Three years into Florida’s landmark tort reform, the legal landscape for negligent security claims in 2026 looks fundamentally different from what property owners, insurers, and injured plaintiffs faced before March 2023. The mechanism driving that change — negligent security criminal fault apportionment — is no longer theoretical. It is playing out in courtrooms across the state, reshaping verdicts, settlement negotiations, and insurance premiums in ways that every stakeholder in Florida premises liability must now account for.
What HB 837 Changed About Negligent Security in Florida
Florida’s House Bill 837, signed into law in March 2023 and codified under Section 768.0701 of the Florida Statutes, fundamentally restructured how fault is allocated when a crime occurs on private property. Before this reform, a property owner could be held liable for the full measure of a victim’s damages even when the criminal perpetrator bore the overwhelming share of moral and legal responsibility. The reform eliminated that framework and replaced it with a system requiring juries to evaluate every contributing party — including the person who actually committed the crime. Notably, the 2026 legislative session, which concluded on March 13, 2026, ended without any statutory modifications to HB 837, leaving the law fully intact for the third consecutive year.
Under the old regime, a hotel guest attacked in a poorly lit parking lot could recover 100 percent of their damages from the hotel, regardless of the fact that an armed third party chose to commit violence. In 2026, that same case requires the jury to assign a percentage of fault to the criminal actor, to the property owner, and potentially to other parties. The property owner’s financial exposure is now directly tied to whatever percentage the jury assigns to them — not the criminal’s share.
This is the core mechanics of negligent security criminal fault apportionment: the jury becomes the arbiter of proportional responsibility across all parties, including those who may never appear in a courtroom because they are incarcerated, unknown, or judgment-proof.
How Florida Juries Are Applying Fault Apportionment in 2026
Mid-year 2026 case analyses from defense and plaintiff firms confirm that juries are consistently and meaningfully apportioning fault to criminal perpetrators when given the opportunity. The practical effect has been significant reductions in property owner liability across a range of venue types — from apartment complexes to retail centers to hospitality properties. In some cases, when juries assign majority fault to the criminal actor, the damages assessed against the property owner drop to a fraction of the total award. In cases where the jury assigns more than 50 percent fault to the perpetrator, the property owner’s share shrinks accordingly — and in extreme apportionments, the net recovery for the plaintiff against the property owner can approach zero.
This is not a hypothetical outcome. Negligent security criminal fault apportionment is producing zero or near-zero recoveries in cases where, before 2023, a property owner might have faced a seven-figure judgment. A July 2026 dismissal with prejudice in a wrongful death negligent security case out of Broward County — involving a toddler’s shooting death at an apartment complex and an eight-figure demand — illustrates how dramatically the apportionment framework can affect case outcomes even in the most sympathetic fact patterns. For plaintiffs and their counsel, this means the litigation calculus has changed entirely. For insurers pricing commercial premises liability policies, the actuarial baseline has shifted. And for property owners evaluating their security investment decisions, the reform creates a complicated incentive structure worth examining carefully.
Victims of violent crime who bring negligent security claims in 2026 are navigating a legal environment where the strength of the underlying premises liability evidence matters more than ever. Because the jury will be asked to weigh the property owner’s negligence against the deliberate act of a criminal, plaintiffs must build a record that clearly establishes the property owner’s awareness of foreseeable risk and their failure to act on it — not merely that a crime occurred on the premises.
Property Types and Claims Most Affected by the 2026 Shift
The apportionment framework introduced by HB 837 does not affect all property types equally. The claims most profoundly reshaped by negligent security criminal fault apportionment in 2026 are those involving high-crime multifamily residential properties, hospitality venues, retail and entertainment centers, and parking structures. These property categories share a common profile: they attract large volumes of visitors or residents, they have documented histories of prior criminal incidents in many cases, and they are the settings where plaintiffs historically had the strongest arguments for property owner foreseeability.
Apartment complexes in particular have emerged as a focal point of post-HB 837 litigation. Florida leads the nation in personal injury lawsuits, with 127.41 cases filed per 100,000 residents compared to a national average of 9.53 — and multifamily residential properties account for a substantial share of negligent security claims within that caseload. Before the reform, plaintiffs in apartment shooting cases could point to prior incidents, broken gates, inadequate lighting, and absent security personnel and argue that the property owner bore essentially unlimited joint liability. In 2026, those same facts must compete against a jury’s assessment of how much fault to assign to the person who pulled the trigger.
