A hot cement pool deck and beach sand under a 95-degree Florida sky is an open and obvious condition, and a premises owner has no duty to warn or protect a barefoot guest from it — even a guest whose medical condition kept him from feeling the heat. The Third District Court of Appeal affirmed the dismissal of a resort guest’s negligence suit.
Theoharis Lekas vacationed at the Trump International Beach Resort in Sunny Isles and repeatedly walked barefoot across the hot pool deck and sand. He has diabetic neuropathy and could not feel the heat; his feet burned, and the injury later required hospitalization. He sued, alleging the resort should have warned or protected him.
The panel held the heat of a sun-exposed deck and sand is exactly the kind of ordinary, obvious condition that carries no duty to warn. Lekas’s neuropathy, the court reasoned in its own words, “may have prevented him from perceiving the heat, but it did not transform an otherwise ordinary and obvious condition into a dangerous one or create a special duty on the part of the landowner.” The panel separately cited *McCain v. Florida Power Corp.* as supporting authority for the broader principle that a legal duty arises from a foreseeable zone of risk — a distinct point from the neuropathy discussion.
**Why it matters:** open-and-obvious natural conditions remain a strong defense in premises cases, and a plaintiff’s hidden vulnerability does not, by itself, create a duty the landowner would not otherwise have.
*Lekas v. Dezer Properties, LLC, No. 3D25-1446 (Fla. 3d DCA Sept. 2, 2026).*