South Florida Personal Injury Lawyers Blog

The Role NICA Plays in a Florida Birth Injury Lawsuit

Published on: September 25, 2026 | by Friedman Rodman Frank & Estrada, P.A.

Last updated September 25, 2026 · Reviewed by Carolyn Friedman Frank

Florida law can require an administrative law judge to rule on a baby’s brain injury at delivery before any lawsuit over that injury goes forward in circuit court. On July 8, 2026, the Third District Court of Appeal applied that rule to a Miami-Dade case in which parents had sued a hospital and its executives in a lawsuit separate from their case against the doctors who delivered their child. The decision, Mount Sinai Medical Center of Florida, Inc. v. Esposito, puts the NICA question at the front of a Florida birth injury lawsuit even when the claim is aimed at hospital systems.

NICA is the Florida Birth-Related Neurological Injury Compensation Plan, a no-fault system that compensates a limited class of catastrophic birth injuries in place of a malpractice suit. Florida Statute § 766.304 gives the administrative law judge exclusive jurisdiction to decide whether a claim is compensable under the plan, and it provides that no civil action may be brought until the judge has made the determinations listed in Florida Statute § 766.309. For families working with our Miami medical malpractice attorneys, the first contested question is often whether the injury falls inside NICA at all, and the negligence case waits on the answer.

Florida’s Apartment Security Presumption Survived the 2026 Session

Published on: September 15, 2026 | by Friedman Rodman Frank & Estrada, P.A.

Last updated September 15, 2026 · Reviewed by Elizabeth Estrada

Florida Statute § 768.0706 gives the owner of an apartment complex a presumption against liability for crimes committed on the property by third parties who are not its employees or agents, as long as the owner substantially implemented a list of security measures. Two 2026 bills would have denied that protection to properties with a recent history of reported crimes. Both died in committee on March 13, 2026, so the Florida apartment negligent security presumption remains exactly as the Legislature wrote it in 2023.

The presumption is not automatic. Subsection (3) puts the burden of proof on the owner or principal operator to show that it substantially implemented the security measures the statute lists. For a tenant or guest hurt in a robbery, shooting, or assault, the owner’s security records are central evidence, and our Florida negligent security attorneys ask for them first.

Florida Supreme Court Rules Workers’ Comp Can Cover an Assault at Work

Published on: September 10, 2026 | by Friedman Rodman Frank & Estrada, P.A.

Last updated September 10, 2026 · Reviewed by Carolyn Friedman Frank

An employee attacked on the job by a stranger can qualify for workers’ compensation benefits in Florida, the Florida Supreme Court held on July 9, 2026. The decision, Bouayad v. Normandy Insurance Co., quashed a First District Court of Appeal ruling that had taken a far narrower view of workers’ comp for assault at work in Florida. One way to show the attack is work-related, the Court said, is proof that the job duties and work environment exposed the worker to an increased risk of assault.

Florida Statute § 440.09(1) requires an employer to pay benefits for an injury “arising out of work performed in the course and the scope of employment.” The Court read that phrase to require a real connection between the injury and the job, not proof that the task the worker was doing at that moment caused the harm.

Florida’s New Memory Care License Law and What It Changes for Families

Published on: September 5, 2026 | by Friedman Rodman Frank & Estrada, P.A.

Last updated September 5, 2026 · Reviewed by Carolyn Friedman Frank

Florida created a separate license for assisted living facilities that care for residents with dementia when Chapter 2026-102, Laws of Florida, was approved by the Governor on May 22, 2026 and took effect that day. The Florida memory care license law, now Florida Statute § 429.076, will require an assisted living facility that serves memory care residents, or advertises memory care services, to hold a memory care services license on top of its standard license. That requirement does not apply yet.

The timing depends on rules the Agency for Health Care Administration must adopt by June 1, 2027. A facility licensed on or after the rules’ effective date needs the license before serving memory care residents or advertising memory care. A facility licensed earlier has six months after the rules take effect to obtain it. A memory care resident is a person with Alzheimer’s disease or a related dementia living in an assisted living facility that claims to provide care, services, or activities specifically for that condition, whether or not the resident’s contract lists them, under Florida Statute § 429.02(15).

Florida Dog Bite Law and the Limits of a “Bad Dog” Sign

Published on: August 31, 2026 | by Friedman Rodman Frank & Estrada, P.A.

Last updated August 28, 2026 · Reviewed by Ronald David Rodman

Florida holds a dog owner responsible for a bite even when the animal has never shown aggression before. Florida Statute § 767.04 makes that responsibility strict, which places the state outside the older common-law rule that effectively gave every dog one free bite.

Under the statute, the owner of a dog that bites a person in a public place, or lawfully in a private place including the owner’s own property, is liable for the damages the bitten person suffers, regardless of the dog’s former viciousness or the owner’s knowledge of it. Strict liability is a rule that makes an owner answerable for the harm without the injured person having to prove carelessness. The statute then supplies one real defense, and it is narrower than the sign on the fence suggests. Our Miami dog bite attorneys find that gap misunderstood by owners and bite victims alike.

