Depending on the type of damages sought in personal injury cases, compensation may or may not be capped under Florida law.
The question of how much compensation may be obtained during a personal injury lawsuit is one that weighs heavily on anyone who has been hurt and is wondering what the path forward looks like. This question is especially complicated in the state of Florida due to a series of laws and legal precedents that have carved out a set of caps on damages alongside rulings that have since lifted those caps.
In addition to having a strong effect on settlement awards handed down by juries and judges, these rules have an influence on the amounts obtained in the roughly 95% of cases that end in settlements or other outcomes.
Let’s take a look at the damage caps a personal injury plaintiff might expect to run into under Florida law.
Cap on compensatory damages
No cap
Compensatory damages are the compensation dollars that are used to cover direct, monetized losses from an accident. These include lost wages, damage to property, and medical expenses related to treatment of injured body parts or physical functions, deformations, and other direct injuries. It also covers less tangible issues, such as emotional trauma.
The state of Florida imposes no caps on compensatory damages. Plaintiffs do, however, need to fully document any damages they might be claiming. These can cover an array of troubling outcomes, including loss of future earning potential.
Cap on non-economic damages
No cap
Non-economic damages include compensation for pain and suffering, reduction in quality of life, loss of companionship, and other areas that don’t necessarily have a definite price tag attached.
In 2003, Florida imposed rules preventing people from seeking more than a certain amount in non-economic damages in personal injury cases involving medical malpractice. In 2017, however, the state’s courts ruled that these requirements “arbitrarily reduce damage awards for plaintiffs who suffer the most drastic injuries.”
Insurance companies and doctors argued that these caps were needed to protect their respective industries, but the court didn’t buy it. The old rules were aimed strictly at helping the medical profession and consequently didn’t apply to other types of personal injury claims.
Under the new requirements, non-economic damages in Florida can be pursued in all types of cases, including medical malpractice, without limit.
It’s reasonable to assume that lawmakers will be pressured to work around the ruling, which focused on violations of the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution. For the time being, though, non-economic damages in Florida aren’t capped.
Cap on punitive damages
3x compensatory damages
The state of Florida does, however, impose damage caps on the amount of money that can be awarded as punishment for perceived wrongdoing attached to a personal injury complaint. The law limits punitive damages to 3 times the amount of compensatory damages, or $500,000, whichever is higher.
This means there isn’t an absolute cap on punitive damages, but the law does prevent juries from awarding punitive damages that are significantly higher than the compensatory damages.
It’s rare that punitive damages are even sought at all in a personal injury case, and these cases are usually the result of extreme negligence.
For punitive damages to be awarded, the behavior involved has to be especially egregious, such as when a trucking company demonstrates a pattern of deliberately overlooking poor driving histories in the hiring process.
Consequently, we don’t see punitive damages pursued or awarded in the majority of Florida personal injury cases.
We can help get you maximum compensation for your Florida personal injury claim
Under Florida’s current laws, a plaintiff can reasonably expect to see no limit on the awards or settlements for the most direct issues arising from their injuries. While the soft caps on punitive damages limit the amount of comfort that can be taken from knowing a party won’t do wrong in the future, it should be possible to recover most or all of the immediate costs attached to an injury.
