Aventura Mall fall. $612,000 settlement.

Our client, E.G., a 65-year-old retired educator, fell on a clear viscous substance — most likely a spilled smoothie or boba beverage — in the second-floor concourse of Aventura Mall, approximately 40 feet east of the food court entrance, on a Saturday afternoon in early 2023. She suffered a right intertrochanteric hip fracture requiring intramedullary nail fixation, plus a non-displaced left wrist fracture that healed conservatively. She spent six weeks in skilled nursing and another twelve in outpatient rehab. The fall ended her part-time tutoring work and significantly reduced her independence for the following two years.

Florida slip-and-fall cases turn on notice — actual or constructive — under Florida Statute 768.0755. Without proof that the property owner knew or should have known about the dangerous condition long enough to have addressed it, even a clear case of injury fails on summary judgment. Mall premises cases are particularly vulnerable to the 'we didn't know about it' defense because mall ownership typically delegates daily walk-through inspections to subcontracted janitorial vendors whose logs are unreliable.

We served a Florida statutory spoliation letter on the mall ownership, its parent property-management company, and the janitorial subcontractor within 72 hours of intake — well inside the typical CCTV overwrite window. The preserved surveillance showed the substance on the floor for 41 minutes before E.G.'s fall, including footage of a janitorial team member walking past it twice without stopping. That single fact carried the case.

We supplemented the notice theory with a mode-of-operation argument: a food-court adjacency in a high-traffic mall creates a foreseeable risk of beverage spills, and Florida case law (Owens v. Publix) supports applying that mode-of-operation analysis to commercial premises that knowingly tolerate the risk. The case settled at mediation for $612,000, fully resolving E.G.'s past and future medical, the LOEC for her tutoring income, and a substantial non-economic component. Her health-insurance subrogation lien was negotiated down by 45% before distribution.