Notice of Claim in Florida: Recipients, Deadlines, and Waiting Period

A notice of claim in Florida is the written pre-suit notice you must give to a government entity before you can sue it for injury or property damage under Section 768.28. You send it to the agency involved (and, for state agencies, to the Florida Department of Financial Services) within three years of the incident, then wait while the agency investigates. Skip this step and your lawsuit gets dismissed no matter how strong the underlying facts are.

Who Must Receive the Notice

Your written notice goes to the government agency involved in the incident. For claims against state agencies, you must also send it to the Florida Department of Financial Services, Division of Risk Management.¹ DFS accepts tort claims by mail at:

Florida Department of Financial Services
Division of Risk Management
200 E. Gaines Street
Tallahassee, Florida 32399-0338²

Local governments work differently. If your claim is against a municipality, county, or the Florida Space Authority, you do not need to send notice to DFS. You only notify the local entity itself.¹ This distinction trips up claimants regularly. If you are suing a state university hospital and send notice only to the hospital, you have not satisfied the requirement.

The statute does not mandate a specific delivery method. Certified mail with return receipt requested, or another trackable option, is the safer choice. If the agency later disputes receipt, you will want proof.

What the Notice Should Say

Florida does not require a specific form. According to DFS, a narrative letter describing the facts and nature of your claims is usually sufficient, though DFS provides optional forms on its website.²

As a practical matter, your notice should cover:

Your full name and contact information
The date, time, and location of the incident
What happened and how the government entity was at fault
The nature and extent of your injuries or damages
The amount of compensation you are seeking, if you can quantify it

The statute also requires claimants to provide a date and place of birth, a Social Security number (or federal ID number for non-individuals), and a disclosure of any unpaid adjudicated fines, fees, penalties, or judgments over $200 owed to the state or its subdivisions. If you have no such unpaid obligations, you must say so affirmatively.¹ The state can offset what it owes you against what you owe it, which is why the disclosure exists. You do not have to provide this information at the initial filing stage; the statute requires it before settlement payment, the close of discovery, or the start of trial, whichever comes first.³

Deadlines for Filing the Notice

You must file the written notice within three years after the claim accrues. Wrongful death claims carry a shorter deadline of two years.¹ Contribution claims between tortfeasors have an even tighter six-month window tied to when the judgment becomes final or the common liability is discharged.³

The notice deadline is not the same as the statute of limitations for filing suit. Section 768.28(14) gives you four years from accrual to file the lawsuit itself, with medical malpractice and wrongful death following the limitation periods in Section 95.11.¹ That four-year window is longer than Florida’s general two-year negligence period because Section 768.28(14) sets its own timeline for government tort claims.⁴

The trap: you have four years to sue, but only three to file notice (two for wrongful death). Waiting until year three and a half to send notice means you missed the notice deadline, and the remaining time on the litigation clock will not save you.

The Waiting Period Before You Can Sue

After you file the notice, you cannot immediately head to court. The agency gets time to investigate. For most claims, that period is six months. Medical malpractice and wrongful death claims have a shorter 90-day period. If the agency does not respond within the applicable window, the statute treats the silence as a denial and you can file suit.¹

If the agency issues a written denial before the waiting period ends, you can file suit right away without waiting out the full six months or 90 days.⁵ For medical malpractice and wrongful death claims, the statute tolls the litigation deadline during the investigation, so the waiting time does not eat into your filing window.¹

The agency may investigate, request documentation, or open settlement talks during this period. Many claims resolve here, which is the point of the requirement. If a settlement offer comes in, weigh it against the damage caps that would apply even if you won at trial.

Damage Caps and Claims Bills

Even a strong case has a ceiling. The state will not pay more than $200,000 per claimant, or $300,000 total per incident when multiple people are harmed by the same event. Punitive damages are not available.¹

A court can enter judgment above those amounts, but the government pays only up to the cap without further authorization. To collect anything above $200,000 (or $300,000 for the incident total), you have to petition the Florida Legislature for a claims bill. Under the statute, the excess portion “may be reported to the Legislature, but may be paid in part or in whole only by further act of the Legislature.”³ Claims bills are difficult to pass and can take years. The Legislature is not obligated to approve them, and many never make it through.

The government can settle within the limits of any insurance coverage it holds without Legislative approval. Doing so does not waive sovereign immunity or raise the caps.¹

What Happens If You Skip the Notice

Your lawsuit gets dismissed. Florida courts have been consistent on this. In Menendez v. North Broward Hospital District, the Florida Supreme Court held that notice to DFS was so essential that the hospital district could not waive the requirement through its own conduct during mediation and settlement negotiations. Failure to comply was fatal to the action.⁶

The court, citing Levine v. Dade County School Board, also emphasized that the notice provision “is part of the statutory waiver of sovereign immunity” and “must be strictly construed.” There is no substantial compliance standard. You either notified the required parties within the deadline or you did not. Courts will not excuse the failure because you tried to negotiate informally, because the agency already knew about the incident, or because the omission was an honest mistake.

When the Deadline Can Be Extended

Federal law protects servicemembers here. Under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, the period of active military service cannot be counted when calculating any deadline for bringing an action in court or before a government agency.⁷ Courts have applied this tolling to state-level notice-of-claim requirements, not only traditional statutes of limitations. A servicemember does not need to prove that military service actually prevented them from filing; the U.S. Supreme Court has called the protection “unambiguous, unequivocal, and unlimited.”

Time spent on active duty during any part of the three-year notice window gets excluded from the calculation, effectively extending your deadline. This applies whether you were deployed overseas or stationed domestically.

Federal Agencies Follow a Different Track

If the entity that caused your injury is a federal agency rather than a Florida state or local government, Section 768.28 does not apply. You follow the Federal Tort Claims Act instead. Under the FTCA, you file with the specific federal agency using Standard Form 95, include a “sum certain” dollar amount, and must present the claim within two years of accrual rather than three.⁸ Confirm which sovereign you are dealing with before you draft anything, because the wrong statute produces the wrong result.

1
Justia Law. Florida Code 768.28 – Waiver of Sovereign Immunity in Tort Actions
2
Florida Department of Financial Services. Claims Process
3
Florida Senate. Florida Code 768.28 – Waiver of Sovereign Immunity in Tort Actions
4
Florida Senate. Florida Code 95.11 – Limitations Other Than for the Recovery of Real Property
5
Florida Senate. Florida Code 768.28 – Waiver of Sovereign Immunity in Tort Actions
6
Justia Law. Menendez v North Broward Hosp Dist
7
U.S. Government Publishing Office. 50 USC 3936 – Statute of Limitations
8
Department of Justice. Documents and Forms