Florida Medical Malpractice Lawyer
You went in to be made better and came out worse, and the answers have been vague ever since. We can take it from here. Call 954-522-5800 for a free consultation. You pay us nothing unless we win. We have won these claims for Floridians from the Keys to the Panhandle, and we work them from five offices between Fort Lauderdale and Fort Myers.
Under Fla. Stat. § 766.106, no medical negligence suit may be filed until 90 days after written notice reaches each prospective defendant. The limitations period is tolled during that window. Do not approach a medical claim on the same timetable as a car accident: the investigation has to happen before the clock stops.
Winning medical malpractice claims for Floridians for more than thirty years
A medical malpractice claim arrives at a hard time, usually while the bills are still coming in and nobody has told you what happens next. You do not have to work it out on your own. The attorneys in this photograph have won these cases across Florida since 1993, from the Keys to the Panhandle, and one of them will handle yours from the first call to the last check.
Call 954-522-5800 for a free consult and a trial lawyer will tell you today whether you have a case. You pay us nothing unless we win, and we work from five offices between Fort Lauderdale and Fort Myers.
Meet the attorneys →What Florida law does with a medical malpractice claim
The hospital put its own risk team on it early, and the records you need are held by the people you would be bringing a claim against. Meanwhile you are paying for the care that was supposed to fix the problem, and for the care it now takes to put it right. Finding out what actually happened is our job, and it starts the day you call.
Florida puts more procedure in front of a medical negligence claim than in front of any other injury case, and most of it happens before a lawsuit is ever filed. That process is why these cases take longer, cost more to bring and are turned down more often. Below is what it involves and what the law does with the case at the end of it.
A Florida medical malpractice claim generally must be filed within two years of when the injury was discovered, and no later than four years after it happened. Before suit, the law requires an investigation, a supporting opinion from a qualifying physician and a formal notice that gives the other side 90 days to respond.
The deadline that ends a Florida medical malpractice claim
The malpractice deadline is not the ordinary two years, and the difference has ended a great many claims that were otherwise good.
Two years from discovery, and four years at the outside
Fla. Stat. § 95.11 gives two years from the time the incident was discovered, or should have been discovered with due diligence, and then imposes an outer limit: in no event more than four years from the date of the incident itself. The second part is what catches people, because a surgical injury that only becomes clear in year five is out of time no matter how reasonable the delay was.
Where fraud, concealment or intentional misrepresentation prevented discovery, the period extends to two years from when the injury was discovered, capped at seven years from the incident. That is a high bar and it is argued rather than assumed.
Children are treated separately
Fla. Stat. § 95.11 provides that the four-year limit does not bar an action brought on behalf of a child on or before the child's eighth birthday. It is a real protection and it is narrower than it sounds, so a birth injury or a childhood surgical injury still gets looked at on a calendar rather than on an assumption.
The presuit process pauses the clock, and it is written into the statute
Under Fla. Stat. § 766.106 the limitations period is tolled when the notice of intent to initiate litigation is mailed, and stays tolled through the 90-day investigation period. Fla. Stat. § 766.104 adds a separate automatic 90-day extension, granted on petition to the clerk with a small fee and no court order required, to allow the investigation the law demands.
These are useful and they are not a substitute for starting early. Both exist to buy time for work that takes months, not to rescue a claim brought at the last minute.
A public hospital or a state-employed physician
Care given by a public hospital district, a state university medical faculty or a county health department runs through Fla. Stat. § 768.28 as well: written notice to the agency and, in most cases, to the Department of Financial Services, a 90-day response period on a malpractice or death claim, and caps of $200,000 per person and $300,000 per incident. Whether a provider is public is a question of who employed them, and it is not obvious from the sign on the building.
Who can be held answerable
A hospital admission involves a great many people employed by a great many different entities, and who employed whom decides the case more often than what went wrong does.
- The treating physician. The surgeon, the hospitalist, the radiologist who read the scan, the anesthesiologist. Each is frequently employed by a separate group rather than by the hospital, and each carries separate coverage.