Hotel and resort properties face a parallel dynamic. Florida’s tourism-driven economy generates a high volume of premises liability claims tied to assaults, robberies, and other violent incidents on hospitality properties. The apportionment framework gives defense counsel a powerful tool in these cases: even where the property owner’s security failures are well-documented, the jury instruction requiring fault allocation to the criminal actor can dramatically limit recovery.
The Data: How Fault Apportionment Is Reshaping Claim Outcomes
The broader impact of HB 837 on Florida’s litigation environment is measurable beyond individual verdicts. One of the clearest indicators of the reform’s effect on litigation volume and behavior comes from the auto glass sector, where a related provision of the bill targeting assignment-of-benefits abuse produced a dramatic result: lawsuits dropped from 24,720 in the second quarter of 2023 to just 2,613 in the second quarter of 2024. While auto glass claims differ from negligent security cases in important respects, the data point illustrates that HB 837 is functioning as intended across multiple litigation categories — deterring cases that previously proceeded on speculative or inflated theories of liability.
For negligent security specifically, the claim-level data emerging in 2026 reflects several measurable trends. Average settlement values in cases involving criminal acts on commercial property have declined relative to pre-reform baselines, as defendants now hold a structural advantage in settlement negotiations: the credible threat of a jury assigning the majority of fault to an absent or incarcerated criminal. Cases that previously settled in the mid-seven figures are resolving at lower amounts. Cases that previously went to trial with high plaintiff win rates are producing more defendant-favorable outcomes when juries apply the apportionment instruction.
At the same time, not every case has swung toward defendants. A 2024 Hillsborough County verdict of $30 million for a 23-year-old woman whose symptoms were misdiagnosed during a hospital admission — a premises and medical liability case — is a reminder that Florida juries retain the capacity to deliver substantial awards when the evidence of institutional negligence is compelling. The lesson for negligent security plaintiffs is not that large recoveries are impossible under the 2026 framework, but that the evidentiary bar is meaningfully higher and the case preparation requirements are significantly more demanding.
What This Means for Plaintiffs Pursuing Negligent Security Claims in 2026
For an injured plaintiff or the family of a crime victim considering a negligent security claim in 2026, the HB 837 framework demands a different approach to case evaluation and development than was required before March 2023. The threshold question is no longer simply whether a crime occurred on private property and whether the property owner had some notice of prior incidents. The question is whether the evidence supports a jury finding that the property owner’s negligence constitutes a meaningful share of total fault — large enough to produce a recovery worth the litigation investment after apportionment.
That analysis requires examining several specific factors. First, the documented history of prior criminal incidents on or near the property is essential: courts and juries look to whether the property owner had actual or constructive knowledge that the type of crime that occurred was foreseeable. Second, the property owner’s response — or failure to respond — to that known risk matters enormously. Evidence of security measures that were promised but not implemented, security personnel who were inadequately trained or stationed, access control systems that were broken or bypassed, and lighting conditions that expert testimony can tie to heightened criminal opportunity all contribute to a stronger apportionment case against the property owner.
Third, and critically, the identity and circumstances of the criminal actor affect the apportionment calculus. In cases where the perpetrator is unknown or has no meaningful connection to the property, defense counsel may argue for a higher fault assignment to the criminal and a lower share to the property owner. In cases where the perpetrator was a known trespasser, a previously flagged tenant, or a person whose presence on the property the owner had reason to monitor, the foreseeability argument strengthens considerably and the apportionment argument against the property owner becomes more persuasive.
Plaintiffs who understand this framework and build their claims accordingly — with thorough incident history documentation, qualified security expert testimony, and a clear narrative connecting the property owner’s specific failures to the specific harm — are still recovering meaningful damages in 2026. The cases that are struggling are those built on a general theory of inadequate security without the factual specificity that the apportionment framework now demands.
Frequently Asked Questions About Negligent Security Criminal Fault Apportionment in Florida
What is negligent security criminal fault apportionment and how does it work in Florida in 2026?
