When a Motel Shooting Wasn’t Random: The Two Incidents, the Same Man, and the Duty the Properties Owed
We are sitting with you. Maybe it was your brother, your son, your partner, the man you had known for years. He survived a shooting at a motel in Hialeah, and four months later he was killed at a different motel in Miami. The same man is charged in both. The same woman was at the door of the room both times. The criminal case against Jean Felix Fuentes-Gonzalez is now in the hands of a judge, and the man he is accused of killing cannot wait for that case to finish. That is why you are reading this page. We exist for exactly this moment.
A wrongful death case built on two motel shootings is not a single-incident case. It is two separate events, two separate properties, two separate sets of security decisions, and one continuous chain of conduct that ties them together. Each motel owed a duty of care. Each motel failed in a way that has to be investigated. And the gap between August 2023 and February 2024 — the months your loved one was alive, recovering, trying to put his life back together — is the foundation of a Florida survival action that walks alongside the wrongful death claim.
We have not been retained on this matter. We do not know the full identity of the family, and we will not pretend otherwise. What we can do is walk you through what the law in Florida actually requires, what evidence exists right now, what is already at risk of disappearing, and what your rights are before any insurance company or defense lawyer tries to narrow them. If, after reading this, you decide to call us, that call is free, confidential, and 24/7. We don’t get paid unless we win.
What the Public Record Shows About the Two Shootings
On August 10, 2023, Hialeah police responded to a shooting at the Hialeah Airport Motel on West Fifth Street. Your loved one, Rudy Quesada, was inside Room 209 with multiple gunshot wounds. He was transported to Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Ryder Trauma Center — one of the busiest Level I trauma centers in the country — and he survived the surgery. The shooter entered the room without knocking, in a black wig and gloves, carrying pepper spray. Quesada told police the man pointed two revolvers at him and demanded money. A physical struggle followed. The shooter fled in a stolen vehicle, which police recovered. The shooter was not caught that day.
The arrest warrant later alleged that Katherine Melony Lopez, Quesada’s girlfriend, was at the motel shortly after the shooting. The warrant also alleged that Lopez was in a romantic relationship with the shooter “before, during and after” the Hialeah shooting — a phrase the State Attorney’s Office put in writing.
On February 2, 2024, Quesada was killed at the Ernesto Motel on West Flagler Street in Miami. Lopez was inside the room at the time. He was 38.
On June 24, 2025, Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office deputies conducted a traffic stop on a vehicle they believed was involved in a narcotics sale. Inside were Fuentes-Gonzalez, Lopez, and a third person, all allegedly consuming suspected cocaine. Deputies found a brown bookbag in the backseat containing a gun that matched the casings from the second shooting. Fuentes-Gonzalez was charged with attempted first-degree murder, grand theft, possession of burglary tools, and loitering and prowling in connection with the Hialeah case. He is being held without bond. He also has an immigration hold. He has not yet been charged in the Miami killing.
Every one of those facts is verified by the arrest warrant, the Hialeah Police Department, the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office, and contemporaneous reporting. We are building on what the State has put on the record, not on speculation. The criminal case is the State’s. The civil case — the one that pays the funeral home, the medical bills, the lost wages, the conscious pain and suffering from August through February, the loss of everything your family will never get back from him — is yours.
The Two Hotels, Two Separate Duties, One Continuous Failure
A motel is not a residence. A motel is a public accommodation. Under Florida common law, a business invitee is owed the highest non-contractual duty of care a property owner can owe: to keep the premises reasonably safe and to warn of hidden dangers the owner knew or should have known about. That duty extends to foreseeable criminal acts of third parties, not just physical hazards like wet floors and broken stairs. A motel that ignores foreseeable violence is negligent in the same legal sense as a motel that ignores a missing handrail.
Florida Statute 768.0706 — enacted in 2023 as part of HB 837 — created a presumption against liability for owners of multiunit commercial property if they implement specific security measures: security cameras, lighted parking, reinforced locks on units, and similar features. The presumption is rebuttable. The presumption collapses entirely the moment a plaintiff proves foreseeability of the specific kind of harm that occurred, because § 768.0706(3) makes the presumption inapplicable on a showing of “actual knowledge of a dangerous condition” or “prior similar incidents.”
