Consider a hypothetical. A shopper slips on water near the produce section of a grocery store in April 2023, tears her meniscus, and needs surgery. If she first calls an attorney in May 2025, her claim is likely dead. She fell three weeks after HB 837 took effect, which means she had two years to file — not the four years that Florida slip-and-fall victims used to have.
This is the single biggest trap in Florida premises liability law right now. The statute of limitations for slip-and-fall cases changed on March 24, 2023, and thousands of injured people across South Florida have no idea their window to sue just got cut in half.
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What HB 837 Did to the Slip and Fall Filing Deadline
HB 837 rewrote Florida Statute § 95.11, which sets the deadlines for filing civil lawsuits. Before March 24, 2023, negligence claims — including slip-and-falls — had a four-year statute of limitations. The new law cut that window to two years for any negligence claim that accrued after the effective date.
Slip-and-fall cases are “actions founded on negligence” under Florida law. That means they fall squarely under § 95.11(5)(a), the section governing general negligence. If you fell on a wet floor at a Walmart, tripped on a broken sidewalk outside a Coral Springs office building, or slipped on grease in a restaurant kitchen after March 24, 2023, you have two years from the date of the fall to file a lawsuit. Not two years from the date you finished treatment. Not two years from when the insurance company denied your claim. Two years from the day you hit the ground.
The clock starts ticking the moment the injury happens, and it doesn’t stop because you’re still negotiating with the property owner’s insurance carrier or waiting to see if your medical bills are covered under Florida’s PIP system.
The March 24, 2023 Dividing Line
The transition rule is simple but brutal. HB 837 applies to causes of action that accrued on or after March 24, 2023. If your fall happened before that date, you still get the old four-year window. If it happened on or after that date, you get two years.
Say someone slipped on a wet tile floor at a Fort Lauderdale hotel on March 20, 2023. That claim accrued before HB 837 took effect, so the four-year statute of limitations applies. The deadline to file is March 20, 2027. But if the same person fell in the same hotel on March 25, 2023 — five days later — the deadline is March 25, 2025. That claim is already time-barred as of early 2026.
Defense attorneys and insurance adjusters know this. They’re using the shortened deadline to run out the clock on people who don’t realize how fast their time is disappearing. A slip-and-fall victim who spends a year trying to settle with an insurance company and then decides to hire a lawyer is often shocked to learn they’ve burned through half their filing window without even knowing it.
By 2027, the four-year tail for pre-HB 837 incidents will be gone. Every slip-and-fall case filed in Florida after that point will be governed by the two-year rule.
When the Clock Actually Starts
For slip-and-fall cases, accrual is almost always the date of the fall itself. Florida courts don’t wait until you know the full extent of your injuries or finish your medical treatment. The statute of limitations begins running the day you slip, trip, or fall on someone else’s property.
There are narrow exceptions. If the injury was latent — meaning you had no reasonable way to know you were hurt right away — the clock might start later. But that’s rare in slip-and-fall cases. You know immediately when you fall on a wet floor and blow out your knee. You know when you trip on a broken stair and fracture your wrist. The injury is obvious, and the two-year countdown starts that day.
Do not assume a child’s deadline waits until age 18. Under Section 95.051, a child’s age pauses the statute of limitations only in limited situations, such as when no parent or guardian exists, so an attorney should confirm the deadline early. For adults, there’s generally no pause button. The deadline runs whether you’re in treatment, negotiating with insurance, or unaware that you even have a claim.
How the 51% Fault Bar Intersects With the Two-Year Rule
HB 837 didn’t just cut the filing deadline in half. It also changed Florida’s comparative negligence standard in a way that makes it much harder to win slip-and-fall cases even if you file on time.
Under the old rule, Florida followed pure comparative negligence. If a jury found you 70% at fault for your own fall — maybe you were texting and not watching where you walked — you could still recover 30% of your damages. The new rule, codified in Florida Statute § 768.81, bars recovery entirely if you’re found more than 50% at fault. If a jury decides you were 51% responsible for the accident, you get nothing. Zero. Even if the property owner was also negligent.
