Two Year Cut: Florida Statute of Limitations After HB 837

Most Florida negligence claims must be filed within two years of the incident under §95.11, a deadline Florida changed from a longer period when HB 837 took effect on March 24, 2023. Written contracts get five years, medical malpractice generally gets two years with a four-year outer limit, and criminal prosecutions run anywhere from one year to no limit at all under §775.15. If you’re unsure where your situation falls, talk to a Florida attorney now, not after the clock runs out.

TL;DR:
Florida’s negligence claims now require filing within two years if the injury occurred after March 24, 2023, compared to four years for earlier incidents.
The filing deadline starts from the injury’s date or when it should have reasonably been discovered, with complex rules for delayed or ongoing harm.
Other claims, like written contracts, give five years, and medical malpractice claims have a two-year discovery window with a four-year repose period.
Criminal charges for serious felonies, including murder and death-causing offenses, have no time limit, while misdemeanors can be prosecuted within one or two years.
Deadlines can be extended through tolling for fraud, concealment, minority, or pending arbitration, but thorough documentation and early legal advice are crucial.

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What Is the Statute of Limitations in Florida for Civil Claims?

Florida’s civil deadlines live in Chapter 95, and §95.11 breaks them out by the type of harm you suffered. The clock almost always starts running on the date your claim “accrues,” meaning the date the injury happened or, in some cases, the date you reasonably should have discovered it.

Here’s how the deadlines break down for the claims Florida residents deal with most:

Negligence (car accidents, slip and falls, most personal injury): 2 years for claims accruing on or after March 24, 2023; 4 years if your injury happened before that date.
Written contracts: 5 years.
Oral contracts: 4 years.
Product liability: 4 years to file, with a 12-year statute of repose that can bar the claim entirely regardless of when you discovered the defect.
Medical malpractice: 2 years from discovery, with a 4-year repose period; a 7-year exception applies if the provider concealed or misrepresented facts.
Wrongful death: 2 years from the date of death.
Enforcing a court judgment: 20 years.

The two-year negligence window is the one that trips up the most people, because it applies to the overwhelming majority of accident claims Floridians file. Before March 24, 2023, you had four years to sue after a car crash or a fall in a grocery store. Now you have half that time, and the Florida statute-of-limitations chart makes the accrual-date distinction explicit: anything that happened before the effective date keeps its old four-year clock, but anything after it is locked into two years.

That distinction matters more than most people realize. If you were rear-ended in January 2023, you have until January 2027 to file. If the same accident happened in April 2023, your deadline lands in April 2025. Two similar accidents, two very different filing windows, separated by nothing more than a calendar date. If you’re working through the timeline for a car accident claim in Florida, this is the first thing your attorney should nail down.

Accrual gets trickier when the harm isn’t obvious right away. A surgical instrument left inside a patient, a slow leak that causes mold damage, a defective product that fails months after purchase. In these cases, courts often apply the discovery rule, which starts the clock when you discovered, or reasonably should have discovered, the injury rather than when the underlying act occurred. Medical malpractice cases lean heavily on this rule, since a misdiagnosis or surgical error frequently isn’t apparent until follow-up treatment reveals what went wrong.

If you’re dealing with a fall on someone else’s property, the accrual date for a slip and fall claim usually runs from the date you fell, not the date you finished treatment. Continuing torts (an ongoing pattern of harm, like repeated exposure to a hazardous condition) can shift that start date further out, but these situations are fact-specific enough that guessing wrong can cost you the entire claim. Once you’ve confirmed your deadline, the next step is understanding how to file a personal injury claim correctly the first time.

Florida’s Criminal Statute of Limitations: What Prosecutors Have to Meet

Criminal cases run on a different clock than civil claims, and §775.15 sets it by offense severity rather than by injury type. The State Attorney has to file formal charges within these windows, or the prosecution is generally barred:

Capital felonies, life felonies, and felonies that resulted in death: no time limit.
First-degree felonies: 4 years.
All other felonies: 3 years.
First-degree misdemeanors: 2 years.
Second-degree misdemeanors and noncriminal violations: 1 year.

