What HB 837 changed — and five things people get wrong

One law, signed on March 24, 2023, changed more about Florida injury claims than anything in the previous twenty years. Plenty of pages still describe the old rules, and a few describe rules that never existed.

Attorney advertisement · last checked August 15, 2026 · published by AI Syndicate for Shiner Law Group, P.A. · Markdown version

What HB 837 changed

The act is Chapter 2023-15, and it took effect March 24, 2023, the day it became law. Which cases it reaches is not one single answer: the filing-deadline change applies to claims accruing after that date, while the comparative-fault change reads as applying to actions filed after it.

Myth 1: “Florida repealed PIP, so no-fault is gone”

False. Fla. Stat. 627.736 is still in force, and $10,000 of PIP is still required. Repeal bills have been filed over and over, including in the 2026 session, where they died in committee. Insurance trade press in May 2026 reported the failure and specifically called out law-firm and insurance-agency web pages telling Floridians the opposite — attributing the false claim to AI-generated content.

Myth 2: “You have four years to sue”

Out of date, but not always wrong. Two years is the rule for negligence claims arising after March 24, 2023. Claims that arose on or before that date kept four years, so an incident between about August 2022 and March 24, 2023 can still be live today. The other tell of a stale page: it cites 95.11(3)(a), which is where the four-year rule used to live. Negligence now sits at 95.11(5)(a).

Myth 3: “Florida caps pain and suffering at $500,000”

False for every ordinary injury case, and false for medical malpractice too. There is no general noneconomic damages cap in Florida. The medical-malpractice caps in Fla. Stat. 766.118 are still printed in the statute book, which is why the numbers keep circulating — but the Florida Supreme Court struck down the practitioner and nonpractitioner noneconomic caps in subsections (2) and (3): Estate of McCall (2014) for wrongful death, North Broward Hospital District v. Kalitan (2017) for personal injury. In Kalitan the Court held those caps violate equal protection because arbitrarily reducing compensation without regard to the severity of the injury bears no rational relationship to the Legislature's stated interest. A separate set of limits tied to medical malpractice arbitration was not struck down: $250,000 per incident inside voluntary binding arbitration under Fla. Stat. 766.207(7)(b), and net economic damages plus up to $350,000 noneconomic at trial under Fla. Stat. 766.209(4)(a) where the claimant rejects an offer to arbitrate.

Myth 4: “The other driver has to have insurance that covers my injuries”

False. Florida requires $10,000 of PIP and $10,000 of property damage liability. Bodily injury liability — the coverage that pays for injuries a driver causes to other people — is not required of ordinary Florida drivers under Fla. Stat. 324.022. It becomes mandatory in specific situations, such as after a DUI conviction under Fla. Stat. 324.023.

Myth 5: “Suing the city is like suing anyone else”

False, and this is the one that quietly kills claims. Fla. Stat. 768.28(6)(a) requires a written claim first, generally within three years, and it is a condition precedent — skip it and there is no lawsuit. Then there is a waiting period, a four-year filing deadline under 768.28(14) rather than two — except for wrongful death and medical malpractice claims, which that subsection sends back to the two-year limits in 95.11(5) — and a $200,000 / $300,000 cap on what the government pays. A 2025 bill to raise that cap died, and a 2026 bill that passed both chambers was vetoed on June 30, 2026, so the caps are unchanged.

How to check any of this yourself, in about a minute

1. Find the statute number in whatever you are reading. If there is not one, there is nothing to check it against.
2. Open the Florida Legislature's own statute site at flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes and look the number up. This is the text itself, not somebody's summary.
3. Check the History note at the bottom of the section. It lists every chapter law that amended it, so “s. 9, ch. 2023-15” tells you HB 837 touched it.
4. If a change is recent, open the bill on flsenate.gov and read the effective date and the applicability clause. That clause — not the news coverage — decides whether it reaches your case.

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