Florida Civil Suit Statute of Limitations: Deadlines, Repose, and Tolling

The Florida civil suit statute of limitations ranges from two to five years for most claims, with the exact deadline turning on what kind of case you have. Negligence and personal injury cases now carry a two-year deadline after a major 2023 change. Written contracts give you five years. Several specific categories, from defamation to wage claims to construction defects, have their own rules. Missing the deadline almost always ends the case, so the first task is matching your situation to the right clock.

Deadlines by Type of Claim

For injuries caused by someone’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 negligence scenarios.¹ The change came through House Bill 837, which cut the old four-year window in half.² If your injury happened before March 24, 2023, the previous four-year deadline still applies. The dividing line is the date of the injury, not the date you decide to file.

Contract disputes split by format. A written contract gives you five years from the breach; an oral contract gives you four. Property insurance contracts work differently: the five-year clock runs from the date of loss rather than the date of breach, which matters when an insurer denies a hurricane claim months after the storm.¹

Damage to personal property, such as a vehicle or belongings, falls under a four-year deadline, as does trespass on real property.¹ A single incident can split into two different clocks. If a negligent driver totals your car, the property damage claim runs four years while the negligence claim for your injuries runs two.

Other common categories carved out in the statute:

Anything the statute doesn’t name specifically defaults to a four-year catch-all.¹

Medical Malpractice

Medical malpractice stacks several deadlines on each other. The baseline is two years from the date the malpractice occurred, or two years from the date you discovered the injury (or reasonably should have), whichever is later.¹ The discovery piece exists because some surgical errors produce no symptoms for months or years.

Behind that is an absolute outer boundary. No matter when discovery happens, you cannot file more than four years after the incident. Fraud or intentional concealment by the provider extends that outer boundary to seven years. For children, the repose periods do not block a lawsuit filed before the child’s eighth birthday.¹

Before you can file, Florida requires a pre-suit notice of intent sent to each prospective defendant. Delivering that notice pauses the statute of limitations during a 90-day investigation window, so the clock stops rather than running against you while the defendant looks into the claim.³

Construction Defects and the Statute of Repose

Construction defect claims operate under a different kind of clock. A statute of limitations counts from when you discover the injury; a statute of repose counts from the defendant’s last act and shuts the door after a fixed number of years no matter what.

You have four years from the certificate of occupancy or certificate of completion to sue over a construction defect. If the defect is latent (hidden and not discoverable through reasonable inspection), the four years run from when the defect is or should have been discovered. Even latent-defect claims hit a hard wall at seven years after the certificate was issued.¹ A structural problem that first shows up eight years after completion is simply too late, even if no one could have found it sooner.

Suing a Government Entity

Claims against a Florida state agency, city, or county require pre-suit steps that trip up unprepared plaintiffs. Before filing in court, you must submit a written claim to the agency involved, and for state-level claims, also to the Department of Financial Services. That written notice must be filed within three years of the date the claim accrues, or within two years for wrongful death.⁴

Once the agency either denies the claim in writing or goes six months without responding (which counts as a denial), you can file. The lawsuit itself must be filed within four years of the date the claim accrued. Wrongful death and medical malpractice claims against the government follow the shorter deadlines in Section 95.11 instead.⁴ Skipping the written notice is fatal. Courts treat it as a precondition to being allowed in court at all.

When the Clock Pauses

Several situations stop the statute of limitations from running:

If the defendant leaves Florida, the clock pauses until they return.⁵
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, suit must be started within seven years of the event. Medical malpractice is excluded from this tolling and follows its own rules.⁵
Under the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, time spent on active duty doesn’t count toward any state statute of limitations, whether the servicemember is the plaintiff or the defendant.⁶
When a defendant actively conceals facts that would alert you to a claim, the limitations period may be delayed until those facts come to light. This usually arises in professional malpractice and breach-of-fiduciary-duty cases.

Tolling pauses the countdown; it does not restart it. If you had 18 months left when the defendant left the state, you have 18 months from their return to file.

A related doctrine, 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. Once you have enough information to suspect something went wrong, the two-year clock begins.

What Happens If You Miss the Deadline

After the statute of limitations expires, the defendant can move to dismiss, and the court will grant that motion. The strength of your evidence and the clarity of the defendant’s fault stop mattering once the deadline has passed.

The damage reaches beyond the courtroom. An expired deadline eliminates leverage in settlement talks. A defendant who knows the case will be thrown out has no reason to pay anything. Insurance adjusters track these dates and disengage the moment the window closes. The most common way valid claims die in Florida is by sitting on them, often because the claimant assumed the insurance process 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