How to Handle a Restaurant Accident in Fort Myers in 2025

By David B. Pittman, Esq. — Founder, Pittman Law Firm, P.L. | Last updated May 12, 2026

Somebody calls our office a day or two after a slip at a place along McGregor Boulevard or Cleveland Avenue — sometimes with a sprained wrist, sometimes with a broken hip — and the first thing they want to know is whether they even have a case. The answer is: maybe. Restaurant falls look simple from the outside and are usually harder than they look once you start working them.

I have handled these cases for years, and I want to walk through what Florida law actually requires, the patterns we see over and over in Fort Myers restaurants, and what to do in the first week after a fall so the case does not fall apart before it starts.

What Florida law actually says about restaurant slip-and-falls

Florida’s main premises-liability statute for a transitory substance on a business floor is Florida Statute §768.0755. In plain English, if you slip on something on the floor of a Fort Myers restaurant, you have to prove the business either actually knew the substance was there, or that it had been there long enough that a reasonably attentive owner should have known. A coffee that spilled ninety seconds before you stepped in it is a tough case. A puddle of dressing that sat next to a salad station for half an hour while two servers walked past is the kind of fact pattern that wins.

Three other statutes come up in almost every one of these cases.

• §95.11(4)(a), Fla. Stat. — the statute of limitations. For negligence, you have two years from the date of injury. That used to be four years. The 2023 tort reform cut it in half, and people still call our office assuming they have plenty of time. If you fell at a restaurant in April 2025, your filing deadline is April 2027. After that, the claim is gone regardless of how strong the facts are.
• §768.81, Fla. Stat. — modified comparative negligence. Florida is a modified comparative state now. If a jury decides you were 50% or less responsible for your own fall, you still recover, reduced by your percentage. If they put you over 50%, you walk away with nothing. Defense carriers know that. They will spend real money pushing your percentage of fault up — you were looking at your phone, you were wearing flip-flops, you walked past a warning cone, anything they can find. The comparative-fault fight is often the whole case.
• §768.0755 — knowledge of the dangerous condition. This is the one I started with. The statute lists how you can show constructive knowledge: the condition existed for a length of time such that the business should have known about it in the exercise of ordinary care, or the condition occurred with regularity and was therefore foreseeable. Maintenance logs, sweep sheets, and surveillance video do most of the heavy lifting here.

One footnote on PIP. §627.736 covers $10,000 of no-fault medical for auto-related injuries. It almost never applies to a restaurant fall, even though clients ask about it constantly. Your health insurance handles the bills as they come in. The restaurant’s general-liability carrier pays at the end, through settlement or verdict.

A case from our Fort Myers slip-and-fall practice

A Fort Myers man tripped over uneven concrete at a Fort Myers business and sustained a serious head injury. The property had prior notice of the condition. That case settled for $675,000. The head injury was real; the documentation of what the owner knew and failed to repair is what drove the number.

Five patterns our office handles from Fort Myers restaurants

Having handled injury cases in Lee and Collier Counties for over thirty years, the restaurant-fall files in our office sort into a handful of repeating patterns. If your situation matches one of these, it is likely a viable case. If it does not, we will tell you that too.

1. The bus station puddle. A server drops a tray near the dish drop-off and the spill sits because no one wants to claim it. Twenty minutes later a guest coming back from the restroom hits it. These files almost always have video and almost always settle once we get the timestamped surveillance.
2. The greasy-kitchen-doorway track. Cook walks from the line to the bar with oily soles, leaves a slick trail across the tile near the bar pickup. The guest who slips is usually on the way to their table from the host stand. We win these on shoe-floor friction testing and on the restaurant’s own slip-resistant-shoe policy, which the kitchen often is not following.
3. The ice-machine drip. Self-serve ice or drink stations near the soda fountain pool water on the floor over the course of a busy lunch. By dinner, it has been there for hours. These are clean §768.0755 constructive-knowledge cases if we can preserve the maintenance log before the restaurant rewrites it.
4. The patio-step or sidewalk-lip fall. Half-step from an indoor dining room down onto a patio, with no contrast strip and no handrail. These tend to be older guests, often after sundown, often with a broken hip or wrist. Building-code consultants matter more than slip-and-fall reconstruction here.
5. The bathroom-floor mop. A porter mops the bathroom in the middle of the dinner rush, leaves no wet-floor sign, and walks off to do something else. This is the easiest fact pattern for plaintiffs and the most common one we see in older Fort Myers restaurants along Cleveland Avenue.

Restaurant slip-and-falls — why these cases are harder than they look

From the outside, a restaurant fall sounds simple. You fell on their floor. They are responsible. In practice, three things make these cases harder than they look.

The first is the surveillance video. Most chain restaurants overwrite security footage on a 7-to-30-day loop. If you do not put the restaurant on written preservation notice in the first week, the most important piece of evidence in your case is gone forever. We send a spoliation letter the day a client retains us. I have seen otherwise strong cases collapse because the client waited a month to call a lawyer and the video was already overwritten.

The second is the comparative-fault hammer I mentioned above. Since 2023, restaurant carriers in Florida have gotten aggressive about pushing the plaintiff over the 50% line. They will argue you were distracted, that the spill was open and obvious, that you ignored a warning sign that may or may not have actually been there. The right response is documentation — your own photos, witness names, the condition of your shoes — collected the day of the fall, not three months later.

The third is the medical causation question. Most restaurant falls hurt soft tissue first and reveal worse damage later. A wrist that hurt mildly the night of the fall turns out to have a scapholunate ligament tear that needs surgery six weeks later. If the medical records do not connect the dots from the fall to that surgery, the defense will argue the surgery is unrelated. The fix is simple but unglamorous: see a doctor the day of the fall, even if you feel okay, and tell them what happened and where it hurts. The contemporaneous record is what carries the causation argument later.

