Florida Civil Suit Statute of Limitations: Deadlines and Tolling

The Florida civil suit statute of limitations runs anywhere from two to five years, depending on what kind of claim you’re bringing. The biggest recent change came in March 2023, when the legislature cut the deadline for general negligence cases from four years down to two. Miss your deadline and you almost always lose the right to sue at all, so figuring out which window applies to your situation is the first thing to nail down.

Personal Injury and Negligence Claims

If you were hurt by someone else’s carelessness on or after March 24, 2023, you have two years from the date of the injury to file suit. That covers car accidents, slip-and-fall injuries, and most other situations where negligence caused physical harm.¹ This is one of the shortest personal injury deadlines in the country, and it catches people off guard because Florida used the more common four-year rule for decades before the change.

The shift came through House Bill 837, effective March 24, 2023.² For injuries before that date, the old four-year deadline still applies. The dividing line is when you were hurt, not when you decide to file. Two years sounds like plenty of time until you account for medical treatment, insurance negotiations, and the reality that most people don’t call a lawyer the week they get injured.

Contract Disputes

The deadline depends on whether the agreement was in writing. Written contracts carry a five-year statute of limitations. Oral contracts get four years.¹ The clock starts when the breach occurs, not when the contract was signed.

Property insurance disputes are a notable exception. Even though they involve written agreements, a breach-of-insurance-contract claim carries a separate five-year deadline that runs from the date of the loss, not the date of the breach.¹ That distinction matters when an insurer denies a hurricane claim months after the storm.

Medical Malpractice

Medical malpractice stacks multiple deadlines on top of each other. The basic rule is two years from the date the malpractice occurred, or two years from the date you discovered the injury (or reasonably should have discovered it), whichever comes later.¹ The discovery rule helps patients who couldn’t have known right away that something went wrong.

There’s still an outer wall. No matter when you discover the injury, you cannot file more than four years after the incident. If the provider used fraud or intentional concealment to hide the injury, that outer boundary stretches to seven years. For children, these repose periods don’t prevent a lawsuit filed before the child’s eighth birthday.¹

Florida also requires a pre-suit process before you can file. You must send written notice of intent to sue to each prospective defendant, and once that notice is delivered, neither side can file or proceed for 90 days while the defendant investigates.³ Mailing the pre-suit notice tolls the statute of limitations during that 90-day window, so the clock pauses rather than running against you.

Property Damage

Claims for damage to personal property (a vehicle, personal belongings) must be filed within four years. The same four-year deadline applies to trespass claims involving real property.¹ If someone’s negligence caused the property damage, the negligence component now falls under the two-year window. A car crash that totals your vehicle is both a property damage claim and a negligence claim, and those deadlines can diverge.

Other Specific Claim Types

Several other civil claims have their own deadlines carved into the statute:¹

Wrongful death: two years from the date of death.
Defamation (libel and slander): two years from the date of the statement.
Fraud: four years, typically running from when the fraud was or should have been discovered.
Wage and overtime claims: two years from the underpayment.
Medical debt collection by a licensed facility: three years from the date the facility refers the debt to a third-party collector.

Any civil action not specifically listed falls into a four-year catch-all.

Construction Defects and the Statute of Repose

A statute of repose works differently from a statute of limitations. A limitations period counts from when the injury happens or is discovered. A repose period sets a hard cutoff measured from the defendant’s last act, regardless of when you find out. Once repose expires, your claim is dead even if the defect hasn’t shown up yet.

For construction defects, Florida gives you four years from the date the project received its certificate of occupancy or certificate of completion. If the defect is latent (hidden and not findable through reasonable inspection), the clock starts when the defect is discovered or should have been discovered. Even latent-defect claims hit an absolute wall at seven years after the certificate was issued.¹ A structural problem that surfaces eight years after completion is too late to pursue, even if nobody could have detected it sooner.

Claims Against Florida Government Entities

Suing a state agency, city, county, or other government body involves extra steps that trip up even experienced litigators. Before filing suit, you have to submit a written claim to the agency, and for state-level claims also send a copy to the Department of Financial Services. That written notice must go in within three years of when the claim accrues.⁴ For wrongful death against the government, the written notice deadline shrinks to two years.

Once the agency denies the claim in writing, or sits on it for six months without responding (which counts as a denial), you can go to court. The lawsuit itself must be filed within four years of when the claim accrued. Wrongful death and medical malpractice claims against government entities follow the shorter deadlines in Section 95.11 instead.⁴ Skipping the written notice requirement is fatal. Courts treat it as a condition you have to satisfy before you’re allowed to sue at all.

When the Clock Pauses

Florida law recognizes several situations where the statute of limitations stops running temporarily:

Defendant absent from the state. If the person you need to sue leaves Florida, the clock pauses until they return.⁵
Minors and incapacitated persons. The limitations period is tolled when the person entitled to sue is a minor or has been adjudicated incapacitated, but only if no parent, guardian, or guardian ad litem exists, or the guardian has a conflict of interest. Even with tolling, the lawsuit must be started within seven years of the event. Medical malpractice claims are excluded and follow their own rules.⁵
Active-duty military service. Under the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, time on active duty doesn’t count toward any state statute of limitations, both for claims by and against the servicemember.⁶
Fraudulent concealment. When a defendant actively hides facts that would alert you to your claim, the limitations period may be delayed until those facts come to light. This shows up most in professional malpractice and breach-of-fiduciary-duty cases.

Tolling doesn’t hand you unlimited time. It pauses the countdown, and the remaining time resumes once the tolling condition ends. If you had 18 months left on a two-year deadline when the defendant left Florida, you’d have 18 months from their return.

The Discovery Rule

Some injuries aren’t obvious when they happen. The discovery rule delays the start of the limitations period until you knew or reasonably should have known about the injury. Florida applies it most prominently to medical malpractice, where a surgical error might not produce symptoms for months or years. The rule isn’t a license to wait indefinitely after learning about the problem. Once you have enough information to suspect something went wrong, the clock starts ticking.

Equitable Tolling

Courts occasionally grant equitable tolling when a plaintiff exercised genuine diligence but extraordinary circumstances prevented a timely filing. Florida courts apply this sparingly. The question is whether the plaintiff did everything a reasonable person would do and still couldn’t make the deadline. Being unaware of the deadline, or choosing to wait, doesn’t qualify.

What Happens If You Miss the Deadline

Once the statute of limitations expires, the defendant can ask the court to dismiss the case, and the court will grant it. This is one of the most straightforward defenses in civil litigation. It doesn’t matter how strong your evidence is or how obvious the defendant’s fault.

The consequences reach past the courtroom. An expired deadline destroys your leverage in settlement talks. A defendant who knows the case will be dismissed has no reason to offer anything, and insurance adjusters track these dates carefully and stop engaging once the window closes. The most common way people forfeit valid claims in Florida is by waiting too long, often because they assumed negotiations with the insurance company would resolve things without a lawsuit.

1
Official Internet Site of the Florida Legislature. Florida Statutes 95.11 – Limitations Other Than for the Recovery of Real Property
2
Florida Senate. House Bill 837 (2023)
3
Official Internet Site of the Florida Legislature. Florida Statutes 766.106 – Notice Before Filing Action for Medical Negligence
4
Official Internet Site of the Florida Legislature. Florida Statutes 768.28 – Waiver of Sovereign Immunity in Tort Actions
5
Florida Senate. Florida Code 95.051 – When Limitations Tolled
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 50 USC 3936 – Statute of Limitations