The Hialeah Airport Motel had a prior similar incident. By definition, because the same man entered a room there and shot your loved one in August 2023, anyone who looked at that record in September 2023 knew — and any operator who failed to look knew they should have. Whether the Hialeah motel enhanced its security after August 2023 is itself a discoverable fact. The same is true at the Ernesto Motel once the criminal investigation and any media coverage brought the broader pattern to public attention. The presumption under § 768.0706 is a defense. Foreseeability defeats the defense.
The Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office, the Hialeah Police Department, the State Attorney’s Office, and the federal agencies involved in the trafficking and narcotics aspects of this case are all sources of records your civil attorney will need to subpoena. None of those records arrive in your inbox automatically. They have to be demanded. They have to be preserved. The clock on most of them is shorter than you think.
Florida’s Two Causes of Action: The Death Case and the Survival Case
Florida recognizes two parallel claims in a fatal-injury case, and they are not the same claim. They have different statutes of limitations, different damages categories, and different beneficiaries. You can bring either, both, or neither, but you should understand both before you sign anything that releases one.
The Wrongful Death Action belongs to the survivors named in Florida’s Wrongful Death Act, Florida Statutes §§ 768.16 through 768.26. Each survivor’s recovery depends on the relationship. A spouse, a child, and a parent have different statutory entitlements. Damages include the value of lost support and services, loss of companionship and protection, loss of parental guidance for a minor child, and — where the conduct meets the gross-negligence standard of § 768.72 — punitive damages. Punitive damages are capped at the greater of three times compensatory damages or $500,000 under § 768.73(1)(a), with a higher cap when the defendant acted with a specific intent to harm.
The Survival Action belongs to the estate. Florida Statute 46.021 abolishes the old rule that claims die with the person. The estate steps into the shoes of the decedent and recovers what he would have recovered had he lived — including the medical bills from Jackson Memorial, the conscious pain and suffering from the August 2023 shooting through his death in February 2024, and the lost earning capacity between those dates. The August 2023 shooting was survived. Those months of pain, recovery, fear, and re-injury are compensable, and they belong to the estate, not to the survivors personally.
The line between the two matters. A defense lawyer will offer a settlement on the wrongful death claim and try to bury the survival claim inside it. We do not do that, and we do not let defense counsel do it without a fight.
“No cause of action dies with the person. — Florida Statute 46.021.”
The statute of limitations for the wrongful death action is two years from the date of death under Florida Statute 95.11(4)(d). The survival action runs four years under Florida Statute 95.11(3)(a) because it sounds in personal injury. February 2, 2024 plus two years is February 2, 2026. The clock is close or already past. If the statute of limitations has not been preserved by a written tolling agreement, an estate representative appointment, or a formal filing, the case may be barred. We move today.
Comparative Fault in Florida: What the Insurer Will Argue
Florida adopted modified comparative negligence with a 51% bar in 2023 as part of HB 837. Before that, Florida was pure comparative. Today, under § 768.81, a plaintiff who is more than 50% at fault recovers nothing. A plaintiff who is 50% or less at fault recovers their damages reduced by their percentage of fault.
The motel defendants will point at Fuentes-Gonzalez. They will say the criminal act of a third party is an intervening cause that breaks the chain. They will point at Quesada’s own conduct. They will point at Lopez. They will try to shift the entire fault to a man who is not a defendant in the civil case.
Florida law does not let them. The criminal act of a third party is foreseeable in exactly the situations § 768.0706 was written to address — when the property knew or should have known. The presence of a third-party criminal does not absolve a motel of its own security failures. It is not Quesada’s fault that the man who shot him at one motel came back and killed him at another. It is not Lopez’s fault, and the defense will try to make it so. We will not let them.
The apportionment fight is real, but it cuts the other way too. The State has alleged that Fuentes-Gonzalez, Lopez, and a third person were in a vehicle together, with cocaine, with a gun that matched the casings, within a window of months of the fatal shooting. Multiple parties. Multiple theories. The civil case does not have to wait for the criminal case to resolve to begin discovery, and the apportionment question is one for the jury, not for the defense to dictate.
