Time Limits for Filing Claims in Florida: Injury, Property, Contract

Time limits for filing claims in Florida now run mostly between one and two years, though a handful of claim types still carry four-, five-, or seven-year windows. Property insurance claims must be reported within one year of the loss. Negligence and personal injury lawsuits must be filed within two years. Medical malpractice carries a two-year limit with a four-year hard cap. Written contract disputes get five years. Miss any of these deadlines and you almost always lose the right to recover, no matter how strong the underlying case.

Property Insurance Claims: One Year

Florida’s property insurance notice deadlines are among the shortest in the country. Under Section 627.70132, you must give your insurer written notice of a new or reopened claim within one year after the date of loss. For supplemental claims, where you find additional damage after the insurer has already adjusted the original claim, the deadline is 18 months from the date of loss.¹

These deadlines apply to every peril: hurricanes, fires, water damage, theft, all of it. The clock starts on the date of loss, not the date you noticed the damage. A slow roof leak from a hurricane that goes undetected for 14 months is already past the deadline even though you just found it.

Your policy may also require a sworn proof-of-loss form within a set number of days after the insurer requests one. That internal deadline varies by policy. Missing it can give the insurer grounds to deny the claim even if you reported the loss on time.

Negligence and Personal Injury: Two Years

If you are hurt because of someone else’s negligence, whether a car crash, a slip-and-fall, or a dog bite, you have two years from the date of the incident to file suit. That two-year window comes from Section 95.11(5)(a), shortened from four years by House Bill 837 in 2023.²

Two years sounds like plenty of time until you account for what has to happen first: reaching medical stability so a doctor can assess permanent injuries, gathering records, and negotiating with the at-fault party’s insurer. Many people burn through 18 months on treatment and settlement talks before realizing they need to file suit.

Which Version of the Law Applies

The two-year deadline applies to causes of action that accrued on or after March 24, 2023, the effective date of HB 837. If you were injured before that date, the prior four-year statute of limitations still governs your claim.³ If you are dealing with an injury from 2022 or early 2023, confirm which version of the law applies to your accrual date before assuming the shorter window has closed you out.

Medical Malpractice: Two Years, Capped at Four

Medical malpractice claims follow a layered structure. You have two years from the date the malpractice occurred, or two years from when you discovered (or should have discovered) the injury, whichever is later. A four-year statute of repose caps that extension: no matter when you discover the harm, you cannot file suit more than four years after the incident itself.⁴

The discovery rule matters most when the injury is not immediately obvious. But if discovery happens five years after the treatment, the four-year repose period has already closed the door.

Two narrow exceptions push the repose further out. If a healthcare provider committed fraud, concealed information, or intentionally misrepresented facts that prevented you from discovering the injury, the repose extends to seven years. For children under the age of eight, the four-year repose does not bar a claim filed on or before the child’s eighth birthday.⁴

Wrongful Death: Two Years

Florida’s Wrongful Death Act gives surviving family members two years from the date of death to file suit. This applies whether the death resulted from negligence, a defective product, medical malpractice, or an intentional act. When wrongful death stems from medical malpractice, the discovery rule and repose periods described above also come into play.

Wrongful death claims against a government entity carry an additional requirement: written notice to the Department of Financial Services within two years of the death, separate from the lawsuit filing deadline.⁵

Property Damage Lawsuits: Two or Four Years

The deadline for suing over property damage depends on how it happened. Negligence-based damage, such as someone rear-ending your parked car or a contractor’s carelessness starting a fire, falls under the two-year negligence statute of limitations in Section 95.11(5)(a).²

Intentional damage to personal property, including vandalism, theft, and trespassing damage, carries a four-year filing window under Section 95.11(3)(g).² Many situations involve disputes about whether the conduct was negligent or intentional, and that characterization determines which deadline applies. When in doubt, treat the shorter two-year deadline as your real window.

Breach of Contract: Five Years Written, Four Years Oral

Contract disputes follow two different timelines depending on whether the agreement was in writing. You have five years to sue on a written contract, measured from the date of breach. For oral contracts, including verbal agreements for the sale and delivery of goods, the window is four years.⁶

One important carve-out: lawsuits for breach of a property insurance contract are excluded from these general contract deadlines. Those claims are governed by the notice requirements in Section 627.70132, which impose the one-year and 18-month windows instead of the five-year contract deadline.

Construction Defects: Four Years, With a Seven-Year Cap

Construction defect claims follow a four-year statute of limitations that starts when the local building authority issues a certificate of occupancy, certificate of completion, or temporary certificate of occupancy, whichever comes first. If the project is abandoned before completion, the four-year clock starts on the abandonment date.⁷

Latent defects, meaning problems hidden inside walls, foundations, or systems that would not show up in a normal inspection, get different treatment. For these, the four-year clock starts when you discover the defect or reasonably should have. A seven-year statute of repose still applies: no construction defect lawsuit can be filed more than seven years after the certificate of occupancy, regardless of when the defect surfaces.⁷

This repose period creates real risk. A foundation crack that first appears in year six gives you one year to file, not four. If it appears in year eight, you are out entirely.

