South Florida Personal Injury Lawyers Blog
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.
How the New Calculation Works in Practice
The court applied the rule six weeks later in Leighton v. Kratos Logistics, LLC, decided May 6, 2026. A delivery driver was hurt on the job in February 2022. The employer and carrier authorized treatment and paid disability benefits, with the last authorized medical care occurring in August 2022. When he filed a petition in March 2024 seeking treatment from a neurosurgeon, the judge of compensation claims dismissed it as untimely.
The First District set that order aside. Under the reasoning in Estes, the August 2022 care stopped the two-year clock until August 2023, which meant the two-year period ran into 2025. A petition filed in March 2024 was comfortably inside it.
A petition for benefits is the filing that opens a disputed workers’ compensation claim before a judge of compensation claims. Under the old reading, the same facts produced the opposite answer, which is why this is worth the attention of anyone whose claim was closed on timing.
The dates that control the calculation sit in the carrier’s records rather than in anyone’s memory. The benefit payment history and the authorized treatment log establish when the clock stopped and when it started again, and both are obtainable. A worker who cannot recall the last date of authorized care is not stuck, because that record exists whether or not a copy of it ever reached the worker.
Who This Actually Affects
The workers most affected are the ones who were treated, improved enough to stop treatment, and then got worse. That pattern is ordinary in back injuries, shoulder injuries, and head injuries, and it is exactly the pattern the old calculation punished.
If a carrier or a judge told you your petition was filed too late, the date that matters is the last day you received authorized care or an indemnity payment, not the date of the accident. Friedman Rodman Frank & Estrada has represented injured workers across Miami-Dade, Broward, and Collier Counties since 1976, and this is a calculation worth having someone redo before accepting that a claim is closed.
What Has Not Changed
The two-year period in Florida Statute § 440.19(1) is still two years, and the tolling in § 440.19(2) is still one year. What changed is how the two interact.
Everything else in the reporting chain is also unchanged. Florida Statute § 440.185 still requires a workplace injury to be reported within 30 days, and the employer still has seven days to notify the carrier from there. Missing the reporting window creates a different problem than missing the filing window, and the new decision does nothing about the first one.
Talk With Our Miami Workers’ Compensation Lawyers
Friedman Rodman Frank & Estrada, P.A. has handled Florida workers’ compensation claims for injured workers throughout Miami-Dade, Broward, Collier, Lee, and Palm Beach Counties since 1976. We work on contingency, so you pay nothing unless we recover for you, and the consultation is free. Call (305) 448-8585 or contact our Miami office if a petition of yours was denied as untimely and you want the dates run again.