If you own or manage commercial property, apartments, retail space, or multi-family housing in Florida, the legal landscape around negligent security claims has changed significantly — and the changes work in your favor. Florida’s sweeping tort reform legislation, passed in 2023, reshaped how these lawsuits are handled, what defenses are available, and how property owners can proactively protect themselves from liability.
Here’s what you need to understand about where the law stands today and what it means for your property.
What Is a Negligent Security Claim?
Before diving into the reforms, it helps to understand what negligent security litigation actually involves. These claims arise when someone is injured by a criminal act — an assault, robbery, shooting, or other violent incident — on someone else’s property, and the injured person argues that the property owner failed to provide adequate security that could have prevented the harm.
Common allegations include insufficient lighting in parking lots or common areas, a lack of functioning surveillance cameras, absent or inadequate security personnel, and poor physical barriers or access controls. Prior to 2023, plaintiffs pursuing these claims faced a relatively low legal threshold. They generally had to show that a property owner should have foreseen the possibility of criminal activity and failed to take reasonable steps to prevent it. For property owners and their insurers, that standard often led to difficult and costly litigation even when the property’s security was genuinely reasonable. That changed with House Bill 837.
How Florida’s Tort Reform Law Changed Negligent Security Cases
In March 2023, Florida enacted House Bill 837 — one of the most significant overhauls of the state’s civil litigation system in decades. While the law addressed a range of tort issues, two provisions in particular fundamentally altered negligent security litigation.
- Juries can now assign fault to the criminal actor. This might sound obvious, but before the reform, criminal third parties could not be included on a jury verdict form in negligent security cases. Property owners were often left absorbing the full weight of liability even when the actual perpetrator of the crime was primarily responsible. Under the new law — codified in Section 768.0701 of the Florida Statutes — juries must now consider the fault of all parties who contributed to an injury, including the person who actually committed the crime. This provision applies to claims filed after March 24, 2023. The practical impact of this change is significant. When a jury can attribute a substantial portion of fault directly to the criminal actor, the share of responsibility assigned to a property owner drops accordingly — and so does the potential damages award. For defendants in negligent security cases, this single change can be the difference between a devastating verdict and a manageable one.
- Compliant multi-family property owners now benefit from a presumption against liability. The second major reform is even more powerful for landlords and residential property managers. Under HB 837, owners and operators of qualifying multi-family residential properties who meet specific statutory security requirements receive a legal presumption that they were not negligent. In plain terms: if you check all the boxes the statute requires, a court will presume you did your job — and the burden shifts to the plaintiff to prove otherwise. That’s a meaningful legal advantage that simply did not exist before 2023.
What Does “Statutory Compliance” Actually Require?
To benefit from the presumption against liability, a multi-family residential property must implement and maintain a defined list of security measures. These include security cameras with retrievable footage at all entry and exit points, adequate lighting throughout parking areas, walkways, and common spaces, one-inch deadbolt locks on all dwelling unit doors, locking devices on windows and sliding doors, locked pool gates with key or fob access controls, and peepholes or door viewers on unit doors that don’t have adjacent windows.
Beyond the physical infrastructure, the law also requires that property owners complete a Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) assessment — a recognized framework for evaluating how a property’s layout and design affect security risk — by January 1, 2025. Ongoing employee training on crime deterrence and safety must also be implemented and maintained.
Meeting these requirements serves two purposes simultaneously. On a practical level, these are genuinely effective safety measures that reduce the likelihood of incidents occurring in the first place. On a legal level, documented compliance creates a powerful defense that can lead to early dismissal of claims, reduced settlement exposure, or a favorable jury outcome if a case does go to trial.
What This Means for Your Liability Exposure
Taken together, the fault apportionment reform and the statutory presumption raise the bar for plaintiffs pursuing negligent security claims against property owners in Florida. Injured parties now face a more demanding legal path — they must contend with the possibility that a significant share of fault will be placed on the criminal actor, and in cases involving compliant multi-family properties, they must affirmatively overcome a legal presumption that the owner acted reasonably.
This doesn’t mean negligent security litigation has disappeared. Plaintiffs’ attorneys are creative and persistent, and claims continue to be filed. But the legal environment is meaningfully more favorable to property owners who take security seriously and document their efforts.
Proactive Steps That Protect You Now
If your property is already facing a negligent security claim, the defense strategy in this new era centers on a few key areas: demonstrating that your property met statutory compliance requirements, building a compelling case for apportioning fault to the criminal actor, preserving security logs, maintenance records, incident reports, and surveillance footage, and pursuing early dispositive motions where the facts support them.
If you haven’t yet faced a claim, now is exactly the right time to evaluate your security infrastructure against the statutory checklist, complete or update your CPTED assessment, ensure employee training is documented and current, and work with legal counsel to build the kind of compliance record that will protect you if litigation ever arises.
The Bottom Line
Florida’s tort reform legislation sent a clear message: property owners who invest in security and maintain proper documentation will be protected under the law. Those who don’t will remain exposed. The legal tools now exist to mount strong defenses against negligent security claims — but only if property owners have done the groundwork in advance.
Whether you’re managing a large apartment complex, a retail center, or a mixed-use development, this is the moment to align your security practices with Florida’s new statutory framework. Your legal exposure in 2026 and beyond will depend on the steps you take today.