of duty which caused the slip and fall.
Damages in a hotel premises liability case might include hospital bills, lost wages, and recovery expenses.
Contact a Skilled Florida Hotel Premises Liability Lawyer
If your stay at a Florida hotel was ruined by a slip-and-fall accident caused by the hotel’s negligence, you may be able to seek compensation for your injuries.
Contact our skilled Florida slip and fall lawyers. We can evaluate your case for free and help you recover damages for any losses sustained after your slip and fall accident.
Call our firm today at (561) 655-1990. We look forward to assisting you.