What to do if you fell at a Fort Myers restaurant

This is the action list I give friends and family when they call. It is not generic. Each one of these comes from a case where doing it, or not doing it, changed the outcome.

• Tell a manager and ask for a written incident report before you leave. Get a copy or a photo of it. The manager will not always offer one. Ask anyway. I have had restaurants later claim no fall ever happened on premises, and a contemporaneous incident report ends that argument.
• Photograph the floor before anyone cleans it. Wide shot, close shot, shot showing the shoe or the substance on your clothing. Photograph any warning cones that were not there. If you can, photograph the soles of your own shoes.
• Get two names and phone numbers from witnesses. Not one. Two. The other diners at the next table will scatter after they pay their check, and the staff will close ranks the next day. Two independent witnesses outside the restaurant payroll is worth more than five staff statements.
• Go to an urgent care or ER that same day. Even if you feel okay. The medical record from the day of the fall is the single most valuable causation document in the file. Tell the provider exactly what happened, where, and what hurts. Do not minimize.
• Save the shoes you wore. Put them in a bag, label them with the date, and do not wear them again. Defense counsel will absolutely ask about footwear, and a preserved shoe with normal tread is worth more than your memory of what you had on.
• Do not give a recorded statement to the restaurant’s insurance company. They will call within a day or two and sound helpful. Politely decline. Ask them to put any questions in writing or wait until you have counsel.
• Call a lawyer in the first week. Not for sales reasons — for preservation reasons. A spoliation letter on the restaurant’s surveillance system has a shelf life measured in days, not months.

Key Takeaways

• Florida’s premises-liability statute for restaurants (§768.0755) requires proof that the restaurant knew or should have known about the hazard on the floor. Time on the floor and prior similar incidents are what build that proof.
• The statute of limitations for a Florida slip-and-fall is now two years under §95.11(4)(a), cut in half by the 2023 tort reform. Many people still think it is four. It is not.
• Under §768.81, if a jury puts you over 50% at fault you recover nothing, which is why the comparative-fault fight is often the whole case.
• Restaurant surveillance video gets overwritten on a 7-to-30-day loop. A written preservation letter in the first week is the difference between a case with video and a case without.
• See a doctor the day of the fall, photograph the floor before anyone cleans it, get two non-employee witnesses, and do not give a recorded statement to the carrier before you have counsel.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1: How long do I have to file a restaurant slip-and-fall claim in Florida?
Two years from the date of the fall under §95.11(4)(a), Florida Statutes. That window was four years before the 2023 tort reform and many people still think it is. If you wait past two years, the courthouse door closes.

Q2: What does Florida Statute 768.0755 require me to prove against the restaurant?
You have to show the restaurant either knew about the wet floor or hazard, or that it was on the floor long enough that they should have known. A spill that happened thirty seconds before you walked through is hard to pin on the restaurant. A spill that sat there for forty minutes with staff walking past it is a different case entirely.

Q3: Does my health insurance or PIP cover the medical bills from a restaurant fall?
PIP under §627.736 is auto-only, so it usually does not apply to a restaurant fall unless the injury happened in a way connected to a vehicle. Your health insurance is the first line. The restaurant’s liability carrier typically pays at the end through a settlement or verdict, not as the bills come in.

Q4: What if the restaurant says I am partly at fault for not watching where I was going?
Florida runs on modified comparative negligence under §768.81. If a jury puts you at 50% or less, you still recover, reduced by your percentage. If they put you over 50%, you get nothing. Defense carriers lean hard on this since the 2023 reform, so the comparative fault fight is often the whole case.

Q5: Should I give a recorded statement to the restaurant’s insurance adjuster?
Not before you talk to a lawyer. Adjusters call within a day or two and sound friendly. The recorded statement is then used to lock you into a version of events before you have all the medical information, and to look for any phrasing that helps the defense. Politely decline and refer them to counsel.

Talk to our office about your Fort Myers restaurant fall

If you fell at a restaurant in Fort Myers, Cape Coral, Bonita Springs, Naples, Estero, or Lehigh Acres in the past two years, call our office at 239-992-8259. The conversation is free, the case review is free, and there is no fee unless we recover for you. The most important calls on these files happen in the first week, while the surveillance video still exists and witness memories are fresh.

About the Author

David B. Pittman, Esq. founded Pittman Law Firm, P.L. and has practiced personal injury law in Fort Myers and across Lee County for more than thirty years. The firm’s work covers the Daniels Parkway, Six Mile Cypress, McGregor Boulevard, Cleveland Avenue, and Summerlin Road corridors, and along I-75 between Estero and Bell Tower, representing injured clients across Lee and Collier Counties, with a particular focus on commercial-vehicle, complex-liability, and serious-injury cases.

David completed his undergraduate degree at The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina, and his JD at the University of South Carolina School of Law. Martindale-Hubbell rates him AV-Preeminent; the Multi-Million Dollar Advocates Forum counts him as a member.

David has held a Florida real estate broker license for twenty-five years, a credential that informs how the firm reads commercial lease obligations, property maintenance duties, and common-area liability — all of which matter in restaurant and retail-premises injury cases. The firm handles personal injury cases across Lee and Collier Counties, serving Fort Myers, Bonita Springs, Naples, Cape Coral, Estero, and Lehigh Acres, with offices at Windsor Place in Bonita Springs (main) and Fort Myers (satellite). Call 239-992-8259 for a free consultation.

Disclaimer: This article is for general information about Florida personal injury law and is not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship with Pittman Law Firm, P.L. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome in any future case. Hiring a lawyer is an important decision that should not be based solely on advertising.