Florida Injury Lawyer Blog
Suing local government for personal injury or wrongful death is a complex process that involves a number of special rules and procedures and for which damages are likely capped. Many times, you must act very quickly, or else forever lose your right to bring a claim. 
Often, before the case ever gets to trial, the government entity will assert sovereign immunity. This is an age-old legal principle that essentially holds the government cannot be held liable for wrongdoing. However, there are instances in which the government grants its permission to be held liable, and in Florida, those instances of waiver of sovereign immunity are outlined in F.S. 768.28.
Still, instances in which a waiver of sovereign immunity is granted are highly case specific. Take, for example, the case of Kent v. City of Columbia Falls, before the Montana Supreme Court. Typically, government entities aren’t responsible for the engineering/design/maintenance of roadways and sidewalk features in private or gated communities. This would generally be the responsibility of the private land-owning association. However, in the Kent case, there was an assertion the government had taken in an unusually active role in the design/engineer/planning for the thoroughfares within a certain gated community where a man had fallen down a steep hill on his skateboard.