Workers’ Compensation: 30 Days to Report, Two Years to Petition

Workers’ compensation has two deadlines that work in sequence. First, you must report the injury to your employer within 30 days of the date you were hurt or the date the injury became apparent.⁸ Missing this 30-day window bars your claim unless a narrow exception applies: your employer already knew about the injury, the cause could not be identified without a medical opinion (in which case you get 30 days from receiving that opinion), or the employer failed to post the required notice about reporting procedures.

Second, you must file a formal petition for benefits within two years of the date you knew or should have known the injury arose from work. If you are already receiving benefits, whether indemnity payments or medical treatment, each payment resets a one-year tolling period, keeping your right to petition alive as long as benefits continue.⁹

Claims Against Government Entities: Notice First, Then Suit

Suing a Florida state agency, county, or municipality requires an extra step that trips up many claimants. Before filing suit, you must give written notice of your claim to the agency involved and, for state-level claims, also to the Department of Financial Services. That notice must be submitted within three years of the date the claim accrued, or within two years for wrongful death claims against the government.⁵

After submitting notice, you must wait for the agency to deny the claim in writing before filing suit. The actual lawsuit must then be filed within four years of accrual for most negligence claims.⁵ The written notice requirement is a condition precedent. Skip it and file directly in court, and the case gets dismissed regardless of its merits.

What Can Pause or Extend the Deadline

Florida law recognizes several situations where the filing clock pauses or shifts forward. These exceptions do not erase deadlines; they adjust the math.

Discovery Rule

For certain claims, the statute of limitations starts when you discover the injury rather than when it occurred. Medical malpractice is the clearest example, and construction defects use a discovery trigger for latent problems. Negligence claims from car accidents or slip-and-falls generally do not benefit from the discovery rule because the injury is immediate.

Minors and Incapacitated Persons

The statute of limitations is tolled for a minor who has no parent, guardian, or guardian ad litem acting in their interest, or whose guardian has a conflict of interest. The clock does not start until a proper representative is appointed or the minor reaches the age of majority. Similar tolling applies to people adjudicated incapacitated before the cause of action arose. In both cases, an absolute backstop applies: the lawsuit must be filed within seven years of the act or event that gave rise to the claim.¹⁰

Military Service

The federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act excludes the period of active military service from any statute of limitations calculation in state or federal proceedings.¹¹ Florida’s property insurance statute adds tolling for servicemembers deployed to a combat zone or combat support posting when the deployment materially affects their ability to file a claim.¹

Emergency Orders After Natural Disasters

After major storms and other declared emergencies, the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation can issue emergency orders that extend filing deadlines and grace periods for policyholders in affected counties. After Hurricane Helene in 2024, OIR extended grace periods for policyholders in 27 counties until November 26, 2024, and prohibited insurers from canceling or nonrenewing policies in those areas during the same period.¹² These orders are temporary and county-specific, so check whether one applies after any declared disaster.

Why the Recent Law Changes Matter

Florida’s claim filing landscape changed more between 2021 and 2023 than in any comparable period. If you are relying on information from before those changes, you could miss a deadline by years.

Senate Bill 76, effective July 1, 2021, cut property insurance claim deadlines. Under prior law, homeowners had three years to report hurricane damage and five years for non-catastrophic losses. SB 76 shortened those to two years for initial hurricane claims and three years for supplemental claims.¹³ Later legislation tightened the window further to the current one-year and 18-month deadlines that now apply to all property insurance claims.¹

House Bill 837, effective March 24, 2023, cut the statute of limitations for negligence claims in half, from four years to two.³ The law applies to causes of action accruing on or after that date. If you were injured before March 24, 2023, the prior four-year window governs. If you were injured after that date, you have two years. There is no middle ground, and the cutoff date is the date the cause of action accrued, not the date you decided to file.

1
The Florida Legislature. Florida Statutes 627.70132 – Notice of Property Insurance Claim
2
Florida Senate. Florida Statutes 95.11 – Limitations Other Than for the Recovery of Real Property
3
Florida Senate. Florida Session Bill 2023-837
4
Florida Senate. Florida Statutes Chapter 95, Section 11
5
Florida Senate. Florida Statutes Chapter 768, Section 28
6
The Florida Legislature. Florida Statutes 95.11 – Limitations Other Than for the Recovery of Real Property
7
Florida Senate. Florida Statutes Chapter 95, Section 11
8
The Florida Legislature. Florida Statutes 440.185 – Notice of Injury or Death; Reports; Penalties for Violations
9
The Florida Legislature. Florida Statutes 440.19 – Statute of Limitations
10
The Florida Legislature. Florida Statutes 95.051 – When Limitations Tolled
11
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 50 U.S. Code 3936 – Statute of Limitations
12
Florida Office of Insurance Regulation. Hurricane Helene OIR Emergency Order: Extension of Grace Periods; Limitations on Cancellations and Nonrenewals
13
Florida Senate. 2021 CS for SB 76