5 Common Causes of Stair Accidents in Fort Myers and How to Avoid Them
Hip fractures. Cervical disc herniations. Traumatic brain injuries from a head strike on the nosing of the step below. A stair fall produces some of the worst orthopedic injuries I see come through this office, and yet most callers assume they have a minor case before they have even told me what happened. People assume a fall on a staircase is a small case, or that the law treats it like tripping over your own feet. Neither is true.
I have been practicing personal injury law in Fort Myers and the surrounding counties for more than thirty years, and I have held a Florida real estate broker license for twenty-five of them. That property background shapes how I read staircase liability — I know what a landlord is supposed to do about a worn exterior tread, what a building inspector looks for, and what a building code violation actually means in a Lee County courtroom. What I want to do here is walk you through what Florida law requires of property owners, the patterns I see repeat themselves in stair cases, and the practical things to do if a fall has already happened.
What Florida law actually says about stair-fall claims
Two statutes do most of the work in a stair-fall case, and a third controls how soon you have to act.
The first is Florida Statute 768.81, modified comparative negligence. Plain English version: a jury assigns percentages of fault to each party. If you come out at 50% or less, you recover, reduced by your share. If you come out at 51% or more, you recover nothing. The 2023 reform tightened this. Before, you could be 80% at fault and still take home 20% of your damages. Now you are out at 51%. On a stair fall, the property owner’s lawyer will argue you were looking at your phone, holding too much, wearing the wrong shoes, or skipping the handrail. We argue back with the condition of the step.
The second is the duty of care a property owner owes you, which Florida sorts by what kind of visitor you are. A business invitee (a customer in a store, a tenant in a leased unit, a guest at a hotel) is owed the highest duty: keep the property reasonably safe, inspect for hidden hazards, warn about anything dangerous. A licensee (a social guest) is owed less but still owed warnings about known traps. A trespasser is owed almost nothing, with narrow exceptions. The category your case falls into often decides what the property owner had to do before you arrived.
The third is the clock. Under Florida Statute 95.11(4)(a), you now have two years from the date of the fall to file a negligence lawsuit. That was four years until the 2023 reform. Two years moves quickly when you are in a halo brace or still in physical therapy. The single most common reason a good case becomes a dead case in my office is the calendar.
The five stair-fall patterns we see in Lee County files
If you pulled my stair-fall files from the past three decades, the same five patterns would account for the overwhelming majority of them.
- Worn or rotted treads on an exterior staircase. Apartment complexes off Cleveland Avenue and Pine Island Road are repeat offenders. Salt air, summer rain, and deferred maintenance turn a serviceable wood tread into something that gives way under a 200-pound person. We have had cases where the tread had been flagged in writing by a tenant six months before the fall, and nobody fixed it.
- Missing or wobbly handrails. Florida Building Code requires the gripping surface to sit roughly 34 to 38 inches above the nosing, continuous along the run, and firmly secured. I have seen rails finger-tight, rails that came out of the wall in the plaintiff’s hand on the way down, and rails that simply stopped halfway. A loose rail is often the difference between a stumble and a hospital stay.
- Inconsistent riser heights. The Code allows risers between 4 and 7 inches, but the dimensions have to be uniform within an eighth of an inch. Your foot reads the first step and assumes the rest match. When the bottom step is a quarter-inch taller, your brain misses the distance and your weight goes forward. This is one of the most under-recognized causes of stair falls and a frequent fight with the defense engineering witness.
- Wet, polished, or improperly sealed surfaces. High-polish tile on outdoor stairs near a pool, marble landings in older Fort Myers commercial buildings off McGregor Boulevard, and tracked-in water at restaurant entrances on Summerlin Road. The hazard is foreseeable in this climate. The cure is a non-slip treatment, a mat, or a warning. Nothing is hard about it, which is what makes the failure to do it actionable.
- Bad lighting on transition steps. Single steps between rooms, dimly lit parking-garage staircases, and exterior stairs at dusk where the bulb has been out for weeks. The Code expects emergency lighting at tread level in many settings. When a property owner has tolerated a dark stairwell for months, that is documented neglect, not bad luck.
Three things that make stair-fall claims harder than car-crash work
From the outside, a stair-fall claim seems simple. The step was bad. You fell. Pay up.
From the inside, three things make these cases much harder than car-crash work.
The first is the open-and-obvious defense. Florida law says a property owner generally does not owe a duty to warn about a condition that is open and obvious. The defense lawyer will argue any reasonable person could see the cracked step, the wet floor, the missing rail. We answer that with the distinction between the duty to warn and the duty to maintain the property in a safe condition, which survives even when the hazard is visible.
The second is preserving the evidence. Stairs get repaired. Treads get replaced. The step that broke your mother’s hip is often gone within a week. If we are not retained quickly, the proof goes with the contractor’s dumpster. We send a spoliation letter on day one, ask for the work orders, and put a reconstruction engineer on the property with a tape measure and a tribometer before anything moves.
The third is the comparative-fault fight under 768.81. The defense will say you were carrying too much, in a hurry, not holding the rail, or distracted. The reform turned that argument into a hammer. We push back with the specific Code violation, the prior complaints, and the maintenance log. The cleaner our liability proof, the less daylight the comparative-fault argument gets.