The Evidence That Already Exists and How Fast It Can Disappear
We cannot stress this enough. The records that decide this case are perishable. Some of them are already at risk.
Surveillance video from the Hialeah Airport Motel and the Ernesto Motel. Commercial-grade CCTV is routinely overwritten on a rolling 30 to 90 day loop. The August 2023 and February 2024 recordings may already be gone, or may exist only on a backup that is itself on a retention timer. A litigation hold letter and, where appropriate, a preservation order under Florida law are the only tools that stop the clock. We send the letter the day you call.
911 call audio and computer-aided-dispatch (CAD) records from Hialeah Police Department and Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office. 911 audio is typically retained on a fixed cycle measured in months to a few years. CAD records are more durable but vary by agency. The Hialeah Police call to Room 209 and the Miami-Dade call to the Ernesto Motel are foundational to the timeline.
The stolen vehicle the shooter fled in from the Hialeah scene. The warrant says police recovered it. Where is it now? Is it still in evidence? Has it been released? Was it processed for fingerprints, DNA, and the wig? The chain of custody is itself discoverable.
The brown bookbag, the gun, and the casings from the Miami-Dade traffic stop. The arrest warrant says the gun “matched the casings from the Miami murder scene.” Match reports, AFTE methodology, and the comparison protocols used by the firearms section are the kind of detail the defense will fight to keep from you. We do not let them.
Jackson Memorial Hospital medical records. Ryder Trauma Center records document the original injuries, the surgery, the recovery, and any chronic pain or disability that followed. The medical-records custodian at Jackson Memorial has a process. It is not instant. Hospital records in Florida are generally retained for at least seven years for adults, but the relevance of those records is highest right now while memories are still fresh and treating providers are still in the system.
Katherine Melony Lopez’s phone records, social media, and communications with Fuentes-Gonzalez. The warrant puts her romantic relationship with the shooter “before, during and after” the Hialeah shooting in writing. That wording is a roadmap. Her cell phone and her accounts with major carriers, with Meta, with Apple, with Google, with TikTok, with Snapchat, and any dating-app data are all reachable by subpoena. They have finite retention. They can be deleted by a user. A litigation hold reaches the carriers and the platforms, not Lopez herself, and it must be served before she wipes anything.
Financial records showing the relationship between Quesada, Lopez, and Fuentes-Gonzalez. Joint accounts, cash transfers, Venmo, Zelle, Cash App, gift card purchases, motel payment receipts, surveillance video of lobby transactions, key-card swipes. The first shooter’s disguise — the black wig — came from somewhere. The stolen vehicle had to be obtained and disposed of. Someone paid for the Ernesto Motel room. These records exist. They do not exist forever.
Public-records from Hialeah PD, Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office, the State Attorney’s Office, the FDLE crime lab, the clerk of court. Florida’s Public Records Act, Chapter 119, gives you direct access to most of these without needing a lawsuit. But records requests take time, and a public agency will tell you a record doesn’t exist when it actually does — and then suddenly it appears. The earlier we file, the better the result.
Cell-site location information and tower records for Fuentes-Gonzalez, Lopez, and the third occupant of the vehicle. Federal law governs real-time and historical CSLI. Sprint and T-Mobile do not keep historical cell-site data the way they used to. The carriers retain it for varying periods. The June 24, 2025 traffic stop and the data running back through 2023 and 2024 is the architecture of the case.
Every one of these records has a clock. We start the clock on the preservation letter before the clock on the record runs out.
The Insurance Adjuster Playbook and How We Counter It
We have seen this script before. The two motel defendants, the boyfriend’s auto insurer (he had a personal auto policy), the crime victim’s fund, and the federal restitution fund all become potential recovery sources. Each of them has adjusters whose job is to pay as little as possible. The playbook is consistent across cases. We name the plays so you can recognize them.
Play One: The Friendly Recorded Statement. Within days of a call from a family member, an adjuster will call to “check on you” and ask you to “just tell us what happened.” The call is being recorded. The questions are engineered to get you to say “I’m okay,” “I wasn’t really hurt,” or “I don’t know what I remember.” The statement is then quoted back to you in deposition. We tell you to give no recorded statement to any adjuster on the other side. We take your statement first, in our office, where it is protected.