Florida Limits Medical Negligence Damages for Adult Children

Published on: August 16, 2026 | by Friedman Rodman Frank & Estrada, P.A.

Last updated August 28, 2026 · Reviewed by Carolyn Friedman Frank

Florida wrongful death law treats a death caused by medical care differently from every other kind of death. Florida Statute § 768.21(8) removes an entire category of damages from adult children when the death arises out of medical negligence, and removes the matching category from parents when the person who died was an adult child.

Florida Statute § 768.21(3) otherwise lets children of a person who died recover for lost parental companionship, instruction, and guidance, and for mental pain and suffering from the date of injury. Subsection (8) withdraws that recovery where the claim is one for medical negligence. The loss is identical, the family is identical, and the outcome turns on what caused the death. Our Miami medical malpractice attorneys explain this to families more often than any other rule in the statute.

The Florida Slip and Fall Rule That Needs No Timeline

Published on: August 10, 2026 | by Friedman Rodman Frank & Estrada, P.A.

Last updated August 28, 2026 · Reviewed by Elizabeth Estrada

Almost every Florida slip and fall case is fought over how long a spill sat on the floor before someone stepped in it. Florida Statute § 768.0755 contains a second way to prove the same element, and it requires no evidence of timing at all.

The statute makes an injured person prove that the business establishment had actual or constructive knowledge of the dangerous condition and should have taken action to remedy it. Constructive knowledge is knowledge the law attributes to a business because a reasonably careful business in the same position would have found the hazard. Subsection (1)(b) allows that to be shown by proving the condition occurred with regularity and was therefore foreseeable. A case about a cooler that leaks every week does not depend on when this particular puddle formed. Our Florida premises liability attorneys reach for that route more often than the timing one.

Florida’s Sovereign Immunity Cap and How Claim Bills Work

Published on: August 3, 2026 | by Friedman Rodman Frank & Estrada, P.A.

Last updated August 28, 2026 · Reviewed by Elizabeth Estrada

Florida limits what a government agency can pay an injured person to $200,000, however large the verdict. The Florida Senate received 17 bills on August 7, 2026 whose entire purpose is paying claims above that ceiling, and five of them name Miami-Dade County.

The cap is not a measure of what a case is worth. Florida Statute § 768.28(5)(a) bars the state, its agencies, and its subdivisions from paying any one person more than $200,000, or more than $300,000 for all claims arising out of the same incident. The same subsection allows a judgment to be entered above those figures and directs that the excess may be reported to the Legislature, payable in part or in whole only by a further act of it.

People injured by a county vehicle, a public hospital, or a sheriff’s deputy are often told the cap ends the discussion. It does not. Friedman Rodman Frank & Estrada has handled personal injury claims across Miami-Dade County since 1976, including claims against public bodies, and two questions decide most of them. Was written notice given in time, and is the loss large enough to justify the legislative route.

Florida Did Not Repeal PIP in 2026, and the 14-Day Rule Still Applies

Published on: July 30, 2026 | by Friedman Rodman Frank & Estrada, P.A.

Last updated July 24, 2026 · Reviewed by Ronald David Rodman, a Florida personal injury attorney.

Two bills that would have ended Florida’s no-fault auto insurance system died in committee on March 13, 2026, the day the legislative session closed. Senate Bill 522 would have repealed the Florida Motor Vehicle No-Fault Law outright, and House Bill 769 was its counterpart in the House. Neither reached a floor vote, so personal injury protection coverage remains mandatory on most vehicles registered in the state.

Florida Statute § 627.736 requires PIP to pay 80 percent of reasonable and medically necessary medical expenses and 60 percent of lost gross income, up to a combined limit of $10,000. That coverage carries a deadline that ends more claims than either repeal bill would have. Initial services and care must be received within 14 days after the crash, or PIP medical benefits are not reimbursable at all. Our personal injury attorneys see that deadline missed more often than any other.

A 2026 Ruling Changed How Florida’s Workers’ Comp Deadline Is Calculated

Published on: July 22, 2026 | by Friedman Rodman Frank & Estrada, P.A.

Last updated July 24, 2026 · Reviewed by Carolyn Friedman Frank, a Florida attorney who handles workers’ compensation and medical malpractice matters.

Florida’s First District Court of Appeal has changed how the deadline for filing a workers’ compensation petition is calculated, in an en banc decision issued March 23, 2026. The court held that benefit payments and authorized medical care do not lengthen the two-year window, which is what roughly 25 years of its own case law had concluded. They stop the clock instead, and it restarts a year later.

Under Florida Statute § 440.19(1), a petition for benefits is barred unless it is filed within two years of the date the worker knew or should have known the injury arose out of work. Section 440.19(2) tolls that period for one year from the last payment of indemnity benefits or the last furnishing of authorized treatment. In Estes v. Palm Beach County School District, the court held that this tolling suspends the two-year period rather than extending it, so the two years do not begin running until one year after benefits or care stop. Our workers’ compensation attorneys read that as a meaningfully longer window than the one carriers have been calculating.