A premises liability case rarely belongs to one defendant. By the time a slip-and-fall, a construction-zone injury, or a negligent security claim reaches a complaint, (a parking lot assault is a negligent security claim), the underlying facts almost always involve a landlord, a tenant, a property manager, a maintenance contractor, a security vendor, a cleaning service, and a chain of insurance policies layered behind them. The first question on most of these files is not whether the plaintiff can prove the case. It is who actually bears the loss when the case resolves.
Topkin Law represents the retailers, property owners, and operators on the receiving end of these claims, and the carriers, third-party administrators, and self-insured corporate clients behind them. The firm has handled this work for more than two decades, including for major national retailers, and it approaches every premises file with two objectives running in parallel, to defend the case on the merits and to shift the loss to the party whose contract, policy, or conduct actually puts it there.
Moving the Loss Off the Client
Defending a fall case is the baseline. The harder work is reading a lease and a commercial general liability policy side by side, finding the indemnity obligation buried in the lease and the additional-insured endorsement buried in the policy, and triggering the duty to defend and indemnify from a co-defendant or its carrier before the client’s own deductible or self-insured retention is ever reached. That is the work the firm is built around.
When a retailer is sued for an injury in or near its premises, the lease, the operating agreement, the construction contract, the service vendor contract, and the underlying CGL, umbrella, and excess policies almost always contain risk transfer language that is easy to miss or treat as background. We treat it as the case. We have spent more than two decades reading those documents in real disputes, tendering claims to landlords, contractors, vendors, and their carriers, and litigating the tender disputes when the recipient refuses. The result, repeatedly, is that the client’s exposure shifts where the contracts and the policies say it belongs.
The same skill set works in the other direction. When the firm represents a carrier or an insured receiving a tender, it reads the same documents through the same eyes and can evaluate, accept, or defeat the tender on its merits.
Premises liability defense
We defend slip-and-fall and trip-and-fall claims, parking lot incidents, common-area injuries, escalator and elevator incidents, swimming pool and recreational facility claims, construction-zone injuries on commercial properties, and the full range of general premises claims that arise on retail, hospitality, commercial, and multifamily properties.
Negligent security defense
We defend retailers, hotels, restaurants and bars, multifamily owners, parking facility operators, and other property owners in negligent security claims arising from criminal acts by third parties. The work includes foreseeability defense, the application of Florida’s apportionment statutes to intentional acts by non-parties, the use of Fabre defendants and the empty-chair strategy, and the coordination of security expert and criminology evidence.
Dram shop defense
We defend bars, restaurants, hotels, and event venues in Florida dram shop claims arising under Section 768.125, Florida Statutes, including claims involving service to minors and habitually addicted patrons.
Contractual indemnity, tender, and additional-insured practice
Insurance coverage analysis and opinions
Commercial landlord-tenant matters
Subrogation defense and multi-defendant apportionment
We defend insureds and self-insureds against subrogation claims, and we handle multi-defendant apportionment, contribution, and equitable indemnity claims in cases with overlapping fault among contractors, vendors, and property occupants.
Pre-suit risk transfer
The most valuable work in this practice often happens before the lawsuit is filed. When the firm is brought in early, we preserve evidence, identify the risk transfer opportunities in the underlying contracts and policies, tender the claim to the appropriate party or carrier, and frequently move the loss off the client’s policy before the client ever takes on the defense.
The firm’s role on a premises file is not just to win the case. It is to position the case so the client’s exposure is as small as it can be regardless of how the case resolves. That means reading the lease and the policy on day one. It means identifying every party in the chain who may owe a defense or indemnity obligation. It means tendering early, tendering aggressively, and litigating the tender when it is refused. And it means handling the underlying defense efficiently, on the merits, with attention to apportionment, comparative fault, and the evidentiary records that decide these cases at summary judgment and at trial.
That posture is sharpened by the firm’s experience on both sides of the tender. The same lawyers who shift losses off retailer clients also evaluate tenders directed at carrier and insured clients, and the same lawyers who interpret leases and CGL policies in defense of corporate occupants interpret them in defense of the landlords and carriers receiving the tender.
Standard premises defense focuses on whether the plaintiff can prove the case. Contractual risk transfer focuses on whether the loss, whatever it turns out to be, ends up on the client’s policy or on someone else’s. The two work in parallel. Premises defense wins cases on the merits. Risk transfer moves the cases the client cannot win onto a co-defendant or its carrier. Doing both is the practice.
Yes, in different matters and with appropriate conflict checks. The work on each side informs the work on the other
The firm pursues the refusal. That can include declaratory judgment actions to enforce the duty to defend, bad-faith claims where the record supports them, and direct claims for fees and costs incurred in the underlying defense. Many tenders that are refused initially are accepted once the firm files. Others are litigated to judgment.