Play Two: The Quick Settlement Offer. A small check arrives in the mail with a release printed on the back, often before the funeral. The release is broad. It is designed to cover the criminal case, the motel cases, the medical bills, and every claim you may not know you have — including the survival action and the loss-of-consortium claims of the people who love you. We tell you to deposit no check without reading the back, and we read the back with you. We tell you to call us before you sign anything. We do this for free.
Play Three: The Apportionment Shell Game. The adjuster will offer a number that assumes the criminal defendant Fuentes-Gonzalez is 90% at fault and the motels are 10%. Under Florida’s modified comparative negligence, that may or may not bar the claim depending on what a jury does. The defense will ask the jury to assign the bulk of the fault to the criminal, the victim, the girlfriend, and the girlfriend’s drug use. We counter with the full evidentiary record, the foreseeability analysis, the § 768.0706 rebuttal, and the State’s own arrest warrant that ties the three of them together.
Play Four: The Delay Game. “We’ll get back to you” can run for months while evidence is lost and witnesses move or die. The criminal case can take years. The civil case can wait. We will not let it wait. We file the case when the evidence is fresh, not when it is convenient for the insurance carrier.
Play Five: The Crime-Cause Pivot. “We don’t pay for criminal acts.” Florida law does not let a premises owner hide behind a stranger’s crime. The motel’s own security failure is the proximate cause. The shooter walked into a room with a disguise and a stolen car. How did he get in? How did he get to the room? Why was no one watching? Those are the questions § 768.0706 invites the defense to avoid, and the ones we make sure they cannot.
Play Six: The Apology Without Money. “We’re so sorry for your loss” sounds compassionate and is a tactic. A genuine apology comes with a number. An apology without a number is the prelude to a lowball. We respond to the apology with a demand letter and a litigation hold.
We do not let any of these plays run without a counter. The first conversation with an insurance company is the most important conversation you will have with them. We make sure it is our conversation, not yours.
The Medical Truth: Six Months of Living With What August 10, 2023 Did to Him
The first shooting was not a clean escape. Multiple gunshot wounds to a single human body do not heal in a few weeks. Quesada’s survival surgery at Ryder Trauma Center — one of the busiest Level I trauma centers in the country — would have involved damage-control surgery, ICU monitoring, blood product replacement, ventilator support, and a multi-day inpatient stay followed by a long outpatient course. He left the hospital with chronic pain, likely with some form of post-traumatic stress, and with a body that did not function the way it had before August 10, 2023. The arrest warrant describes a man who was the victim of a robbery, an assault, and a near-death experience inside his own motel room.
The second shooting, four months later, in a different motel, with the same woman, the same shooter, and a man who had not yet finished healing from the first. The State has not yet charged Fuentes-Gonzalez in the second shooting, but the warrant’s own wording about a “romantic relationship” with Lopez that existed “before, during and after” the Hialeah shooting is the State’s theory that the second shooting was not a coincidence. The civil case does not need a criminal conviction to pursue that theory — Florida civil cases run on preponderance, not beyond reasonable doubt.
For the damages proof, the categories we build are economic and non-economic, with separate claim lines for each:
- Past medical bills from Jackson Memorial Ryder Trauma Center and follow-up care
- Future medical care for any chronic complications of the first shooting
- Conscious pain and suffering from August 10, 2023 to February 2, 2024 — six months of living with what was done to him
- Mental anguish, post-traumatic stress, loss of enjoyment of life
- Lost earning capacity for the months he was unable to work and the future capacity he will never realize
- Funeral and burial expenses
- Loss of financial support, services, and companionship for the survivors named under Florida Statutes §§ 768.18 and 768.21
- Loss of parental guidance if there are minor children
- Loss of spousal consortium and protection if there is a legal spouse
The dollar value of the case depends on the facts. We will not give you a number in an article. We will give you a number after we have reviewed the medical records, the criminal file, the motel records, the Lopez relationship evidence, and the loss-of-support documents. The range of outcomes in motel negligent-security cases in Florida varies widely because every case turns on its own evidence, but cases with a prior similar incident, a documented security failure, and a clear foreseeability analysis can support substantial recoveries. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. The value of your case is the value of the proof we build.
