Gas Station Liability for a Failed Fuel Pump Hose

Attorney Answer

This is a stronger claim than the ordinary store fall, because the hazard came from the station's own equipment rather than from something a customer dropped — and that also means Florida's slip-and-fall statute is not the rule that governs it. You have documentation most injured people never get: a police report, a fire-rescue response, photographs, a witness, and imaging that shows objective injury.

Start with the statute that does not apply, because it explains why. Fla. Stat. § 768.0755(1) provides: "If a person slips and falls on a transitory foreign substance in a business establishment, the injured person must prove that the business establishment had actual or constructive knowledge of the dangerous condition and should have taken action to remedy it." That section is written for a transitory foreign substance — a spill or similar substance a business may or may not have known about. A fuel hose that split open while in use is not that. It is the business's own equipment, in the business's own control, failing during the exact use it exists for.

Claims about equipment and fixed conditions are judged under ordinary negligence principles instead, and § 768.0755(2) preserves those common-law duties. The framing is generally friendlier to an injured customer: a business owes people it invites onto its property reasonable care in maintaining the premises and the equipment it provides, which includes inspecting and maintaining it. The questions that duty produces are concrete — how old the hose was, when it was last inspected, whether the pump had a service history, whether other customers had reported problems, and who was responsible for maintaining it.

That last question is the reason to move early. A station's fuel dispensers are often serviced under contract by a company other than the store operator, the property may be owned by yet another entity, and the equipment itself has a manufacturer. More than one of them may be responsible. Sorting that out starts with the physical evidence, and the single most important piece is the hose. Once it is replaced and discarded, the case gets harder for everyone.

Your medical picture matters too. A lumbar strain that later imaged as herniated and bulging discs with stenosis, treated with epidural steroid and facet injections, is a documented course of care, not a complaint. Keep it consistent — treatment gaps are the argument used to suggest an injury resolved or came from something else.

What you can do

1. Write to the station and its corporate owner asking them to preserve the failed hose, the dispenser, the maintenance and inspection records for that pump, and the station's video from that day. Keep a copy and proof of sending.

2. Request the police report and the fire-rescue incident report from the agencies that responded.

3. Get your witness's name and phone number now, before more time passes.

4. Keep the photographs you took, unedited, along with the originals on the device.

5. Keep every medical record, bill and imaging report together, and continue the treatment your doctors recommend.

6. Ask a Florida lawyer about claims against the station operator, the maintenance contractor and the equipment manufacturer, and about getting the hose preserved formally if the station will not agree.

Most lawyers offer a brief initial call at no cost, and a few minutes on your specific facts with someone who can hear the whole story is worth more than any general guidance, including this page.

⏱ Time limits apply. Fla. Stat. § 95.11 sets the negligence deadline, and the period depends on when you were hurt: two years under § 95.11(5)(a) for claims accruing on or after March 24, 2023, and the former four-year period for earlier injuries. The evidence clock is much shorter — the hose and the video can be gone in weeks. This page does not compute your date; have a Florida attorney check it against your facts.