How Uneven Pavement and Cracks Cause Trip and Fall Accidents in Bonita Springs

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

The crack in the parking lot on Bonita Beach Road was not mysterious. A ficus root had lifted the same corner slab for two full seasons. People had stepped over it, stepped on it, and at least one person had already stumbled. Then our client stepped on it and didn’t recover her balance. The grocery store’s position was that the height difference was too small to matter. The surveillance footage said otherwise — the store had employees walking past that spot repeatedly in the hour before the fall, and not one of them put a cone down or called the maintenance line.

That is the shape of most pavement cases in Bonita Springs. The cause of the fall is almost never mysterious. The fight is almost always about whether the owner knew about the condition, or should have known about it, and what they chose to do with that knowledge. I hold a Florida real estate broker license and have for twenty-five years, and that background shapes how I read these cases. When I walk a property after a fall, I look at it the way an owner or property manager is supposed to look at it: lease responsibilities, common-area maintenance obligations, what a reasonably prudent operator would have inspected and when. That lens matters in Bonita Springs, where so much of the residential and commercial inventory runs through HOAs and management companies that each pass maintenance duties back and forth on cracked walkways and aging asphalt.

If you fell on uneven pavement somewhere between Pelican Landing and Spanish Wells, or anywhere along the Bonita Beach Road corridor, this article is meant to give you a clearer picture of what Florida law actually requires of the people who own the property you were walking on — and what that means for whether you have a case.

What Florida law requires of a property owner

Two statutes do most of the heavy lifting on pavement-and-crack cases.

Section 768.0710 of the Florida Statutes covers negligent maintenance — the structural-condition lane. Cracked sidewalks, uneven pavement, broken curbs, missing handrails, sagging stairs. To recover under that section, you have to show that the property owner or someone responsible for the property either created the dangerous condition or knew or should have known about it and failed to act in a reasonable way. Plain-English version: an owner cannot get away with a pretend-blindness defense. If the lifted slab has been sitting there for six months, the law assumes a reasonable owner would have walked the property at some point during those six months and seen it.

The other one is Section 768.0755 of the Florida Statutes, which technically governs transitory foreign substances — water, oil, dropped produce, that kind of thing — and requires the injured person to prove the owner had actual or constructive knowledge of the substance and a reasonable chance to fix it. It is mostly a liquid-spill statute, but defense lawyers regularly try to drag pavement cases into its orbit because the burden of proof is heavier. Knowing which statute actually governs your fall is half the battle, and it is the kind of thing a general practitioner who does not handle these cases regularly can miss.

If the fall happened on a city sidewalk, a county park path, or any government-owned surface, a third statute kicks in: Section 768.28. That one carries pre-suit notice requirements and damage caps. The pre-suit notice rule is unforgiving — miss it, and the case is over before it starts.

Factors a court considers

When one of these cases goes to a jury, or when the insurance carrier is sizing it up before trial, here is what the analysis usually turns on:

• How long the condition had existed before the fall — six minutes versus six months changes the case completely.
• Whether anyone had complained about it before — prior incident reports, prior 311 calls, prior emails to property management.
• What the lighting was like — a half-inch lip in full sun reads differently from the same lip in a dim breezeway at dusk.
• Whether the owner had a written inspection or sweep policy, and whether the policy was actually followed.
• Whether the dangerous spot was open and obvious in the legal sense, or whether something — a crowd, merchandise, shadow patterns, a turn in the walkway — obscured it.
• Whether any warning sign, cone, or barrier was in place at the time of the fall.

The trivial defect doctrine — why it is not as clean as it sounds

Defense lawyers love the trivial defect doctrine. Their pitch goes something like this: courts have historically held that pavement height differences under about an inch are not actionable, because life involves a certain amount of uneven ground, and property owners are not insurers of perfect surfaces. There is real case law behind the idea.

The doctrine is not a bright-line rule, though, and Florida courts have been clear that the height of the lip is only one piece of the picture. Lighting matters. Sight lines matter. Foreseeable distractions — like a parking-lot lip right next to the display window a customer is supposed to be looking at — matter. So does the owner’s prior knowledge: a half-inch lip the owner has been told about twice is a very different fact pattern than the same lip that has never been reported.

I have settled cases where the height difference was well under an inch, because the rest of the picture made the condition a hazard. I have also walked away from cases where the lip was two inches tall, because the surrounding facts — daylight, no obstruction, no prior complaints, and an injured person who admitted being in a hurry — would have given a jury an easy off-ramp. The doctrine is a starting point, not an ending point.

