Where to File in Florida
Florida birth injury claims are filed in Circuit Court in the county of the defendant hospital or physician. Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Hillsborough, and Orange counties handle the largest dockets. Florida has a unique pre-suit screening requirement for medical malpractice: before filing, plaintiffs must conduct a pre-suit investigation and serve a notice of intent to initiate litigation, triggering a 90-day pre-suit period during which informal discovery and corroboration by a medical expert must be completed (Fla. Stat. § 766.106).
Florida's medical malpractice statute of limitations is two years from discovery, with a four-year repose period (Fla. Stat. § 95.11(4)(b)). For minors, the limitations period is tolled until age 8, or until the eight-year period has run, whichever occurs later—but the absolute repose bar of seven years from the incident applies except in cases of fraud, concealment, or foreign body. Florida also maintains the Birth-Related Neurological Injury Compensation Association (NICA), a no-fault compensation plan that may preempt civil suits for qualifying birth-related neurological injuries.
Florida previously capped non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases at $500,000 ($1 million for catastrophic injuries), but the Florida Supreme Court struck down non-economic damages caps in North Broward Hospital District v. Kalitan (2017) as unconstitutional. Florida now has no enforceable cap on non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases. Economic damages including lifetime care costs, lost earnings, and rehabilitation remain fully recoverable without limitation.
Florida obstetric malpractice litigation commonly involves NICA eligibility disputes—defendants may move to transfer cases to the NICA compensation plan, which provides more limited benefits than civil jury awards. Outside NICA, key litigation patterns include delayed C-section decisions, fetal monitoring failures, shoulder dystocia mismanagement, and hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy resulting from prolonged labor. Large verdicts in Florida have historically exceeded $20–30 million in severe HIE and cerebral palsy cases following the removal of non-economic caps.