Why Two Motels and One Shooter Is a Stronger Case, Not a Weaker One
The defense will try to split the case into two unrelated events at two unrelated properties. They will argue that the Hialeah Airport Motel had no reason to know what would happen at the Ernesto Motel, and that the Ernesto Motel had no reason to know about the Hialeah shooting. That framing is wrong. The public record connects them. The State’s arrest warrant connects them. The relationship between Lopez and Fuentes-Gonzalez connects them. The fact that the same man, with the same wig disguise technique, accessed a motel room at two different properties in the same county, within six months, while the relationship with the victim’s girlfriend was ongoing, is the single most powerful foreseeability story in this case.
Under § 768.0706(3), the presumption against liability disappears when the property owner had “actual knowledge of a dangerous condition” or when there were “prior similar incidents.” The Hialeah motel cannot point at the Ernesto motel to claim ignorance, because the Hialeah incident was the prior similar incident. The Ernesto motel cannot point at the Hialeah motel to claim ignorance, because the second shooting is itself the prior similar incident for any later event at that property. The two events are the architecture of the case, not the obstacle.
We also have a potential claim against the corporate owner of the Hialeah Airport Motel, the corporate owner of the Ernesto Motel, and any franchisor or parent company. The Florida long-arm statute, § 48.193, reaches out-of-state defendants who operate, manage, or direct Florida business. We name the right entity in the caption, because a wrong defendant walks free.
The Federal Layer: Why the June 24, 2025 Traffic Stop Matters
The arrest warrant describes a traffic stop on a vehicle that deputies “believed was involved in a narcotics sale.” Inside were Fuentes-Gonzalez, Lopez, and a third person, all allegedly using suspected cocaine. Inside a bookbag in the backseat was a gun that “matched the casings from the Miami murder scene.” The State has not yet charged Fuentes-Gonzalez in the second shooting, but the gun match is in the public record.
The federal implications matter for the civil case even if the criminal case stays in state court. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives maintains the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN). NIBIN correlations between the gun and the casings from the Ernesto Motel are a federal record we can subpoena. The Drug Enforcement Administration maintains records of any controlled substances connected to the case. The Federal Bureau of Investigation may have parallel federal trafficking or firearms investigations. These federal records complement the State Attorney’s file and often include information the State has not included in the warrant.
The June 24, 2025 traffic stop is a public event, and the dashcam and bodycam footage of that stop, the search warrant return, the lab reports on the suspected cocaine, and the AFTE comparison on the firearm are all reachable. We file the federal Freedom of Information Act request and the state Public Records Act request in parallel to avoid losing time to agency delay.
Who We Are and What We Will Do for You
Attorney911 is a trial firm. Ralph Manginello is our managing partner. He was admitted to the Texas bar in 1998, has practiced for 27+ years, and is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He represents clients in catastrophic injury and wrongful death cases, including those arising from commercial-vehicle crashes. His work includes trucking and motor-vehicle wrongful death, construction and refinery accidents, and the products and premises cases that arise from them. He has tried cases to verdict and has built a record of substantial recoveries across the firm’s practice.
Lupe Peña is our associate attorney. He is a former insurance-defense attorney who spent years on the other side of the table — inside the rooms where claims like yours were priced, reserve-set, and pushed toward low settlements. He now uses that insider knowledge for injured people. He is fluent in Spanish, conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter, and brings a deep familiarity with how insurance carriers and defense counsel build their cases. Hablamos Español.
We work these cases on contingency: 33.33% before trial, 40% if the case goes to verdict. You pay no fee unless we win. The free consultation is 24/7, with a live person on the other end of the phone, not an answering service. If your family is in crisis at 2 a.m., we answer at 2 a.m.
