The rulebook

Florida reduced the deadline for most negligence claims from 4 years to 2 years in 2023. Some exceptions are shorter.

14 days. Florida no-fault requires initial medical treatment within 14 days of a car crash. Miss the window and your own PIP benefits can be lost entirely.

In a wrongful death case, only the personal representative of the estate can file. Until one is appointed, nobody is running the family's claim.

A claim against a city, county or state agency requires written notice before suit, on its own clock, with caps on what can be recovered.

Surveillance systems can overwrite footage within days or weeks. A preservation letter should go out before a lawsuit is filed.

PIP tops out at $10,000, pays 80% of medical bills inside that, and can drop to $2,500 without an emergency medical condition finding.

Florida does not require most drivers to carry bodily injury liability coverage. The person who hit you may have nothing behind them at all.

Uninsured motorist coverage is the claim people forget they bought. It is your own policy standing in for the driver who carried nothing.

A rideshare with a passenger or an accepted trip can put the platform's $1 million policy in play. The same driver between trips is on far less.

Fault is assigned by percentage. At more than 50% your fault, recovery in most negligence cases is zero.

A fall on a wet floor requires proof the business knew or should have known it was there. Florida wrote that into statute. Time and regularity are how it gets proven.

You owe the other driver's insurance company no recorded statement. Your own policy has cooperation duties. Different phone calls, different rules.

A gap in treatment becomes the defense's best exhibit. The argument writes itself: if it hurt, you would have gone.

A product case needs the product, unaltered. Once the vehicle is salvaged or the machine is repaired, the best evidence in the case has been destroyed.

Negligent security turns on foreseeability: what the property owner knew about that address before the night it happened. Prior incidents, prior calls, prior warnings.