Negligent security criminal fault apportionment is the legal mechanism established by Florida’s HB 837 — now codified at Section 768.0701 of the Florida Statutes — that requires juries in negligent security cases to assign a percentage of fault to every party who contributed to the plaintiff’s harm, including the criminal perpetrator. In practice, this means that when a jury evaluates a shooting, assault, robbery, or other violent crime that occurred on private property, it must not only determine whether the property owner was negligent but also assign a specific share of fault to the person who committed the crime. The property owner’s financial liability is then limited to their proportionate share. The law has been in effect since March 2023 and remained unchanged through the conclusion of the 2026 legislative session in March 2026.
Can a plaintiff recover nothing from a property owner if the jury assigns most of the fault to the criminal?
Yes. This outcome, while not the norm in every case, is a real and documented result under the 2026 framework. If a jury assigns, for example, 90 percent of fault to the criminal perpetrator and 10 percent to the property owner, the plaintiff can only recover 10 percent of their total damages from the property owner. In cases with extremely high criminal fault apportionment, the net recovery against the property owner can be economically negligible even if the total damages figure is substantial. A July 2026 dismissal with prejudice in a Broward County wrongful death negligent security case — involving an eight-figure demand following a toddler’s shooting death at an apartment complex — illustrates that even highly sympathetic cases can result in zero recovery when the apportionment and legal framework are applied rigorously.
What types of evidence strengthen a negligent security claim under the 2026 apportionment framework?
The evidence that most effectively supports a negligent security claim in 2026 is evidence that demonstrates the property owner’s specific, documented awareness of foreseeable criminal risk and their concrete failure to address it. This includes prior incident reports from the property or immediately surrounding area, written communications between management and ownership about security concerns, maintenance records showing broken or deferred security infrastructure, contracts with security vendors that were not honored, and expert testimony from qualified security professionals who can establish both the applicable standard of care and the property owner’s deviation from it. Evidence tying the perpetrator’s presence on the property to the owner’s own prior knowledge — such as prior trespass warnings, tenant complaints about a specific individual, or access control failures — also strengthens the apportionment case against the property owner rather than the criminal alone.
How has HB 837’s negligent security criminal fault apportionment changed insurance pricing for commercial properties in Florida?
The reform has had a measurable effect on commercial premises liability insurance in Florida, though the full actuarial impact continues to develop as more post-reform cases resolve. Insurers writing commercial general liability and premises liability coverage for Florida properties have adjusted their pricing models to reflect reduced expected severity in negligent security claims, particularly for multifamily residential, hospitality, and retail properties. The directional signal from the broader HB 837 data — including the dramatic reduction in auto glass litigation from 24,720 lawsuits in Q2 2023 to 2,613 in Q2 2024 — has reinforced insurer confidence that the reform is functioning as a meaningful constraint on litigation exposure. However, because Florida continues to lead the nation in personal injury filings at 127.41 cases per 100,000 residents, insurers have not abandoned caution in high-crime property categories, and premiums for properties with documented prior incident histories remain elevated.
Does negligent security criminal fault apportionment apply to all Florida premises liability cases involving criminal acts?
The apportionment requirement under Section 768.0701 applies broadly to premises liability claims arising from criminal acts on private property, but its application is not unlimited. Cases involving purely accidental injuries on commercial property — slip and falls, structural failures, pool accidents — are governed by the standard negligence and comparative fault framework rather than the criminal apportionment provision. The criminal fault apportionment mechanism is specifically triggered when the harm results from the intentional criminal act of a third party and the plaintiff’s claim rests on the theory that the property owner’s security failures enabled or failed to prevent that act. Plaintiffs and their counsel should evaluate the specific statutory language and applicable case law when assessing whether a particular incident falls within the Section 768.0701 framework, as the boundaries of the provision continue to be defined through ongoing litigation in Florida courts.
Sarah Anderson is a Premises Liability Specialist with extensive knowledge of personal injury law and settlement values across the United States. With years of experience analyzing slip and fall injuries only cases, Sarah helps injury victims understand their legal rights and the potential value of their claims. Sarah is not an attorney and the information provided is for educational purposes only.