What we see most in Bonita Springs

The pavement-and-crack cases that walk into our office at Windsor Place, 3525 Bonita Beach Rd, Suite 107, tend to break into a handful of recurring scenes:

• Strip-mall parking lots along the Bonita Beach Road and Old 41 corridor where the asphalt has cracked and re-cracked through a few hurricane seasons and the patch jobs have left ridges.
• Restaurant and shop walkways where a planter root has pushed up a single slab and the owner has been meaning to grind it down.
• Community walkways inside larger gated developments — Pelican Landing, Bonita Bay, Spanish Wells — where the HOA’s contractor is supposed to inspect quarterly and, often, has not.
• Older curb cuts and ADA ramps along US-41 where the transition between the sidewalk and the road has settled unevenly over time.
• The Imperial Parkway side streets where county-maintained sidewalks meet privately maintained business entrances — those seams are where ownership-of-the-defect arguments get going.

Bonita Springs is a walking town in a way some parts of Lee County are not, and the foot traffic combined with the heat, the rain, and the cycle of patches and re-patches means uneven pavement is a feature of the landscape. That does not give owners a pass. It raises the duty.

What a grocery store fall taught us about surveillance footage

One of the cases I think about often involved a shopper at a grocery store off Bonita Beach Road. She was walking down an aisle in the produce section and stepped onto a clear liquid that had been on the floor for more than twenty minutes. No cone. No warning sign. No employee in sight, despite the fact that the surveillance footage later showed several staff walking past the same spot during that twenty-minute window. She went down hard on her lower back.

The imaging came back showing a herniated lumbar disc. Her treating physician got her into a course of epidural steroid injections paired with physical therapy, with the goal of avoiding open back surgery. That worked, but the recovery road was long, and the pain interrupted her work, her sleep, and her ability to lift her grandchildren.

The case turned on the surveillance footage. Most stores will not give that footage up voluntarily — they will tell you it has been overwritten, or that they need a subpoena, or that they cannot find the right camera. We sent a written preservation letter the same week our client retained us, and we made it clear that any failure to preserve would be raised with the court. We resolved it for a significant settlement before trial.

The lesson I take from that case is the one I keep repeating to people who call us: the evidence in a pavement or premises case has a short shelf life. The video gets overwritten. The crack gets patched. The witnesses move. The longer you wait, the thinner the proof gets.

What a property owner is supposed to be doing

This is where the broker license has been most useful in my law practice. Having spent twenty-five years as a licensed Florida real estate broker in addition to representing injured Floridians, I have seen first-hand what a property owner’s reasonable safety obligations look like from the inside — the lease structures, the common-area maintenance obligations, the management agreements, the inspection schedules.

A reasonably prudent commercial property owner in Florida is supposed to:

• Walk the property on a regular, documented schedule — not when something goes wrong, but routinely. Most well-run shopping centers do this weekly.
• Keep a written log of those inspections, including who walked it, when, and what they noted. The absence of a log is itself a fact a jury can weigh.
• Address known defects on a timeline that matches the severity of the hazard. A lifted slab in the main pedestrian walkway is not something you put on next quarter’s punch list.
• Cone, mark, or barricade a hazard while waiting on a repair. A bright cone is cheap. A lawsuit is not.
• Train staff to report and respond to hazards in real time — sweep policies, spill procedures, walkway-check procedures.
• Know which surfaces they own versus which are HOA, city, or county, so the right party is making the call on repairs.

When a property owner has done these things and the fall still happens, the case is hard for an injured person to win — and frankly, it should be. When the owner has not done these things, the fall is rarely the only incident. There is usually a record, if you know how to look for it.

What to do if you fell

Practical, in the order I would want a family member to handle it:

1. Get medical attention the same day. Lower-back, hip, and head injuries are the three I see most often from these falls, and all three can present mildly at first and then declare themselves over the next 48 hours. The medical record that starts on the day of the fall is far more valuable than one that starts a week later.
2. Photograph the spot before it gets patched. Multiple angles, something for scale in the frame, and a wide shot showing the surrounding area (lighting, signage, what a person walking through would have seen).
3. Get names and phone numbers of any witnesses while they are still on scene.
4. Report the fall in writing to the property owner or manager — and keep a copy of what you sent. A written incident report on the property’s own form is even better.
5. If the property has cameras, ask in writing that the footage be preserved. Mention the date, time window, and camera location if you know it.
6. Do not give a recorded statement to any insurance adjuster before talking to a lawyer. That is the single most common way a case gets damaged in the first week.
7. Save the shoes you were wearing, exactly as they are. I have had defense lawyers try to blame the footwear in cases where the shoes were clearly fine; having the actual shoes ended the argument.

