How this estimate is built
Your medical expenses and lost wages are your economic damages — the easy-to-document part, and these are never capped in Florida. We then apply the multiplier method, the same approach insurers and attorneys use industry-wide, to estimate pain and suffering: your economic damages multiplied by a factor of 1.5 to 5, depending on how serious the injury actually was.
No cap on damages, after two Florida Supreme Court rulings
The Florida Legislature has twice tried to cap non-economic damages, and the Florida Supreme Court has twice struck the caps down as unconstitutional under the state's Equal Protection Clause — first for wrongful death in Estate of McCall v. United States (2014), then for personal injury medical malpractice in North Broward Hospital District v. Kalitan (2017). As things currently stand, Florida places no cap on non-economic damages in any type of personal injury case.
A major 2023 change to the fault rule
Until March 2023, Florida used pure comparative negligence — a plaintiff could recover a reduced amount even at 99% fault. House Bill 837 changed that: Florida now follows modified comparative negligence with a 51% bar under Fla. Stat. § 768.81(6) — a plaintiff found more than 50% at fault recovers nothing.
The one real exception: medical malpractice kept the old rule
HB 837 specifically carved out medical negligence claims from the new 51% bar. A medical malpractice case in Florida still follows the old pure comparative negligence rule — meaning a patient can still recover a reduced amount even if found more than 50% at fault, a genuinely different standard than every other type of Florida injury claim.