Orlando Injury Lawyers for Central Florida Accidents

The Two-Year Deadline: Florida's Statute of Limitations

Florida law gives you two years from the date of an accident to file a personal injury lawsuit. That clock does not pause while you heal, while you negotiate, or while the insurance company stalls — and after it runs, the courthouse door closes for good, no matter how strong your case. The deadline is why experienced Orlando lawyers tell clients the same thing: call early, not on the eve of the deadline. Evidence matters too — skid marks disappear, witnesses move or forget, surveillance video gets overwritten, and medical records need time to be gathered and organized.

The two-year limit applies to car accidents, truck accidents, motorcycle wrecks, slip-and-fall and premises cases, and most other negligence claims in Florida. Special rules apply to claims against government entities — shorter deadlines and notice requirements that catch people off guard — and to cases involving minors. Only a lawyer can tell you exactly which deadline applies to your situation, and the consultation is free. The one thing you cannot do is assume the insurance company's timeline is the legal one; it is not.

Florida No-Fault and PIP: What $10,000 Actually Covers

Florida is a no-fault state: every driver must carry $10,000 of Personal Injury Protection (PIP), and after a crash your own PIP pays first — 80 percent of your medical bills and 60 percent of lost wages — regardless of who caused the accident. That sounds simple, but the strings matter. Florida law requires you to see a doctor within 14 days of the crash or PIP can deny your benefits entirely, which is why the first advice after any accident is medical care, immediately. PIP also does not pay for pain and suffering, and $10,000 disappears fast when an ambulance, an ER visit, and a few follow-ups are involved.

To recover beyond PIP — your full medical bills, lost income, and pain and suffering — you must show a serious injury under Florida's threshold: significant and permanent loss of a bodily function, permanent injury within a reasonable degree of medical probability, significant and permanent scarring, or death. That is where a lawyer earns their fee, because insurance adjusters routinely argue your injury does not meet the threshold. And one more Florida reality: the state does not require drivers to carry bodily injury coverage, so a surprising share of at-fault drivers have little or no insurance. Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage on your own policy is the backstop, and your lawyer will check every available policy — including umbrella and commercial coverage — before settling anything.

SB 837: How Florida Tort Reform Changed Injury Claims

Florida's 2023 tort-reform law, SB 837, changed the rules of the game for injury cases. The most important change: Florida abandoned its old pure-comparative-fault rule, under which an injured person could recover even if they were mostly at fault. Under the new modified standard, if you are found more than 50 percent at fault for your own accident, you recover nothing; if you are 50 percent or less at fault, your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault. Fault now matters more than ever, which means the accident investigation — who ran the light, who changed lanes, who was speeding — is the foundation of the case.

SB 837 also tightened the rules on insurer bad-faith claims and changed how attorney fees and certain damages are handled, with the stated goal of lowering insurance rates. For an injured person the practical effect is simple: cases are harder to push to trial and quicker to value, so the quality of the evidence gathered in the first weeks — police reports, photos, witness statements, medical documentation — decides the outcome more than ever. That is why you want a lawyer involved before you talk to the other side's adjuster, not after you have already given a recorded statement that hurts your claim.

What an Orlando Case Is Worth — and What It Costs to Hire a Lawyer

Case value in Central Florida is a function of five things: your medical bills and future treatment needs, lost wages and lost earning capacity, the permanency of your injuries, how the fault splits under Florida's comparative-fault rules, and the insurance limits available. Minor soft-tissue cases with a few thousand in bills often settle in the thousands to the tens of thousands; cases involving surgery, permanency, or a commercial policy can settle for six or seven figures. Truck accidents are a category of their own — federal safety regulations, multiple policies, and severe injuries make them the highest-value cases an Orlando firm handles.

Cost should never stop you from calling. Orlando personal injury lawyers work on contingency: no upfront fee, and the lawyer is paid a percentage of what you recover — typically 33.3 percent if the case settles before a lawsuit is filed and up to 40 percent if it goes to litigation. If you recover nothing, you owe no attorney fee, and case costs are advanced by the firm and deducted at the end. That structure means the lawyer only gets paid if you get paid, which aligns the incentives exactly where you want them.

Frequently Asked Questions