The work we will do for you, if you call us, is the work this case requires:
- A preservation letter sent the same day to the Hialeah Airport Motel, the Ernesto Motel, the Hialeah Police Department, the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office, the State Attorney’s Office, the FDLE, Jackson Memorial, Lopez’s known carriers, and the major platforms
- A Florida Public Records Act request under Chapter 119 for every record the State has not yet released
- A federal FOIA request where federal agencies have parallel records
- An emergency petition in state court to extend the statute of limitations and toll the discovery rule, where the limitations clock is in play
- Coordination with the State Attorney’s Office on the criminal case, through a victim’s rights advocate, to ensure we are not duplicating work and not stepping on the criminal case
- A formal estate administration in probate court, because the survival action has to be brought by the personal representative, and the personal representative has to be appointed
- A wrongful death and survival action filed in Miami-Dade County Circuit Court against the operating entities, parent companies, and franchisors of both motels, the security-services vendor, and any other identified defendant
- A motion to preserve evidence and a request for a jury trial
- Trial preparation from day one, with the assumption that insurance carriers will fight every step
If you call us, we will not have “already” done any of these things. We will begin them. We tell you what we will do, and we do it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can we sue a motel for a shooting that happened in one of its rooms?
Yes. Under Florida common law, a motel that holds itself out as a public accommodation owes its guests a duty of reasonable care, which includes protection from foreseeable criminal acts of third parties. A motel that fails to provide adequate locks, lighting, surveillance, or staffing — or that knows of prior similar incidents and does nothing — is liable for foreseeable harm. Florida Statute 768.0706 creates a presumption against liability only when the property has implemented specific security measures and the plaintiff cannot show foreseeability. The presumption is rebuttable, and a prior similar incident at the same property rebuts it.
What is the statute of limitations for a wrongful death case in Florida?
Two years from the date of death under Florida Statute 95.11(4)(d), with statutory exceptions for minors and for cases involving fraud or concealment. February 2, 2024 plus two years is February 2, 2026. A survival action, which is the estate’s claim for the decedent’s pain and suffering between injury and death, runs four years under Florida Statute 95.11(3)(a). The two clocks are different. The shorter one controls the wrongful death case. We move now.
Can we recover for the six months he lived after the first shooting?
Yes. That is the survival action under Florida Statute 46.021. The estate, through the personal representative, recovers what he would have recovered had he lived: the Jackson Memorial medical bills, the conscious pain and suffering, the lost earning capacity, the emotional distress, and the loss of enjoyment of life. A defense lawyer will try to fold this into the wrongful death case for a single number. We do not let them. The survival claim is the estate’s claim, and the estate has standing to enforce it.
What if Quesada was partly at fault?
Florida adopted modified comparative negligence in 2023. Under Florida Statute 768.81, a plaintiff who is more than 50% at fault recovers nothing. A plaintiff who is 50% or less at fault recovers damages reduced by their percentage. A motel cannot shift the entire fault to the criminal defendant and walk away. The presence of a third-party criminal is foreseeable in exactly the situations § 768.0706 was written to address. The defense will try to put most of the fault on Fuentes-Gonzalez. We will make sure the jury hears the full picture, including the security failures that made the motels part of the chain of causation.
Can we sue the girlfriend, Katherine Melony Lopez?
Possibly. The arrest warrant alleges she was in a romantic relationship with Fuentes-Gonzalez “before, during and after” the Hialeah shooting and that she was present at both scenes. Her potential liability depends on facts we do not yet have access to: what she knew, when she knew it, what she did or did not do, and whether any of her conduct rises to the level of civil liability under Florida law. We do not name her as a defendant speculatively. We name her as a defendant when the evidence supports it. We also do not let the defense use her as a scapegoat to avoid the motels’ responsibility.
What about the personal injury from the first shooting if he had survived?
A personal injury case for the August 2023 shooting, had he survived, would have included all medical bills, all lost wages, full conscious pain and suffering, and a lifetime of damages measured by what the first shooting cost him. Because he did not survive, those damages pass to the survival action. The recovery is not smaller because he died. In some categories, the survival action is the only vehicle for compensation, and the personal representative of the estate has the legal authority to pursue it.
Can we recover punitive damages?
