In March 2023 Florida passed the largest change to its personal injury law in a generation. Three years on, every injury claim Kemp Law Group handles runs under the new rules, and most people who are hurt in a crash or a fall still do not know what they are. Here is what changed, what did not, and what it means for a claim in Pasco, Pinellas, Hillsborough or Hernando County today.

Two years to file, not four

Before 2023, a Florida negligence claim could be filed up to four years after the injury. For anything that happened after March 24, 2023, the deadline is two years (Florida Statutes § 95.11). Wrongful death claims were already two years and stayed there.

Claims against a government agency run on a different clock. A crash with a county truck, a city bus, a school district vehicle or a state road defect requires written notice to the agency under § 768.28 before a lawsuit can be filed, and that notice deadline arrives well before the two-year mark.

Two years is less than it sounds. A serious injury takes a year or more of treatment before anyone, doctor or lawyer, knows what it is worth, and a claim that is valued too early is valued too low. The practical effect of the shorter deadline is that the work has to start in the first weeks, not the last months.

Fault above 50 percent now ends the case

Florida used to follow pure comparative negligence: a person 80 percent at fault could still recover 20 percent of their damages. The 2023 law moved the state to a modified system (§ 768.81). If a jury finds you 50 percent or less at fault, your award is reduced by that share. At 51 percent or more, you recover nothing.

Insurers understood immediately what that meant. Adjusters now build the injured person’s share of fault from the first phone call: the recorded statement that asks how fast you were going, whether you saw the other car, whether you were on your phone. A recorded statement given before you have counsel is the most expensive thing you can give away in a Florida injury claim, and the right answer to the request is that your lawyer will be in touch.

The rule does not apply to medical malpractice claims, which keep the old system.

What the jury hears about your medical bills

The most technical change is the one that affects the value of every case. Under § 768.0427, juries now hear what was actually paid or is actually owed for treatment, rather than the amounts a provider billed. For bills paid by health insurance, the measure is what the insurer paid plus the patient’s share. For an uninsured patient with unpaid bills, the measure is tied to 120 percent of the Medicare rate for the service, or 170 percent of the Medicaid rate where Medicare has none.

Treatment under a letter of protection, the arrangement in which a provider agrees to wait for payment until the case resolves, must now be disclosed in detail: a copy of the letter, an itemized bill with its billing codes, whether the provider sold the receivable to a factoring company and for how much, and whether a lawyer referred the patient to the provider.

A case built on consistent, documented treatment does fine under these rules. A case built on inflated billing does not, which is how it should be. What has changed for injured people is that the quality of the medical record now matters more than ever: the imaging, the specialist’s opinion on permanence, and a treatment history with no unexplained gaps are what the jury weighs, and what the insurer weighs long before any jury is picked.

Insurance bad faith has a 90-day safe harbor

Florida law has long let an injured person sue an insurer that unreasonably refused to settle within its policy limits and exposed its own customer to a larger judgment. The 2023 law kept that claim but added a safe harbor (§ 624.155): an insurer that pays the policy limits, or the amount demanded, within 90 days of receiving notice of a claim with enough evidence to evaluate it cannot be sued for bad faith over that claim. The law also says that negligence alone is not bad faith, and that the injured person and their lawyer must act in good faith as well.

In practice this made the demand package the whole game. The demand now has to give the insurer everything it needs to pay, on the record and within the window, so that a refusal is a documented choice rather than a misunderstanding. The firm’s insurance claims page explains how those claims work.

Negligent security and the fault of the criminal

When someone is assaulted or shot at an apartment complex, a gas station or a bar that ignored known crime, Florida law allows a claim against the property owner for negligent security. The 2023 law changed two things. Juries must now apportion fault to the criminal as well as the owner (§ 768.0701), which can shrink the owner’s share of a verdict. And owners of multifamily properties that adopt a specific list of security measures, from lighting and cameras to locked gates and crime-prevention assessments, receive a presumption against liability (§ 768.0706).

These cases are harder than they were. They still exist, and the evidence is what it always was: the record of prior crime at and around the property, which county public records make available, and what the owner did or did not do about it. See negligent security.

What did not change

The no-fault system is intact. Every registered Florida car still carries $10,000 of personal injury protection, PIP still pays 80 percent of medical bills and 60 percent of lost wages up to that limit, the 14-day rule still requires treatment within two weeks of the crash, and only $2,500 of the benefit is available without a physician’s finding of an emergency medical condition. Pain and suffering damages against the at-fault driver still require a permanent injury, significant scarring or death. Florida still does not require drivers to carry bodily injury coverage, and roughly one driver in five carries none. And there is still no cap on damages in an ordinary negligence case.

That combination is why uninsured motorist coverage on your own policy, and on the policies of relatives in your household, remains the most important line on a Florida auto policy, and why we read every policy in the household before we value a case. The firm’s personal injury protection page covers the no-fault rules in detail.

What it means in practice

• Call sooner. Two years passes quickly, government claims have earlier notice deadlines, and cameras, event data and witnesses exist for days, not months.
• Do not give the recorded statement. Under a 51-percent bar, the insurer’s first job is to put fault on you.
• Treat consistently and keep every bill. The medical record is now the evidence; gaps and billing shortcuts cost more than they ever did.
• Expect the insurer’s first answer to be no. The 90-day safe harbor rewards a complete demand and punishes an incomplete one.
• Know where cases are won. Most of what decides a Florida injury claim now happens in the first weeks, not in a courtroom.

Talk to a Florida personal injury lawyer

If you or someone you love was hurt because someone else was careless, call or text 727-847-4878 or contact us online for a free consultation, 24 hours a day. Kemp Law Group has represented injured people across Florida since 2008, and you owe no fees and no costs unless we win.

The hiring of a lawyer is an important decision that should not be based solely upon advertisements. This article is general information about Florida law as of its publication date and is not legal advice about any particular case.