- The physician group, rather than the hospital. Emergency departments, radiology, anesthesia and hospitalist services are commonly contracted out. The physician who treated you inside a hospital may not be the hospital’s employee at all, which is a fact established from the contracts rather than from the letterhead.
- The hospital, for its own staff and its own systems. Nursing, pharmacy, monitoring, infection control, staffing levels and whether it granted privileges to somebody it should not have. These are claims against the institution itself rather than against any individual, and they are proved from the institution’s own records.
- A nursing home or rehabilitation facility. Care after discharge is a large share of what goes wrong, and it runs on its own body of law. Those claims are on our Florida nursing home page.
- A public hospital district or state entity. Several of Florida's largest hospital systems are public bodies, which puts the claim under Fla. Stat. § 768.28 with its notice requirements and its caps. This changes the value of an identical case by an order of magnitude, and it is worked out first rather than late.
- A birth injury, which may go somewhere else entirely. Certain birth-related neurological injuries are directed into a state compensation program rather than a lawsuit. Whether a case falls inside it is a threshold question with its own rules, and it is covered on our Florida birth injury page.
How a Florida medical malpractice case actually runs
Nothing gets filed for months, and the reason is statutory rather than tactical. Florida requires the case to be substantially proved before it may be brought.
- The complete record is obtained first. Everything, from every provider, including nursing notes, medication administration records, imaging and the audit trail showing who accessed the chart and when. A summary is not a record, and the useful material is rarely in the discharge summary.
- A qualifying physician reviews it. Fla. Stat. § 766.104 requires the attorney to conduct a reasonable investigation giving rise to a good faith belief that there was negligence, and a written opinion from a physician is how that is normally established. This costs real money before a case exists, and it is why a firm that will not review a malpractice claim carefully will not take it at all.
- The reviewer has to be the right kind of physician. Fla. Stat. § 766.102 sets the standard as what a reasonably prudent similar provider would have done, and restricts who may give the opinion: for a specialist, somebody in the same specialty who has spent professional time in the three years before the incident in clinical practice, teaching or research in it. Where a provider treated a condition outside their own specialty, a specialist in that condition qualifies.
- A notice of intent is served. Under Fla. Stat. § 766.106 a notice of intent to initiate litigation goes to each prospective defendant, with the corroborating opinion, before any complaint may be filed. Serving it starts the tolling and starts the clock on the other side.
- The 90-day presuit investigation. The provider and its insurer investigate, with informal discovery running both ways: unsworn statements, documents, written questions. It is the one period in these cases where both sides are looking at the same material without a judge, and a meaningful number of claims resolve or are abandoned here.
- One of three answers comes back. At the end of the period the defendant must reject the claim, make a settlement offer, or offer to arbitrate on damages with liability admitted. The third is rarer than the statute suggests and it is a genuine decision when it arrives, because it trades the risk of losing entirely for a limit on what can be won.
- Suit, and then expert discovery. Filed after presuit ends. Malpractice discovery is heavier than any other injury case because both sides put up physicians, every one of them is deposed, and their qualifications are litigated in their own right.
- Mediation, a formal offer, and trial. Mediation is required by most Florida courts. Fla. Stat. § 768.79 lets either side serve a formal offer, with attorney fees running from a refused offer the judgment beats by at least 25 percent. Malpractice cases go to trial more often than other injury cases, because insurers defend physicians harder and because a physician’s consent is often needed to settle at all.
What the claim is worth, and how that number is built
Two rules make a malpractice case value differently from any other injury claim in Florida, and both work in the injured person’s favor more than people expect.
The caps in the statute are not enforced
Fla. Stat. § 766.118 still contains limits on noneconomic damages, and Florida courts do not apply them. The Florida Supreme Court held them unconstitutional under the state's equal protection clause: in Estate of McCall v. United States, 134 So. 3d 894 (Fla. 2014) for wrongful death, and in North Broward Hospital District v. Kalitan, 219 So. 3d 49 (Fla. 2017) for personal injury.
People read the statute, see a number and assume that is the ceiling on their claim. It is not, and the text remaining in the books is the reason the question keeps being asked.