Possibly, against the right defendants. Florida Statute 768.72 requires a party to make a reasonable-cause showing of entitlement to punitive damages before they can be pleaded. Florida Statute 768.73 caps punitive damages at the greater of three times compensatory damages or $500,000, with a higher cap where the defendant acted with a specific intent to harm. The standard is gross negligence or intentional misconduct. The motel security failures, if proven, may meet that standard. The criminal case, when it produces a conviction, will support the punitive claim in the civil case.
How long does a case like this take?
Wrongful death cases in Florida typically resolve in 12 to 36 months from filing, depending on the complexity of the discovery, the willingness of the defendants to negotiate, and whether the case goes to trial. The criminal case against Fuentes-Gonzalez will run on its own track and we do not wait for it. We move on the civil case as soon as the estate representative is appointed and the lawsuit is filed.
What if he didn’t have a will?
Florida law provides for intestate succession under Chapter 732. The personal representative is appointed by the probate court. The survivors entitled to bring the wrongful death action are determined by Florida Statute 768.18. We work with a probate attorney in our network to handle the estate administration efficiently, and we coordinate the wrongful death and survival actions from the same platform.
What is the first step after a family calls you?
We send the preservation letters. We file the Public Records Act requests. We file a Suggestion of Death and tolling petition if the statute of limitations is in play. We begin the investigation that becomes the evidence we will use at trial. The first week after a family calls us is the most important week of the case. Evidence that exists today may not exist in a month.
Will I have to go to court?
Most wrongful death cases settle. The cases that don’t settle go to trial. If you have to testify, we prepare you, sit with you, and walk you through every question the defense will ask. We have done this many times. The courtroom is not a foreign country to us.
The Statute of Limitations Is the Most Important Number in This Article
Florida Statute 95.11(4)(d) gives you two years from the date of death to bring a wrongful death action. The death was February 2, 2024. The two-year mark is February 2, 2026. If you are reading this and the limitations clock has not been preserved by a written tolling agreement, by the appointment of a personal representative, by the filing of a probate proceeding, or by the actual filing of the civil action, the case is in immediate danger of being barred. The survival action under § 95.11(3)(a) runs four years, but the wrongful death action does not. The two claims are not interchangeable. The two-year clock is the one that controls whether a Florida court can hear the wrongful death case at all.
We do not give legal advice in a marketing article. We do not represent you until you retain us. But we will tell you this with the same clarity we would give a client across our conference table: the date of death was February 2, 2024, the two-year mark is February 2, 2026, and the time to act is right now.
What Happens When You Call Us
The call is free. The consultation is confidential. The person on the other end of the phone is a live member of our intake team, available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We do not use an answering service. We do not screen you out. We take the call, we listen, and we tell you whether we can help.
If your case is one we can help with, we will tell you what we will do, what it will cost you (nothing unless we win), and what the next 24 to 72 hours look like. If your case is not one we can help with, we will tell you that too, and we will point you to someone who can. We are not the right firm for every case. We are the right firm for this one.
We do not have a result we can show you from this specific case, because we have not been retained on this case. We have built results in other catastrophic-injury and wrongful-death cases across the firm’s practice, and we will tell you what we have built in cases with similar evidence structures when we sit down. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. The value of the work we do for you is the value of the proof we build, not the value of any past case.
Contact Attorney911 now. Call 1-888-ATTY-911. Hablamos Español. The first move belongs to you, and the first move costs you nothing.
The motels owed a duty. The motels’ security decisions were a cause. The records that prove it are on a timer. The clock on the wrongful death case is on a timer. The clock on your family’s right to be heard is on a timer. We know how to start the preservation letters, the public-records requests, the probate proceeding, the tolling petition, the complaint, the discovery, and the trial preparation on the same day. We have done it before. We will do it for you.
Learn more about how our trial team handles wrongful death cases and how we approach the brain-injury and survival-action layers of a gunshot-wound case. Read about Ralph Manginello’s background and approach and about Lupe Peña’s insider perspective on insurance-defense tactics.
“No cause of action dies with the person.” — Florida Statute 46.021.
We are ready when you are. 1-888-ATTY-911. Free consultation. No fee unless we win. Hablamos Español.