A fall we handled on the Fort Myers side
A Fort Myers man tripped over uneven concrete at the entrance to a business and sustained a serious head injury. That kind of case — pavement or step condition at a commercial property — is one we see regularly, and the pattern repeats: the owner knew or should have known about the condition, had the means to fix or mark it, and did neither. That client’s case settled for $675,000. The head injury was real, the liability proof was solid, and the property owner’s maintenance records were not kind to the defense.
What to do if you have already fallen on a stairway
If a fall has already happened, here is the practical order of operations I give callers, and it is built on the patterns I have watched repeat themselves for thirty years.
- Photograph the exact step that caused the fall before you leave the property, or have a family member do it. Close up. With something in frame for scale, a quarter or a phone. Then a wider shot showing the run and the handrail. Memories blur. Photographs do not.
- Report the fall in writing to the property manager that day, by email if possible. Two sentences. “I fell on the stairs at [address] today at approximately [time]. The step was [briefly describe].” That email, time-stamped, will matter at deposition.
- Get medical care the same day, even if you think you are fine. Adrenaline masks injuries. The defense will argue any gap between the fall and the first doctor visit means the injury came from something else. A same-day urgent-care record closes that door.
- Keep the shoes you were wearing in a bag. Defense witnesses will argue your shoes were inappropriate or worn. The actual shoes, set aside, often refute that.
- Write down what you remember within 24 hours. Where you were going. What you were carrying. Whether the lights were on. Whether you used the handrail. I have a yellow legal pad in my office that has held a hundred of these accounts. The notes from day one are always sharper than the testimony six months later.
- Call a lawyer before you talk to the property owner’s insurance company. Adjusters call early because they know you will be on pain medication and you will be polite. Polite, on the record, becomes the recorded statement the defense plays at trial. Let us handle that call.
Key Takeaways
- You have two years from the date of a Florida stair fall to file suit under Section 95.11(4)(a). The clock is half what it used to be.
- Florida’s modified comparative negligence rule under Section 768.81 cuts off any recovery if a jury puts you above 50% at fault. The defense will push hard on that line.
- Stair-fall liability usually turns on a Code violation (riser uniformity, handrail height, lighting), a maintenance failure, or both. We measure and document, often within days of being hired.
- Open-and-obvious is a defense, not a bar. A property owner’s duty to maintain the property safely survives even when the hazard is visible.
- Preserve the step, the shoes, the photographs, and the written notice to the property owner. Cases are won and lost on what is captured in the first 72 hours.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. How long do I have to file a stair-fall lawsuit in Florida?
Under Florida Statute 95.11(4)(a), the statute of limitations for a negligence claim is two years from the date of the fall. That was shortened from four years in the 2023 tort reform. If you wait, you lose the case before you ever file it, so call a lawyer early even if you are still treating.
Q2. What if I was partly at fault for falling on the stairs?
Florida uses modified comparative negligence under Florida Statute 768.81. If a jury finds you more than 50% at fault, you recover nothing. At 50% or less, your recovery is reduced by your share. So if you were looking at your phone on a wet landing, that gets argued, but it does not automatically end the case.
Q3. Does my own health insurance or PIP cover stair-fall injuries?
Florida’s PIP statute, Section 627.736, applies to motor vehicle crashes, not stair falls. For a fall on someone else’s property, you are looking at your health insurance, possibly Medicare or Medicaid, and the property owner’s liability coverage. We sort that out for you and deal with the liens at the end.
Q4. What evidence matters most in a Fort Myers stair-fall case?
Photographs of the exact step that caused the fall, taken before anything is repaired. Measurements of riser height and tread depth. Any prior complaints or work orders on the property. Witness names. Your medical records starting the day of the fall. We send a written preservation letter to the property owner the day we are hired.
Q5. What is my stair-fall case worth?
Answer: nobody can quote you a number on a first call. Value depends on the injury, the medical bills, the wage loss, the property owner’s insurance limits, and the strength of the liability evidence. A torn rotator cuff on a retiree reads very differently from a fractured hip on a working tradesman. We give you a range once we have the records.
If you or a family member has fallen on a staircase in Fort Myers, call our office
The first call costs nothing, the consultation is free, and there is no fee unless we recover for you. We will go out to the property, measure the step, pull the records, and tell you straight whether you have a case. If you do, we will work it. If you do not, we will tell you that too, and you will not have spent a dollar.
Call Pittman Law Firm, P.L. at 239-992-8259 for a free consultation, or reach our Fort Myers premises liability team through the website.
About the Author
Pittman Law Firm, P.L. — founded by David B. Pittman, Esq. — has handled personal injury cases in Fort Myers and across Lee County for more than thirty years. The firm’s Fort Myers presence handles a steady stream of serious-injury work along 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.
Between undergraduate at The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina and a JD from the University of South Carolina School of Law, David built the foundation for a personal injury practice that now carries AV-Preeminent status with Martindale-Hubbell and membership in the Multi-Million Dollar Advocates Forum. He has also held a Florida real estate broker license for twenty-five years — a background that comes through directly on premises-liability cases, where understanding a property owner’s maintenance obligations from the inside changes how the firm reads the duty question.
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.