If you or someone you love was hurt by another person's carelessness, the rules that decide what happens next are not always fair, and they are full of deadlines. This is a plain-English walk through Florida personal injury law — what a claim is, the major types of cases, the statutes that control your rights, how a case actually moves, and what you can recover. Written for an injured Broward resident, by an attorney who has worked these cases here for more than 40 years.
Personal injury law covers what happens when one person gets hurt because someone else was careless. The legal word for that carelessness is negligence. The basic idea is simple and old: if you cause harm by failing to act with reasonable care, you should pay for the harm you caused. A personal injury claim is how an injured person asks for that payment — usually from the at-fault party's insurance company.
You do not have a claim just because you got hurt. People get hurt every day with no one to blame. To have a real case in Florida, four things generally have to be true:
Take all four out for a spin with a simple example. A driver runs a red light and hits you. The driver owed you a duty to stop (duty), ran the light (breach), the crash broke your wrist (causation), and now you have surgery bills and time off work (damages). That is a textbook negligence claim. Most personal injury cases are some version of that story — the facts just change.
One more thing worth saying up front, because it stops people from calling: almost all personal injury work is done on contingency. That means you pay no fee unless there is a recovery. At our office, the case review is free, confidential, and same-day, and there is no fee unless we recover for you. You should never have to risk money out of pocket just to find out whether you have a case.
“Personal injury” is an umbrella. Underneath it are very different kinds of cases, each with its own rules, its own kind of proof, and its own deadlines. Here are the main ones, and where to read more about each.
The biggest category by far. Car crashes, truck wrecks, motorcycle accidents, rideshare crashes, and people struck while walking or biking. These cases run through Florida's no-fault insurance system first, and the deadlines are unforgiving. If you were hurt on the road, start with our motor vehicle accidents hub, or go straight to the car accidents page.
When you are hurt on someone else's property because they did not keep it safe — a wet floor with no warning sign, a broken stair, poor lighting, or a lack of security where a crime was foreseeable. Florida puts a specific burden on the injured person in store slip-and-fall cases, which makes early evidence critical. Learn how these claims work on our premises liability hub.
When a doctor, hospital, or other provider gives care that falls below the accepted medical standard and a patient is harmed. These are the most procedurally demanding cases in Florida — they require expert review before you can even file, and they run on a different clock than ordinary injury claims. See our medical malpractice hub for the special rules.
Not a separate kind of accident, but a separate level of seriousness — spinal cord and brain injuries, amputations, severe burns, and other harm that changes a person's life permanently. The stakes, the medicine, and the lifetime costs are all different, which is why these cases are handled differently. Our catastrophic injuries hub explains how.
The cases that do not fit a neat box — dog bites, boating and personal-watercraft accidents, defective products, and similar matters that each carry their own Florida rules. If your situation feels unusual, it probably still has a home; see our specialty accidents hub.
If you were hurt on the job, your case usually goes through Florida's separate workers' compensation system rather than a regular injury lawsuit — and it has its own rules and a quick reporting deadline. Our workers' compensation hub walks through what to do after a workplace injury.
There is one more area many injured families need help with — immigration. Being undocumented does not erase your right to be compensated for an injury in Florida, and we help clients understand how the two issues fit together. You can read about that on our immigration hub.
A handful of statutes decide far more about your case than most people realize — who pays first, how long you have, and whether a jury's verdict gets reduced or thrown out entirely. Two of the most important were rewritten in 2023. Here are the ones that matter most, cited so you can look them up yourself.
Fla. Stat. 627.736
Every Florida driver must carry at least $10,000 in Personal Injury Protection (PIP). After a crash, your own PIP pays first — no matter who was at fault. But you have to get medical care within 14 days of the crash, or the insurer can deny the entire PIP claim. Important: motorcycles are not covered by PIP.
Fla. Stat. 627.737
No-fault keeps small cases out of court — but a serious injury lets you step outside PIP and pursue the at-fault driver directly. You generally cross this threshold with a permanent injury, significant and permanent loss of an important bodily function, significant scarring or disfigurement, or death. That is when pain-and-suffering damages come into play.
Fla. Stat. 768.81 Amended 2023
Florida uses modified comparative negligence. Your recovery is reduced by your share of the fault — 20% at fault, 20% less. As of the 2023 changes (House Bill 837, effective March 24, 2023), if you are found more than 50% at fault, you recover nothing. The old rule let you recover even at high fault; that door is now closed.