This is a huge shift in premises liability litigation. Defense lawyers across South Florida are already pushing hard on plaintiff fault. They’ll argue you weren’t paying attention, you were wearing inappropriate shoes, you ignored a wet floor sign, or you were in an area marked off-limits to customers. If they can get your fault percentage over 50%, the case is over.
The two changes work together to squeeze plaintiffs from both ends. You have less time to file, and even if you file on time, you face a much higher bar to recover anything at all.
One technical note: the two-year statute of limitations applies based on when the injury occurred. The modified comparative negligence rule applies based on when the lawsuit is filed. That means almost every slip-and-fall case filed today — even if the fall happened close to the March 24, 2023 cutoff — will be judged under the 51% bar rule.
Slip and Fall on a Boat vs. Slip and Fall on a Dock
Fort Lauderdale and Broward County have more boats, marinas, and waterfront property than almost anywhere in Florida. That creates a jurisdictional trap that most people don’t see coming.
If you slip and fall on a fixed dock, a marina parking lot, or a waterfront restaurant’s outdoor patio, that’s a standard Florida premises liability case governed by the two-year statute of limitations under § 95.11(5)(a). But if you slip and fall on a vessel on navigable waters — a yacht, a charter fishing boat, a dinner cruise ship — that’s a maritime tort governed by federal law. Federal maritime personal injury claims have a three-year statute of limitations under 46 U.S.C. § 30106.
The line between state and federal jurisdiction can be razor-thin. A gangway connecting a boat to a fixed dock is usually considered part of the vessel if it’s attached to the boat and moves with the tide. A fixed wooden walkway over the water is usually considered land-based property. These distinctions matter because they control which law applies and how much time you have to file.
Defense lawyers will sometimes argue that a fall on a borderline structure — a floating dock, a marina ramp — should be treated as a maritime claim to invoke federal procedural rules that favor defendants. Plaintiffs’ attorneys will argue the opposite to keep the case in state court under Florida premises liability law. The statute of limitations can hinge on where exactly you were standing when you fell.
What You Actually Have to Prove in a Florida Slip and Fall Case
The two-year deadline is only half the battle. Even if you file on time and your fault percentage stays under 51%, you still have to prove the property owner was negligent under Florida Statute § 768.0755, which governs most business-property slip-and-fall claims.
If you slip on a transitory foreign substance — spilled soda, tracked-in rainwater, dropped produce, leaked cleaning solution — you have to prove the business had actual or constructive knowledge of the hazard and should have done something about it. Actual knowledge means an employee saw the spill and ignored it. Constructive knowledge is harder. You have to show either that the dangerous condition existed long enough that the business should have discovered it with reasonable care, or that the condition occurred with regularity and was therefore foreseeable.
Say someone slips on a puddle of water near the entrance of a Broward County grocery store on a rainy afternoon. Proving the store knew about the puddle is tough unless you have video footage of an employee walking past it or a witness who saw the spill happen 20 minutes earlier. Proving constructive knowledge is easier if you can show the store had no floor mat, no wet floor sign, and no inspection log showing anyone checked the entrance during the prior hour. But you still have to build that record, and you can’t build it if you’ve already blown the two-year statute of limitations.
Defense attorneys also love to argue that the hazard was “open and obvious,” which can defeat a claim even if the property owner was negligent. If a reasonable person in your position should have seen the danger and avoided it, Florida courts sometimes find no duty to warn. This is another way the 51% fault bar creeps into slip-and-fall litigation — juries hear “open and obvious” and start thinking the plaintiff should have been more careful.
What Happens If You Miss the Deadline
If you file a slip-and-fall lawsuit even one day after the two-year statute of limitations expires, the defendant will move to dismiss on statute-of-limitations grounds, and the court will grant it. The case is over. It doesn’t matter if you have surveillance video showing the property owner mopping the floor and walking away without putting up a sign. It doesn’t matter if you have $100,000 in medical bills and permanent injuries. Once the statute runs, you lose the right to sue.
There is no do-over. Florida courts enforce the statute of limitations strictly in negligence cases. You can’t ask for an extension because you didn’t know about the deadline or because you were trying to settle with the insurance company. Ignorance of the law is not an excuse, and ongoing settlement negotiations do not toll the statute.