The 50 percent bar does not apply here
Fla. Stat. § 768.81 bars recovery entirely by anybody found more than 50 percent at fault for their own harm, and the same section excludes medical negligence from that rule. Fault is still divided and still reduces an award, but a patient whose own conduct contributed heavily to a bad outcome is not shut out of the claim the way they would be in a crash case.
The medical care that follows the negligence
Everything billed and everything still ahead, which after a surgical injury or a missed diagnosis frequently means a lifetime of care. Where the injury is permanent this is costed by a professional working from the treating physicians and brought to present value by an economist.
Lost income and lost earning capacity
Wages missed, and separately the working life that has gone. This is proved with evidence rather than asserted, and where somebody was young and working it is regularly the largest single number in the case.
Pain, suffering and what the outcome cost
The loss with no invoice attached. In a malpractice case it carries additional weight because the harm arrived through care somebody sought out and trusted, and a jury understands that without being told.
What comes back out of it
Health insurance, Medicare and Medicaid are repaid from the recovery, with Fla. Stat. § 768.76 keeping those payments from being deducted from the award because the repayment right already exists. Those claims are negotiable and reducing them is a real part of what a client keeps.
What changes from one part of Florida to another
Two hospitals a mile apart in Florida can produce completely different claims from identical care, and the reason is who owns them.
Public hospital districts
Florida runs several large hospital systems as public bodies through special taxing districts. Care given at one is subject to Fla. Stat. § 768.28, which means presuit notice, a waiting period, no punitive damages and a cap of $200,000 per person and $300,000 per incident.
An identical surgical injury is therefore worth a fraction at one hospital of what it is worth at the private hospital down the road. Establishing which you were treated at, and who employed each physician who touched your care, is the first question rather than a detail.
Teaching hospitals and university faculty
Where residents and fellows are involved, the supervising physician and the university that employs them both come into the picture, and the university may itself be a state entity with the protections above. Who was actually in the room, and who was supposed to be, is answered from the chart and the call schedule.
Rural and small-market care
Fewer providers means a longer transfer, a smaller record and a real difficulty finding a qualifying reviewer who is not connected to the people involved. Cases from smaller markets take longer to work up for reasons that have nothing to do with their merit.
A proven record, anywhere in Florida
Our five offices run from Fort Lauderdale to Fort Myers, and malpractice work is not limited to the counties they sit in.
The insurance behind a Florida medical malpractice claim
What can be collected on a malpractice claim depends on arrangements the patient never sees, and Florida allows some of them that other states do not.
A Florida physician is not required to carry malpractice insurance
Fla. Stat. § 458.320 requires a physician to demonstrate financial responsibility, and insurance is only one of the ways to do it. The required amounts are modest: $100,000 per claim and $300,000 in the aggregate, rising to $250,000 and $750,000 for a physician with hospital staff privileges.
The same section lets some physicians go without coverage altogether, including experienced physicians working limited hours and those who agree to pay a judgment up to a set amount within 60 days. Both routes require the patient to be given notice, which is the sign in the waiting room almost nobody reads.
Hospitals frequently insure themselves
Large systems commonly carry their own retention or run a self-insurance trust, paying the first substantial slice of any claim from their own funds. The decision-maker is then an in-house risk department rather than a carrier, which changes how a claim is evaluated and when it moves.
Finding the whole tower of coverage
Fla. Stat. § 627.4137 requires disclosure of the limits of each known policy including excess and umbrella layers, in a sworn statement, within 30 days of a written request. On a malpractice claim there are usually several: the physician’s, the group’s and the facility’s, each with its own layers.
A public provider, and the cap
Fla. Stat. § 768.28 limits a public hospital or state-employed physician to $200,000 per person and $300,000 per incident regardless of the harm, with anything beyond requiring the Legislature to pass a claim bill. It is the most consequential fact in some of these cases and it is established at the very start.
What pays for treatment in the meantime
Nothing pays automatically. Health insurance covers the care needed to put right what went wrong, and it is repaid at the end out of any recovery. Delaying treatment while a claim is worked out helps nobody, and it hands the defense an argument about causation that is very hard to answer later.