Key Takeaways

• Florida pavement-and-crack cases are governed primarily by §768.0710 — the structural-condition statute — not the transitory-substance statute defense lawyers often try to invoke.
• The trivial defect doctrine is a starting point, not an ending point — lighting, prior complaints, and surrounding facts move the needle.
• Falls on city or county pavement bring §768.28 into play, with pre-suit notice deadlines that are easy to miss.
• Florida is a modified comparative negligence state — being partly distracted does not end your case, but more-than-50% fault does.
• Evidence on these cases has a short shelf life: video gets overwritten, the crack gets patched, and witnesses scatter. Move quickly.

Frequently Asked Questions

If I tripped on a cracked sidewalk in Bonita Springs, who is on the hook — the business or the city?

It depends on where the crack sits. If it is on the business’s own property — its parking lot, its walkway, the strip in front of its store — the business is the target. If the crack is on a city sidewalk or a county right-of-way, then the claim shifts to the government, and §768.28 of the Florida Statutes pulls in a different set of rules: a written notice of claim before you can sue, and damage caps. The line is not always obvious from looking at the pavement, so one of the first things our office does is pull the parcel and easement records to find out who actually owns the slab you fell on.

I heard there is a 1-inch rule for sidewalk cracks. Is that true?

There is something called the trivial defect doctrine, and over the years some Florida courts have treated height differences under roughly an inch as not actionable. It is not a bright-line rule, though. A three-quarter-inch lip on a well-lit, dry, clearly marked walkway is one thing. The same three-quarter-inch lip in a dim breezeway, where the owner has been told twice about it, is another. Courts look at the whole picture, not just a ruler.

How long do I have to bring a slip-and-fall case in Florida?

For most premises-liability cases that happened on or after March 24, 2023, the deadline is two years from the date of the fall. Cases against a city, county, or other government entity have shorter pre-suit notice deadlines on top of that. Two years sounds like a lot of time, but evidence on a property case — surveillance video, sweep logs, the actual pavement before it gets patched — disappears fast. The sooner you get a lawyer involved, the more of that evidence we can lock down.

Do I have a case if I was looking at my phone when I tripped?

Maybe. Florida is a modified comparative negligence state, which means if you are partly at fault, your recovery gets reduced by your percentage of fault, and if you are more than 50 percent at fault you recover nothing. Being distracted does not automatically sink the claim — it is one factor a jury weighs against whatever the property owner failed to do. Owners do not get a free pass on a dangerous condition just because the person who got hurt was not staring straight at the ground.

What should I do right after a fall on a broken sidewalk or cracked parking lot?

Get checked out medically first — adrenaline hides a lot, and back and head injuries often take a day or two to show their full picture. Then, before the property owner patches the spot, photograph it from several angles with something for scale in the frame (a coin, a phone). Get the names of anyone who saw you fall. If the property has cameras, ask the manager in writing to preserve the footage. Report the fall to whoever runs the property — and keep a copy of that report. Then call a lawyer before talking to any insurance adjuster.

Talk to our office before you talk to an adjuster

If you or a family member fell on uneven pavement, a cracked sidewalk, or a parking-lot lip anywhere in Bonita Springs, Fort Myers, Naples, Estero, Cape Coral, or Lehigh Acres, our office is glad to take a look. Call 239-992-8259 for a free consultation. There is no fee unless we recover for you. The sooner we get involved, the more evidence we can preserve before it disappears.

About the Author

A more-than-thirty-year personal injury practice from the firm’s Windsor Place office on Bonita Beach Road has been the daily work of David B. Pittman, Esq., founder of Pittman Law Firm, P.L., with a sustained focus on personal injury and premises-liability cases. Bonita Springs is home for the firm, and most of its child-pedestrian, premises, and family-injury cases come from the residential corridors off Old 41 and Imperial Parkway, the school zones around the Bonita Beach Road corridor, and the surrounding Lee County neighborhoods.

David is a Citadel grad (The Military College of South Carolina, undergraduate) and a University of South Carolina School of Law grad (JD). Martindale-Hubbell rates him AV-Preeminent; he belongs to the Multi-Million Dollar Advocates Forum.

David has held a Florida real estate broker license for twenty-five years, a credential that shapes how the firm reads the property side of premises 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.

The information on this website is for general information purposes only. Nothing on this site should be taken as legal advice for any individual case or situation. This information is not intended to create, and receipt or viewing does not constitute, an attorney-client relationship. This is attorney advertising.