Insurance adjusters know this, and they use it. They’ll drag out negotiations, request more medical records, ask for another round of bills, schedule an independent medical exam, and then lowball you two weeks before the statute runs. At that point, you either take the low offer or scramble to file a lawsuit with almost no time to prepare. It’s a deliberate tactic, and it works more often than it should.
Filing Doesn’t Mean You Can’t Settle
Some people hesitate to file a lawsuit because they think it burns the bridge to settlement. That’s backwards. Filing a lawsuit before the statute of limitations expires preserves your claim. You can still negotiate and settle after you file — and in fact, most slip-and-fall cases do settle after a lawsuit is filed, often during discovery or shortly before trial.
But if you wait too long to file because you’re hoping the insurance company will make a fair offer, and the statute runs, you lose all leverage. The insurance company has zero reason to pay you anything once your claim is time-barred. Filing before the deadline keeps the pressure on and forces the other side to take you seriously.
The statute of limitations is a hard deadline. Settlement negotiations are not.
Wrongful Death Claims Are Still Two Years, But They Always Were
If a slip-and-fall injury results in death, the claim becomes a wrongful death action under Florida Statute § 768.19. Wrongful death claims have always had a two-year statute of limitations in Florida, now codified at § 95.11(5)(e). HB 837 didn’t change that deadline, although the subsections of § 95.11 have since been renumbered.
The confusion comes from people reading outdated information online. Some websites still say “personal injury claims have a four-year statute of limitations in Florida,” which was true before March 24, 2023, but is no longer accurate for negligence claims accruing after that date. Those same sites often note that wrongful death claims have a two-year limit, which makes it sound like wrongful death claims got shorter. They didn’t. They were always two years. It’s the non-fatal negligence claims — including slip-and-falls — that got cut from four years to two.
For wrongful death claims arising from a slip-and-fall, the two-year clock typically starts on the date of death, not the date of the fall. If someone falls in January 2024, lingers in a coma for six months, and dies in July 2024, the wrongful death statute of limitations generally runs from July 2024. But there are nuances depending on when the estate is opened and who the personal representative is, so these cases need immediate legal review.
The Deadline Doesn’t Care About Your PIP Coverage or Insurance Delays
Florida is a no-fault state for auto accidents, and a lot of people assume that means their health insurance or PIP coverage will handle their slip-and-fall medical bills too. It doesn’t work that way. PIP only applies to motor vehicle accidents. If you slip and fall in a Publix or trip on a broken sidewalk outside a Lauderhill strip mall, your PIP coverage doesn’t pay a dime.
You’re left using your regular health insurance, and if you don’t have health insurance, you’re paying out of pocket or negotiating payment plans with providers. That’s one reason slip-and-fall victims often wait months before talking to a lawyer — they’re focused on getting treatment and figuring out how to pay for it. By the time they realize the property owner’s insurance company isn’t going to cover their bills, a year has passed.
The insurance company’s delay tactics don’t stop the statute of limitations from running. You might spend 18 months going back and forth with an adjuster who keeps asking for more documentation, and then suddenly you’re six months away from the deadline with no settlement offer in sight. At that point, you have no choice but to file or walk away.
Whether you are buying a home, dealing with a landlord dispute, or recovering from an injury, Eric Goldman can help. Serving clients throughout Florida.
You Can’t Afford to Wait Until the End
The worst time to call a lawyer is three weeks before the statute of limitations expires. At that point, there’s barely enough time to investigate the claim, gather records, identify witnesses, and draft a complaint. Attorneys who take slip-and-fall cases on contingency need time to evaluate whether the case is worth filing. If you show up at the last minute, many lawyers will decline the case because they can’t do the necessary due diligence before the deadline hits.
The statute of limitations is not a suggested timeline. It’s a guillotine. If you fell after March 24, 2023, and you’re thinking about pursuing a claim, you need to talk to an attorney now — not in six months, not after you finish treatment, not after the insurance company makes one more lowball offer. The two-year rule eliminated the margin for error that used to exist in Florida slip-and-fall cases.
If you’re in Broward County and you’re anywhere close to the two-year mark, call a premises liability attorney this week. If the statute has already run, there’s nothing anyone can do. But if there’s still time, waiting another month could be the difference between recovering damages and losing your claim forever.
