Florida Did Not Raise the Injury Caps on Government Claims

What Florida Actually Limits Today

Sovereign immunity is the rule that the government cannot be sued unless it agrees to be. Florida agreed, partially, in § 768.28 — and the price of that agreement is a ceiling on what an agency pays. The state and its agencies and subdivisions are liable “in the same manner and to the same extent as a private individual under like circumstances,” but may not pay a claim or judgment to any one person exceeding $200,000, or claims totaling more than $300,000 out of the same incident or occurrence.

That ceiling is not a cap on the verdict. A jury can return any number, and a court can enter judgment for it. What the statute controls is collection: the portion above the limit “may be reported to the Legislature, but may be paid in part or in whole only by further act of the Legislature.” That further act is a claim bill, a separate legislative process with its own politics, and nothing obliges the Legislature to pass one. A catastrophically injured person with a seven-figure judgment against a county can still be looking at $200,000 in hand.

Punitive damages and prejudgment interest are excluded from the waiver entirely. This is why a crash with a city bus, an FDOT work zone, a school board vehicle, or a sheriff's cruiser is a structurally different case from the same crash with a private driver, and why the analysis has to start on day one rather than after the medical treatment settles down.

The Dated Record of HB 145

This bill came closer than any sovereign immunity reform in fifteen years, which is exactly why so much was written about it in the future tense. Here is the official action record.

The record shows no override action, and the Legislature had already gone home on March 13. The bill is finished.

The Effective Date That Never Arrived

HB 145 carried an effective date of October 1, 2026, applying to causes of action accruing on or after that day. That date is the reason this correction is worth publishing now rather than in six months. Content written in March, when passage looked certain, described new caps arriving on October 1 — and October 1 is days away. A reader who finds one of those pages this week has no signal that anything went wrong; the date it promised is about to look current.

An effective date on a bill is a conditional. The Senate's own summary of HB 145 says so plainly: “If approved by the Governor, or allowed to become law without the Governor's signature, these provisions take effect on October 1, 2026.” Neither condition happened.

Two Different Sets of Wrong Numbers

If you have read two articles about this bill and come away with different dollar figures, neither writer necessarily made it up. HB 145 carried two completely different cap structures at different points in the session.

The version the House passed on January 15, 2026 would have set $500,000 per person and $1 million per incident for claims accruing between October 1, 2026 and September 30, 2031, then stepped up automatically to $600,000 and $1.2 million. Those are the numbers in the House committee staff analyses, which are indexed, public, and rank well — and which describe a version of the bill that no longer existed by March.

The version the Governor received was different. On March 10 the Senate adopted amendment 401768, a delete-all that replaced everything after the enacting clause. The enrolled text set $350,000 and $500,000, flat, with no escalator. That is the version the House concurred in and the version that was vetoed.

A staff analysis is a snapshot of a bill on the day it was written. It is a genuinely useful primary document and a bad substitute for the enrolled text. The only two documents that settle what a law says are the enrolled bill and the current statute.

What Else the Bill Would Have Done

Nearly all of the coverage treated HB 145 as a bill about dollar limits. It was not only that. Read alongside the current statute, the enrolled text was a trade — a higher ceiling in exchange for materially shorter deadlines on the way to it.

The left column is the law. Whatever one thinks of the trade, the veto means an injured person keeps the longer deadlines and the lower ceiling — and the shortened presentment window that would have caught people who waited two years is not something anyone has to worry about.

The Three Clocks That Actually Govern Your Claim

Almost every article on this subject gives one number. Section 768.28 runs three separate clocks, they are different lengths, and the one that ends your case is whichever expires first.

• Presentment — 3 years, § 768.28(6)(a). A written claim to the appropriate agency and, except for claims against a municipality, a county, or the Florida Space Authority, also to the Department of Financial Services. This is a condition precedent to filing suit, not a filing deadline. Under § 768.28(6)(b) it is not an element of the cause of action and does not change when the claim accrued.
• Wrongful-death presentment — 2 years, § 768.28(6)(a)2. A separate, shorter clock, running to the Department of Financial Services. A family whose relative was killed by a government vehicle has one year less than the general rule, and this is the single most commonly missed deadline in this area.
• Filing — 4 years, § 768.28(14). The complaint itself. But medical malpractice and wrongful death actions are carved out and run on the periods in § 95.11(5) instead, which are 2 years — wrongful death at § 95.11(5)(e), medical malpractice at § 95.11(5)(c).

If you want to see the dates for your own accident laid out side by side rather than in the abstract, our free Florida statute of limitations calculator handles the government case type and shows all three rows, earliest first. It is not legal advice and it does not know the facts of your case, but it will tell you which clock is closest.