Fla. Stat. 95.11(4)(a) Amended 2023
The biggest 2023 change for most injury victims. Florida cut the deadline to file most negligence claims from four years to two years (House Bill 837, effective March 24, 2023). Miss it and your claim is gone for good, no matter how strong it was. Some claims have different clocks — which is exactly why you should not wait to find out which applies to you.
Fla. Stat. 768.0755
In a business slip-and-fall, Florida puts the burden on you to prove the store knew or should have known about the dangerous condition — that the spill sat long enough that a careful business should have caught it. Surveillance video and incident reports vanish fast, so this proof is built in the first days, not months later.
Fla. Stat. 768.16–768.26
When carelessness takes a life, the Wrongful Death Act controls. The claim is brought by a court-appointed personal representative of the estate on behalf of surviving family, and it must generally be filed within two years of the death. It covers losses unique to a death — lost support, lost companionship, and a family's grief.
Note: a few injury types run on their own clock. Medical malpractice, for example, is generally two years from when the harm was discovered, with an outer limit, and carries its own presuit requirements (Florida Statutes section 95.11(4)(b) and Chapter 766). Always confirm your specific deadline with an attorney.
People picture a courtroom. In reality, the great majority of injury claims settle without a trial — the work that gets you there happens long before any judge is involved. Here is the path a typical case follows.
We sit down with you, listen to what happened, and tell you honestly whether you have a case and what it may be worth. No charge, no obligation, and same-day. If we are not the right fit, we will say so.
We gather the proof while it still exists — the crash or incident report, photos, surveillance video, witness statements, and the other side's insurance information. Acting fast matters; video gets recorded over and memories fade.
We let your treatment run its course and assemble the full picture of your harm — bills, records, lost wages, and how the injury changed your daily life. Settling before you know your real losses is one of the costliest mistakes an injured person can make.
We send the insurer a demand backed by the evidence and the law, then negotiate hard. Most cases resolve at this stage — but only when the other side knows we are ready and willing to file suit if the offer is not fair.
If the offer is fair, we resolve it and you collect. If it is not, we file suit and take your case to a Broward jury. The credible willingness to go to trial is, more often than not, what produces a fair settlement.
“Damages” is just the legal word for the money meant to make you whole. Florida law sorts it into two main buckets, and understanding the difference helps you see why a serious injury can be worth far more than the medical bills alone.
These are the costs you can add up on paper:
These are real, but they do not come with receipts. For a serious injury, they are often the largest part of a claim:
Here is a point worth knowing, because the headlines about other states confuse people: Florida does not cap most compensatory damages in everyday injury cases. There is no arbitrary ceiling on what a jury can award you for the pain and the losses you actually suffered. (A separate, narrow set of rules can affect certain categories like punitive damages, which are rare and are meant to punish especially bad conduct rather than to compensate you.) The takeaway: your case is worth what your real losses are worth — which is exactly why the medical and damages workup in step three matters so much.
If you remember one thing from this guide, make it this: Florida injury law runs on deadlines, and missing one usually ends the case no matter how strong it was. The 2023 law changes made several of these shorter and stricter. The most important ones:
These deadlines are not the only reason to act fast. Evidence is the other. Surveillance footage gets overwritten, skid marks wash away, and witnesses forget. The sooner a lawyer can preserve proof, the stronger your case will be — and that work cannot start until you call.
Not every injury needs a lawyer. If you had a minor fender-bender, you feel fine, and your own PIP covers the few visits you needed, you may be able to handle it yourself. But there are clear signals that you should at least get a free consultation before you sign or say anything:
The honest reason to hire a lawyer is leverage. An insurance adjuster does this for a living, every day, and the system is built to favor the side with more experience and more patience. A lawyer levels that. We deal with the adjusters, build the proof, value the claim correctly, and — because the other side knows we will try the case — we are far more likely to get you a fair number. And because the work is done on contingency, hiring us costs you nothing unless we recover for you.
Robert DiStefano has represented injured people in Broward County for more than 40 years. If you want to know where you stand, you can read about Robert here or simply call. The first conversation is free, and it is the fastest way to stop guessing about your rights.
This guide provides general information about Florida law and is not legal advice. Your specific situation requires a consultation.
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