A premises liability case rarely belongs to one defendant. By the time a slip-and-fall, a parking lot assault, a construction-zone injury, or a negligent security claim reaches a complaint, 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 national retailers, supermarket and big-box chains, restaurants and hospitality clients, hotels, multifamily property owners, condominium and homeowners associations, commercial landlords and tenants, 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 representation of major national retailers, and it approaches every premises file with a parallel set of objectives: defend the case on the merits, and shift the loss to the party whose contract, policy, or conduct actually puts it there.
Most premises liability lawyers know how to defend a fall case. Fewer know how to read a lease and a commercial general liability policy side by side, identify the indemnity obligation buried in the lease, identify the additional-insured endorsement buried in the policy, and trigger 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 other defense counsel either 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 insured receiving a tender, it reads the same documents through the same eyes, and it is often the firm best positioned to evaluate, accept, or defeat the tender on its merits. The work on both sides of a tender informs the work on each side, and it is a meaningful part of why the practice is effective.
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.
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.
We defend bars, restaurants, hotels, and event venues in Florida dram shop claims arising under Florida Statute 768.125, including claims involving service to minors and habitually addicted patrons.
This is the practice’s structural advantage. We pursue and enforce indemnity and defense obligations from landlords, tenants, contractors, subcontractors, vendors, and service providers under leases, vendor agreements, construction contracts, and management agreements. We tender claims to additional-insured carriers under CGL, umbrella, and excess policies. When a tender is refused, we litigate the refusal, including declaratory judgment actions and bad-faith claims where the record supports them. We also defend tenders directed at the firm’s clients, evaluating, accepting, or rejecting them based on what the contracts and policies actually require.
The firm has served as national coverage counsel and has issued comprehensive coverage opinions across a wide range of industries. We analyze primary, umbrella, and excess CGL policies, business liability policies, liquor liability policies, and the additional-insured, indemnity, and contribution provisions that determine who pays what when a claim is presented.
We represent commercial landlords and tenants in disputes that intersect with premises liability and risk transfer, including indemnity and defense disputes arising from injuries on leased premises, allocation of responsibility between landlord and tenant for common areas and maintenance, and the lease language that determines who bears the loss when something goes wrong.
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.
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.
Our clients include physician practices across specialties, PIP clinics, surgery centers, diagnostic providers, and the management companies that support them. The firm represents providers in clawback and recoupment matters arising from the full range of carriers operating in Florida, including major P&C carriers such as Allstate, State Farm, Progressive, GEICO, USAA, Liberty Mutual, and Travelers, and commercial health and managed care payers such as UnitedHealthcare, Aetna, Cigna, Humana, and Florida Blue. The firm also handles matters involving Medicare administrative contractors, Medicare Advantage plans, Medicaid managed care organizations, and AHCA.
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. The depth of perspective is the practice’s structural advantage, and the results follow from it.
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.
