Florida Offer of Judgment: Requirements, Fee Shifting, and Defects

A Florida Offer of Judgment is a formal written settlement proposal that either side in a civil lawsuit can serve on the other, and it carries a built-in penalty: reject it, then come out at least 25 percent worse at trial, and you pay the other side’s attorney fees and costs dating back to when the offer was served. Florida law calls this a Proposal for Settlement. It is governed by Florida Statute § 768.79, which creates the fee-shifting right, and Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.442, which dictates the format.¹

The mechanism applies in any civil action for damages filed in Florida courts. The statute does not limit itself to personal injury or any other claim type, so the tool shows up in car accident cases, commercial disputes, and most other money-damage lawsuits. The point is to force honest case evaluation. Accept and end the case, or reject and gamble that the verdict will justify walking away.

What a Valid Proposal Must Contain

Florida courts are strict about format. A proposal that misses a required element is unenforceable, and the offering party loses any right to fees no matter how unreasonable the rejection looked in hindsight. A valid written proposal must:

State that it is made under Florida Statute § 768.79 and Rule 1.442.
Identify who is making the proposal and who it is directed to.
State a specific total dollar amount, not a range or a formula.
If the case includes a punitive damages claim, separately state the amount allocated to that claim.¹
State whether the amount includes attorney fees and whether fees are part of the underlying legal claim.
Avoid non-monetary conditions. The only non-monetary term allowed is voluntary dismissal of all claims with prejudice. Confidentiality clauses, broader releases, and side agreements are not permitted.
Include a certificate of service.

When a case involves multiple plaintiffs or defendants, a joint proposal must break down the amount and terms for each party separately. Without that breakdown, the court cannot run the 25 percent comparison party by party, and the whole proposal fails. One narrow exception: a party whose liability is purely vicarious or derivative (an employer liable only because of an employee’s acts, for example) does not need a separate allocation.

When It Can Be Served and How Long You Have to Respond

The window opens 90 days into the case. A proposal aimed at a plaintiff cannot be served until at least 90 days after the lawsuit was filed. A proposal aimed at a defendant cannot be served until at least 90 days after that defendant was served with the complaint. The window closes 45 days before the trial date or the first day of the trial docket, whichever comes first.

Multiple offers are allowed. Nothing in the rule stops a party from making a new proposal as discovery develops or the trial date approaches, and it is common to see offers adjusted over the life of a case.¹

The recipient has 30 days to deliver a written acceptance. If none arrives within that period, the offer is deemed rejected automatically. No formal rejection is required; silence is enough. The offering party can withdraw the proposal at any time before a written acceptance arrives, as long as the withdrawal is in writing and reaches the other side first. A withdrawn offer carries no fee-shifting consequences.¹

A rejected or ignored offer cannot be used as evidence at trial. It only comes back out of the file if a party later moves to enforce the fee-shifting penalty.

What Acceptance Looks Like

Acceptance ends the dispute between the involved parties. The accepting party files the written acceptance along with the original proposal, and the court then has jurisdiction to enter judgment on the agreed terms. The proposal itself is not filed with the court unless it is accepted or a party later needs to enforce the fee-shifting provisions.

Fee-Shifting After Rejection

Fee-shifting is the whole point of the statute, and how it works depends on which side served the offer.

When a Defendant’s Offer Is Rejected

If a defendant serves an offer and the plaintiff rejects it, the defendant recovers attorney fees and costs from the date of service if either the plaintiff takes nothing at trial or the plaintiff’s judgment comes in at least 25 percent below the offer amount. If the defendant offered $100,000 and the jury awarded the plaintiff $74,000, the threshold is crossed because $74,000 is more than 25 percent less than $100,000.¹

The result can be severe. The court offsets the defendant’s fees and costs against the plaintiff’s award. If the fees exceed the award, the court enters a net judgment in favor of the defendant. A plaintiff who technically won at trial can end up owing the defendant money.

When a Plaintiff’s Demand Is Rejected

If a plaintiff serves a demand for judgment and the defendant rejects it, the plaintiff recovers post-offer attorney fees and costs when the final judgment exceeds the demand by at least 25 percent. A plaintiff who demanded $100,000 and received a $125,000 verdict triggers fee-shifting against the defendant for everything spent after the demand was served.¹

Only post-offer expenses are recoverable. And the offering party must file a motion within 30 days after entry of judgment to claim the fees. Miss that deadline and the right to fee-shifting is gone regardless of how badly the other side misjudged the offer.

Court Discretion and the Good-Faith Factors

Fee-shifting is not fully automatic. Even when the 25 percent threshold is met, the court retains discretion to reduce or deny the award if the offer was not made in good faith. A nominal offer of $100 in a case clearly worth six figures, for example, may be found to lack good faith even if the format is technically correct.¹

In sizing a reasonable fee award, the statute directs the court to weigh several factors:

The apparent merit of the claim at the time the offer was made.
The number and nature of offers exchanged.
The closeness of the legal and factual issues; genuinely debatable cases get more leeway.
Whether the offering party unreasonably withheld information the other side needed to evaluate the offer.
Whether the lawsuit was a test case raising questions beyond the parties.
How much additional delay and expense the offering party reasonably expected if the case continued.¹

An offer designed only as a fee trap, rather than a real settlement attempt, can be disallowed even when the trial math satisfies the statute.

Defects That Have Killed Proposals

Florida appellate courts have thrown out proposals on technical grounds many times, and a few errors recur.

The most common is the unallocated joint offer. A proposal directed at multiple plaintiffs or defendants without a party-by-party breakdown is unenforceable because the court cannot measure whether any individual party ended up 25 percent worse off than the offer.

Ambiguous or conditional terms also fail. An offer that requires the recipient to sign a general release extending beyond the lawsuit’s claims, or one that conditions acceptance on proof of ability to pay, introduces uncertainty the rule does not allow. Offers phrased as “exclusive” of interest, costs, or fees have been struck down as impermissibly vague because the recipient cannot determine the actual total value.

Precision matters more here than almost anywhere else in litigation. A proposal that is off by one required element does not simply weaken a later fee motion. It eliminates it.

If Your Case Is in Federal Court

Florida’s statute governs state court. In federal court, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 68 applies, and it works differently in several ways: only defending parties can serve an offer, the recipient has 14 days to accept rather than 30, and the rule shifts only costs rather than attorney fees unless the underlying statute treats fees as costs. There is also no 25 percent buffer; any judgment “not more favorable” than the offer triggers the penalty.² State-law claims brought in federal court through diversity jurisdiction can sometimes still bring in Florida’s fee-shifting statute, and that interaction is worth running past an attorney who handles both.

Why Insurance Changes the Calculation

When an insurance company is defending the case, a Proposal for Settlement creates particular pressure. If a plaintiff serves a reasonable proposal within policy limits and the insurer refuses, a verdict exceeding those limits can expose the insurer to a bad-faith claim by its own policyholder. The statute itself anticipates insurance-funded defenses: it allows a defendant to recover fees incurred “on the defendant’s behalf pursuant to a policy of liability insurance or other contract.”¹

A plaintiff’s well-crafted proposal can do two things at once. It puts direct fee-shifting pressure on the defendant, and it builds the foundation for a separate bad-faith claim against the insurer if the offer is unreasonably refused and the eventual judgment exceeds coverage.

1
The 2025 Florida Statutes. Florida Statutes 768.79 – Offer of Judgment and Demand for Judgment
2
Legal Information Institute. Rule 68 – Offer of Judgment