The “no time limit” category deserves a closer look, because it’s broader than most people assume. Murder never expires as a chargeable offense in Florida. Neither do many sexual offenses committed against victims under 18, following legislative changes aimed at giving survivors more time to come forward as adults. Any felony where the underlying act caused someone’s death also falls outside the standard time limits, which is why vehicular homicide and certain violent felonies can be prosecuted decades later if new evidence surfaces.

DNA evidence adds another layer of nuance. Florida law allows prosecutors to file charges after the standard limitation period has expired in cases where the defendant’s identity is established through DNA testing that wasn’t available or hadn’t been performed earlier, according to FindLaw’s summary of Florida’s criminal limitations rules. The same source notes a similar exception exists for offenses involving certain destructive devices, where the nature of the evidence makes early identification difficult.

Tolling applies here too. If a suspect leaves Florida and stays away, the clock pauses while they’re gone, but that pause is capped: continuous absence from the state can extend the deadline by no more than three years beyond the standard period. A three-year felony charge doesn’t become indefinite just because someone fled to another state for a decade. It caps at six years total, and prosecutors still have to prove the absence to get that extension.

None of this is theoretical for victims tracking a case. Criminal statute-of-limitations defenses are affirmative, meaning a defendant has to actually raise the issue in a timely motion for it to matter, which is one more reason preserving dates, reports, and evidence early benefits both sides of a case.

Tolling, Discovery, and Repose: Three Doctrines People Confuse

These three concepts get mixed up constantly, and the confusion costs people real claims. A statute of limitations sets the deadline to file. The discovery rule determines when that deadline starts ticking. A statute of repose sets an absolute outer boundary that applies no matter when you discovered the harm.

Repose is the one that catches people off guard, because it can bar a claim you didn’t even know you had. Florida’s statute-of-repose framework cuts off medical malpractice claims at four years, product liability at 12 years, and construction-defect claims at seven years, following a 2023 reduction from the previous ten-year period. If a construction defect doesn’t surface until year eight, the repose period has already closed the door, discovery rule or not.

Tolling pauses the clock rather than resetting it. Florida recognizes a handful of specific tolling events, and courts apply them narrowly:

Minority: in most personal injury cases, a minor’s claim is tolled until they turn 18, though medical malpractice carries a special rule letting a child sue up until their eighth birthday in certain circumstances, per §95.11.
Fraud or concealment: if a defendant actively hides facts that would reveal the claim, the clock can pause until the concealment is or should have been discovered.
Absence from the state: applies in limited civil and criminal contexts when a defendant can’t be served or located.
Pending arbitration or ongoing dispute resolution: filing for arbitration on a claim generally tolls the limitations period on a related lawsuit while that process runs, since Florida law doesn’t want claimants penalized for pursuing arbitration first.
Partial payment on a written instrument: a partial payment can restart the clock on a debt or contract claim under certain conditions.

Pro Tip: Never assume a tolling exception applies to your situation just because it seems fair. Document every date, every communication, and every reason you believe the clock should be paused, then get a Florida attorney to confirm it before you rely on it.

Special Deadlines: Government Claims, Construction, Products, and Minors

Suing a government entity in Florida comes with an extra hurdle most civil claims don’t have. Under §768.28(6), you generally must serve a presuit notice on the appropriate agency, and that notice period runs alongside, not instead of, your underlying limitations deadline. Miss the notice window and your claim can be barred even if you’re still technically inside the statute of limitations. Municipal agencies and state agencies sometimes have different notice recipients, so confirming the correct entity matters as much as confirming the timeline.

Construction-defect claims face their own layered deadlines: a four-year limitations period paired with the seven-year repose cap noted earlier, a real tightening from the ten-year window that applied before 2023. Product liability claims carry a four-year filing deadline and a separate 12-year repose limit, covered in more detail on our product liability examples page.

