Florida Statutes of Limitations: Deadlines, Repose, and Tolling

Florida’s statutes of limitations set how long you have to file a civil lawsuit, and most run between two and five years from the date the harm occurred or the contract was breached. A few narrow claims must be filed within one year, and enforcing a judgment from a Florida court of record stretches out to twenty. Miss the deadline that applies to your claim and, with rare exceptions, you lose the right to sue permanently.

Common Civil Deadlines at a Glance

Written contract: 5 years
Oral contract: 4 years
Property insurance contract: 5 years from the date of loss
General negligence (car accidents, slip-and-fall, most personal injury): 2 years for injuries on or after March 24, 2023
Wrongful death: 2 years from the date of death
Medical malpractice: 2 years, with a 4-year outer limit (7 years if the provider concealed the injury)
Product liability: 4 years from discovery, with a 12-year outer limit for most products
Fraud: 4 years from discovery, with a 12-year outer limit
Intentional torts (assault, battery, false arrest, false imprisonment, malicious prosecution): 4 years
Defamation (libel or slander): 2 years
Trespass on real property: 4 years
Mortgage foreclosure: 5 years, with each missed payment starting its own clock
Construction defects: 4 years, with a 7-year outer limit
Specific performance: 1 year
Mortgage deficiency on a residential property of one to four units: 1 year
Sale of goods: 4 years
Medical debt referred to a third-party collector: 3 years from the referral date
Government tort claims: 3-year pre-suit written notice, 4-year filing deadline
Enforcing a Florida court of record’s judgment: 20 years
Enforcing an out-of-state or federal judgment in Florida: 5 years

The full list of civil limitations periods sits in Florida Statutes Section 95.11.¹

When the Clock Starts

The default rule is that the limitations period begins when the last element of the legal claim falls into place, which Florida law calls the time the cause of action accrues.² For a breach of contract, that is the date of the breach. For a car accident, that is the date of the collision. For wrongful death, it is the date of death rather than the date of the underlying injury.¹

Property insurance disputes are a common surprise: the five-year deadline runs from the date of the loss, not from the date the insurer denies the claim.¹ Time spent in claim negotiations does not extend the window.

Discovery Rules for Hidden Injuries

Florida shifts the starting point for claims where the harm is not immediately obvious.

Fraud claims run from the date you discovered, or should have discovered with reasonable diligence, the facts underlying the claim.²
Product liability claims run from the date you discovered or should have discovered the injury and its connection to the product.²
Medical malpractice claims run from the date of the incident or the date the injury was discovered, whichever is later.¹
Construction defect claims run from the latest of several trigger events (the owner taking possession, the certificate of occupancy, or the end of the contract with the architect, engineer, or contractor) or from the date a hidden defect is discovered.¹

The Hard Outer Limits: Statutes of Repose

Each discovery-based deadline is paired with an absolute cutoff called a statute of repose. Once that period runs, the right to sue is gone regardless of when the injury surfaced.

For medical malpractice, the outer limit is four years after the incident, or seven years if the provider concealed the injury through fraud or intentional misrepresentation. Children get one carve-out: a claim on behalf of a minor can be filed on or before the child’s eighth birthday even if that pushes past the four- or seven-year repose.¹ If the child was six at the time of the injury, though, the eighth-birthday rule can actually shorten the window compared to the standard two years.

For fraud and constructive fraud, the outer limit is twelve years from the date the fraud was committed, no matter when it came to light.²

For product liability, the statute presumes an expected useful life of ten years or less for most products and imposes a twelve-year cap measured from first delivery to a purchaser or lessee.²

For construction defects, the outer limit is seven years, measured from the same trigger events that start the four-year deadline.¹

The 2023 Change to Negligence Claims

Florida’s tort reform law, HB 837, cut the general negligence deadline from four years to two. It took effect on March 24, 2023, and applies to any injury on or after that date.¹ Car accidents, slip-and-fall injuries, and most other standard personal injury claims fall inside this two-year window. If your injury occurred before March 24, 2023, the old four-year period still governs.

What Can Pause the Clock

Once the limitations period starts running, only a short list of events can pause it. Florida’s tolling statute recognizes:³

The defendant’s absence from Florida, unless you can still reach them through another legally sufficient method such as service by publication.
The defendant using a false identity or hiding within Florida to avoid service.
The plaintiff having been adjudicated incapacitated before the claim arose. Even with tolling, the suit must be filed within seven years of the event.
The injured person being a minor with no parent, guardian, or guardian ad litem, or with a guardian whose interests conflict. The seven-year outer limit still applies, and this tolling does not extend medical malpractice deadlines.
Pending arbitration of the dispute.

Florida courts hold the list strictly. No disability or reason beyond what the statute names will pause the clock.³

Bankruptcy is the other common pause. When a defendant files for bankruptcy, the automatic stay blocks lawsuits. Federal law then gives you the longer of the original expiration date or thirty days after the stay is lifted.³

Suing a Government Agency Adds a Step

Claims against a Florida government agency or employee require a written pre-suit notice. You must submit that notice to the agency involved, and for state-level claims also to the Department of Financial Services, within three years after the claim accrues (two years for wrongful death).⁴ Skipping the notice gets your case dismissed even if you file the lawsuit itself on time.

After the agency denies the claim in writing, you can sue. The overall deadline to file suit is four years from the date the claim accrued.⁴ Medical malpractice and wrongful death claims against government entities follow the specific deadlines in Section 95.11, not this general four-year rule.

Enforcing a Judgment

Once you win a civil judgment in a Florida court, it acts as a lien on the losing party’s property for twenty years.⁵ Enforcement of an out-of-state or federal judgment in Florida is a different matter and must be brought within five years.¹

Because the same set of facts can support more than one type of claim, and each type carries its own deadline, the safest move once you know you have been harmed is to identify every possible claim early and calendar the shortest one. Waiting to see how a dispute develops rarely buys time; more often it burns it.

1
Online Sunshine. Florida Code 95.11 – Limitations Other Than for the Recovery of Real Property
2
Online Sunshine. Florida Code 95.031 – Computation of Time
3
Online Sunshine. Florida Code 95.051 – When Limitations Tolled
4
Justia Law. Florida Statutes 768.28 – Waiver of Sovereign Immunity in Tort Actions
5
Florida Senate. Florida Code 55.081 – Statute of Limitations, Lien of Judgment