Why these cases take longer than any other injury claim
The presuit process, in order
Before anything is filed, the records have to be gathered and reviewed by a qualified medical expert who is willing to corroborate that there are reasonable grounds for a claim. Only then does written notice of intent go out, and only then does the 90-day clock start. During that period the prospective defendant and its insurer conduct their own review, and informal discovery is available to both sides.
This front-loading is why competent firms turn down more medical cases than they take. The expert review costs real money before a single document is filed, and it is done honestly: if the expert says the care was within the standard, the case does not go forward.
A bad outcome is not the same as negligence
Medicine carries risk that no amount of care removes, and Florida law does not compensate a bad result on its own. The question is whether the care fell below the standard a reasonably prudent similar provider would have delivered, and whether that failure caused the harm. Those are two separate elements and both have to be proved.
One thing worth knowing: the modified comparative negligence bar introduced in 2023, which stops anyone more than 50 percent at fault from recovering, expressly does not apply to medical negligence claims under chapter 766.
Dental injuries run on this same track
People are surprised by this one. A dental injury in Florida is a medical malpractice claim rather than an ordinary negligence claim, because the malpractice statutes count a dentist as a health care provider. The presuit investigation, the corroborating written opinion and the 90 days notice all apply, and so does the shorter deadline that runs from discovery.
The dental cases we see most are nerve injuries after a lower wisdom tooth comes out, sedation given to a child, and periodontal disease that nobody flagged across years of routine visits. Those are set out on the dental malpractice page.
Who would handle your case
Your case is handled by one of the trial lawyers below, and you will know which of them has it from the first conversation. They do medical malpractice work week in and week out, they will tell you what your case is worth and why, and they will be straight with you about the parts that are hard.
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Richard P. Pravato Founding & Managing Attorney Board Certified in Civil Trial Law by The Florida Bar since 2004, and by the National Board of Trial Advocacy. Injury cases exclusively since 1996. Full profile → -
Brett J. Yonon Senior Trial Attorney Selected to Florida Super Lawyers in 2024 and 2025. Brett Yonon is who this firm puts on a catastrophic injury or a death in the family, and he has tried those cases to verdict. Full profile →
Medical Malpractice questions we are asked
How long do I have to bring a medical malpractice claim in Florida?
Medical negligence runs on its own limitations rules, separate from ordinary negligence, and the presuit notice period tolls them. Because the investigation and expert review have to be completed before notice can even be sent, the practical deadline is much earlier than the statutory one. Ask early rather than assuming you have years.
Do I need a medical expert before I can sue?
Yes. Chapter 766 requires a corroborating written opinion from a qualified medical expert that there are reasonable grounds to believe negligence occurred. That review happens at our expense during the presuit investigation, and if the expert does not support the claim, we tell you so.
The hospital asked me to sign something. Should I?
Not before someone reads it. Requests for records are routine and usually fine, but broad authorizations, arbitration agreements and anything resembling a release are not. Bring the document to us before signing; reading it costs you nothing.
Questions that apply to any Florida injury claim, fees, deadlines, recorded statements and shared fault, are answered on our injury claim FAQ. What we have recovered is on recent case results.
Five Florida offices
We take medical malpractice claims statewide. Each market below has its own page on this claim, with that office's address, its direct number and the court a case there is filed in.
Fort Lauderdale medical malpractice claims
2101 W Commercial Blvd, Fort Lauderdale. Serving Broward County.
View →Miami medical malpractice claims
1111 Brickell Avenue, Miami. Serving Miami-Dade County.
View →West Palm Beach medical malpractice claims
2101 Vista Parkway, West Palm Beach. Serving Palm Beach County.
View →Boynton Beach medical malpractice claims
1375 E Gateway Blvd, Boynton Beach. Serving Palm Beach County.
View →Fort Myers medical malpractice claims
1825 Colonial Blvd, Fort Myers. Serving Lee County.
View →Other claims we handle
Three of the closest to this one. The full list is on our Florida practice areas page.
Tell us what happened
A lawyer will listen, tell you what Florida law does with those facts, and be straight with you about whether it is worth bringing. If it is not, we will say so.
We take cases anywhere in Florida.