The “180-Day Investigation Period” Does Not Exist

Search for how to sue a Florida city and you will be told, repeatedly and confidently, that after you file the notice of claim the agency has 180 days to investigate before you may sue. There is no 180-day period anywhere in § 768.28.

What the statute actually does is condition suit on a written denial, then supply one when the agency says nothing. Under § 768.28(6)(d), failure to make final disposition of a claim within 6 months after it is filed is deemed a final denial — 90 days in medical malpractice and wrongful death actions, where the statute of limitations is also tolled for however long the agency takes to deny.

The distinction is not academic, and it lands hardest on the people who can least afford it. A wrongful death family working from the 180-day number is being told to wait roughly twice as long as the statute requires before they may file — on the one claim where the presentment clock was already a year shorter than they think it is.

Fifteen Years at the Same Number

The $200,000 and $300,000 figures are not new and they are not indexed to anything. They arrived through SB 2060 in 2010, approved by the Governor on April 27, 2010 as chapter 2010-26, with an effective date of October 1, 2011. Before that the limits were $100,000 and $200,000, and you can watch the change happen between the 2010 and 2011 editions of the statute.

That history is the reason to expect this back. A version of the same bill, CS/HB 301, died in the Senate in 2025. HB 145 got further than any of them and still did not make it. Florida's next regular session convenes in 2027, and if a new bill is filed, the thing to read is the last action line — not the headline.

How to Check This Yourself in Two Minutes

You should not have to take a law firm's word for what the law is, including ours. The verification path here is short.

1. Open the bill page on flsenate.gov and read the Last Action line. For HB 145 (2026) it says “Vetoed by Governor” with the date 6/30/2026.
2. Open the full Bill History table rather than trusting the summary line. A bill's summary often shows only its final action, which hides how it got there.
3. Open § 768.28(5)(a) in the current statutes and read the dollar figures. If a bill had changed them, they would have changed there.
4. Treat “passed the House,” “favorable,” and “effective October 1” as what they are: stages, not law.

We apply the same test to legislation in every practice area. See did Florida repeal PIP in 2026 for the same pattern playing out with a bill that died in committee, and what changed in Florida injury law in 2026 for the year's actual changes.

Florida Sovereign Immunity Caps — FAQ

Sources

Every legislative and statutory claim on this page traces to the official record. Check any of it yourself:

• HB 145 (2026) — Claims Against the Government: full bill history, including House passage 104-7 (1/15/2026), Senate passage 36-0 (3/10/2026), House concurrence 108-1 (3/12/2026), presentment to the Governor 6/15/2026 and "Vetoed by Governor" 6/30/2026 (The Florida Senate)
• HB 145 (2026), enrolled text — the version presented to the Governor, setting $350,000 / $500,000 and revising the § 768.28 deadlines (The Florida Senate)
• HB 145 (2026), filed text — the version the House passed, setting $500,000 / $1 million and $600,000 / $1.2 million from 10/1/2031 (The Florida Senate)
• HB 145 (2026) — Judiciary Committee bill summary, confirming the enrolled caps and the October 1, 2026 effective date (The Florida Senate)
• HB 145 (2026) — House Judiciary Committee staff analysis, 12/11/2025, describing the earlier $500,000 / $1 million version (The Florida Senate)
• Fla. Stat. § 768.28 (2026) — Waiver of sovereign immunity in tort actions; recovery limits; statute of limitations (Online Sunshine)
• Fla. Stat. § 768.28 (2026) — The Florida Senate edition
• Fla. Stat. § 768.28 (2010) — the $100,000 / $200,000 limits in force before the current caps took effect (The Florida Senate)
• Fla. Stat. § 768.28 (2011) — the first edition carrying $200,000 / $300,000 (The Florida Senate)
• SB 2060 (2010) — Sovereign Immunity; approved by the Governor 4/27/2010, chapter 2010-26, effective 10/1/2011 (The Florida Senate)
• Fla. Stat. § 95.11 (2026) — Limitations other than for the recovery of real property; negligence at (5)(a), wrongful death at (5)(e) (Online Sunshine)

Statutory subsection numbering can change between legislative sessions; the citations above reflect the 2026 Florida Statutes as published and current as of September 2026. This page describes the veto and its effect on § 768.28; it does not reproduce or characterize the Governor's veto message, which is not cited here. Whether a claim against a government entity exists, which of the three deadlines governs it, and how fault would be apportioned all depend on facts specific to the incident and the entity involved. This article is general information about Florida law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.