In Florida, personal injury cases have a statute of limitations of four years for most types of injuries or deaths due to someone else’s negligence or wrongdoing. You can think of a statute of limitations as the amount of time you have from the date of the accident and injury to take legal action, and in Florida, the clock starts running the day you were injured. There are some exceptions to that, and a Florida personal injury attorney will be able to advise you on whether or not your case falls within the statute of limitations and if you have a viable cause for legal action.
Medical Malpractice Statute of Limitations
In Florida, the medical malpractice statute of limitations is two years with a four-year statute of repose, which is an extended period of time given to victims who may not know they were injured during a surgery. For instance, if a medical professional such as a surgeon leaves a sponge or some other surgical tool in your body, you may not get sick for many years after the date of surgery. In Florida, there’s a seven-year cap for cases that involve fraud, concealment or intentional misrepresentation by a healthcare professional. There’s an exception to this, however: If the claimant (victim) is eight years of age or less, the seven-year period does not bar legal action brought on behalf of the minor child on or before his eighth birthday.
Product Liability Statute of Limitations
In Florida, you have four years after the injury or death occurred to file suit. If your vehicle was defective in some way and caused an accident in which you were injured (or a loved one was killed), the statute of limitations to take legal action is only four years. If you suspect you suffered an injury due to a faulty medical device or some other product, please don’t delay because four years is not a lot of time to file; you may not even know a defective medical device caused you injury until several years after it was implanted in your body.
Breach of Contract Statute of Limitations
If you have suffered a financial loss due to a breach of contract, the state of Florida allows you five years to file suit for a breach of a written contract and only four years for oral contracts. The Florida statutes of limitations for contract breaches, make it very important to act quickly. If you fail to file suit within the applicable time period, your claim will be time-barred and you will have no way to recover the money.
Take a moment to contact a Florida law firm and start on the road to recovery.
