CITY OF MIAMI BEACH
v.
MANUEL MENENDEZ, ETC.
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A municipal government operating a designated public swimming area assumes a common law duty of care to operate the facility safely and cannot claim sovereign immunity from negligence liability for injuries resulting from known or foreseeable dangerous conditions.
[1] A municipality that operates and designates a public swimming area assumes a common law duty of care to maintain the facility safely and warn of known or foreseeable dang…
[2] Sovereign immunity is not available to a government entity for the operation of a publicly maintained swimming facility merely because the area lacks formal designation a…
Previewing 2 of 3 headnotes on this case. FLexlaw’s editorially structured points of law — every proposition, pinpointed — are reserved for members.
Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence“once the [governmental] unit decides to operate the swimming facility, it assumes the common law duty to operate the facility safely, just as a private individual is obligated under like circumstances.”
Butler v. Sarasota Cnty., cited for the principle that government operation of swimming facilities eliminates sovereign immunity from negligence liability
The City of Miami Beach operated a public swimming area at 29th Street where an injury occurred. The case involved a dispute over whether the City cou…
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PER CURIAM.
Affirmed. See Breaux v. City of Miami Beach, 899 So. 2d 1059, 1066 (Fla. 2005) (“We hold that based on the undisputed facts, [Miami Beach] controls the beach area and was operating a public swimming area at the 29th Street location at the time of the accident. Thus, the City had a duty of care to warn of dangers that were known or should have been known, and is not shielded from liability as a matter of law based on sovereign immunity.”); Florida Dept. of Nat. Res. v. Garcia, 753 So. 2d 72, 77 (Fla. 2000) (“[W]here an area such as South Beach is a well-known public swimming area . . . the State has no basis for claiming immunity from suit merely because a formal designation as a state park did not occur.”); Butler v. Sarasota Cnty., 501 So. 2d 579, 579 (Fla. 1986) (“[O]nce the [governmental] unit decides to operate the swimming facility, it assumes the common law duty to operate the facility safely, just as a private individual is obligated under like circumstances. . . . [T]he public owner did not create the specific dangerous condition but did create a designated swimming area where the dangerous condition existed.”); Burton v. MDC PGA Plaza Corp., 78 So. 3d 732, 734 (Fla. 4th DCA 2012) (“A plaintiff's awareness of a dangerous condition does not negate a defendant's potential liability for negligence in allowing the dangerous condition to exist; it may be relevant, however, to a determination of comparative negligence.”).
Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus
Citator
Authorities Cited
- Butler v. Sarasota Cnty., 501 So. 2d 579 (Fla. 1986)
- Burton v. MDC PGA Plaza Corp., 78 So. 3d 732 (Fla. 4th DCA 2012)
- Fla. Dep't OF Natural Res. v. Garcia, 753 So. 2d 72 (Fla. 2000)
- Frederica E. Breaux v. City OF Miami Beach, 899 So. 2d 1059 (Fla. 2005)