Abuse and minor-victim cases get some of the most generous exceptions in Florida law:

Certain childhood sexual abuse claims allow filing well after the victim turns 18, sometimes measured from the date of discovery rather than a fixed age.
Medical malpractice claims involving minors carry the eighth-birthday carve-out mentioned above.
Some abuse-related civil claims can be filed up to seven years after the victim reaches majority, depending on the specific statute involved.

These exceptions exist because lawmakers recognized that trauma, dependency, and cognitive development don’t follow the same timeline as a car accident claim. If your situation involves a minor or a delayed-discovery abuse claim, don’t assume the general two-year or four-year rule applies. It probably doesn’t.

What to Do Right Now to Protect Your Claim

Acting fast protects your claim even when your deadline feels far away. Here’s where to start:

Write down every date you can confirm: the incident date, the date you first noticed harm, the date of diagnosis or repair estimate, and any date you learned who was responsible.
Gather documentation immediately, including photos, preserved physical evidence, medical records, police or incident reports, and all bills and communications tied to the claim.
Determine which side of March 24, 2023 your accrual date falls on, since that single date decides whether HB 837’s two-year window or the older four-year window applies to your negligence claim.
Check whether presuit notice is required, particularly if a government entity is involved, since that notice deadline can be shorter than your overall limitations period.
Bring your timeline and documents to a Florida attorney before you assume you’re either too early or too late. Preventing spoliation of evidence starts the moment you realize you have a claim, not the moment you decide to file.

Why Haddad & Associates Treats Every Deadline as Day One

Statutes of limitations are jurisdictional, which means missing one usually ends the case outright, no matter how strong the underlying facts are. The approach starts with pinning down accrual dates and repose limits before anything else, because a case built on the wrong deadline is a case built on nothing. Early investigation catches the details that get missed later, like which side of March 24, 2023 an accident falls on or whether a government notice deadline is quietly running out. If you’re carrying a potential claim and you’re not sure where you stand, reach out to us for a prompt assessment. The clock doesn’t wait for certainty, and neither should you.

— Haddad & Associates

Get Your Deadline Confirmed Before It Confirms Itself

Calculating your own deadline from statute text is risky when a single date, an accrual question, or a repose limit can end a valid claim before you ever file it. Legal providers may review your timeline at no upfront cost and only get paid if they recover compensation for you, to reduce financial barriers to finding out where you stand. If you’re weighing whether your situation needs an attorney at all, our page on deciding whether to get a lawyer walks through the factors that actually matter. If a defective product caused your injury, our product liability examples page shows how those claims typically unfold under Florida’s repose rules. Contact Haddad & Associates today for a prompt case review. Strict deadlines don’t pause for hesitation.

This article is general information, not a substitute for advice from a qualified lawyer. Consult a qualified legal professional about your own circumstances before acting on anything here.

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FAQ

What crimes have no statute of limitations in Florida?

Murder, life felonies, capital felonies, and any felony that resulted in someone’s death have no time limit for prosecution under §775.15, and many sexual offenses against minors are also exempt.

What is the “7-year” rule people mention for Florida statutes of limitations?

There isn’t a single universal 7-year rule; it usually refers to either the reduced construction-defect repose period or specific abuse-claim windows that allow filing up to 7 years after a victim reaches adulthood.

What are the exceptions to the statute of limitations in Florida?

Common exceptions include tolling for minority, fraud or concealment, absence from the state, and pending arbitration, along with discovery-rule accrual for latent injuries and DNA-identity exceptions in criminal cases.

What is the statute of limitations for a civil lawsuit in Florida?

It depends on the claim type: 2 years for negligence claims accruing on or after March 24, 2023 (4 years if the claim accrued earlier), 5 years for written contracts, and 2 years with a 4-year repose cap for medical malpractice, all under §95.11.

How is the statute of limitations different from a statute of repose in Florida?

The statute of limitations sets a deadline based on when you discover or should have discovered your injury, while a statute of repose sets an absolute cutoff from the date of the act itself, regardless of when the harm was discovered.