A woman in Plantation buys a pressure cooker from Target. Three months later, the lid explodes during normal use, sending third-degree burns across her forearms. The manufacturer discontinued the model two years ago after 47 similar incidents nationwide, but never issued a recall. She has two years from the date of injury to file a lawsuit in Florida — not four, like most people think. That changed in 2023, and defense lawyers are already using the shorter window to push cases past the deadline.
Florida product liability law holds manufacturers, distributors, and even retailers strictly liable when a defective product causes injury. You don’t need to prove the company was careless. You need to prove the product was defective when it left their hands, that you used it as intended, and that the defect caused your harm. The law recognizes three types of defects: manufacturing flaws (like contamination in a single batch), design flaws (like an inherently unstable ladder), and failure to warn (like selling a power tool without safety instructions for a known risk).
Fort Lauderdale cases file in Broward County’s 17th Judicial Circuit. The median product liability case here takes 12 to 18 months to reach resolution, and about 65% settle before trial. But getting to settlement requires moving fast on evidence preservation, expert witnesses, and filing deadlines that are now shorter than they’ve been in decades.
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What Counts as a Defective Product in Florida
Florida courts follow the strict liability doctrine established in West v. Caterpillar Tractor Co. back in 1976. That means if a product reaches a consumer without substantial change from how it left the manufacturer and it injures someone, the manufacturer is on the hook — even if they followed every safety regulation and quality control protocol in existence.
Manufacturing defects are the easiest to prove. A single contaminated bottle in a production run, a car with a missing brake line that should have been installed, a surgical implant with a crack that wasn’t supposed to be there. These cases often settle quickly because the defect is obvious and the company’s own quality control records usually prove it.
Design defects are harder. You’re arguing the entire product line is dangerous. Florida courts use either the consumer expectations test (would an ordinary consumer expect this product to be this dangerous?) or the risk-utility test (do the risks outweigh the benefits?). The 4th District Court of Appeal upheld a design defect verdict against Ford in 2026 over faulty airbags that deployed with excessive force. The airbags met federal standards, but the court found the design unreasonably dangerous anyway.
Failure-to-warn cases hinge on foreseeability. If a manufacturer knows or should know about a risk, they have a duty to warn consumers. Prescription drugs are a common example — pharmaceutical companies get some leeway under the learned intermediary doctrine because they warn doctors, not patients directly. But that protection disappears if they actively concealed risks. The Engle tobacco cases in Florida turned on exactly that: failure to warn about addiction and cancer risks the companies knew about for decades.
The Two-Year Deadline Almost Everyone Gets Wrong
Florida’s statute of limitations for product liability claims dropped from four years to two in 2023 under HB 837. The clock starts when you’re injured or when you discover the injury if it’s not immediately obvious. Say you have a hip implant that fails three years after surgery. You might have a case under the discovery rule if you didn’t know — and couldn’t have reasonably known — the implant was defective until it failed. But you’d need to file within two years of that failure, not the original surgery date.
The statute of repose is a separate and harsher deadline. Twelve years from the date the product was first sold to any user, your claim is dead. Period. It doesn’t matter if you just discovered the defect yesterday. The only exceptions are fraud (the manufacturer actively hid the defect) and asbestos cases. A client who buys a 10-year-old used car and gets injured by a defective airbag 18 months later still has time under the statute of limitations, but if that car is more than 12 years old from its original sale date, the repose statute might bar the claim entirely.
Wrongful death cases have their own two-year limit under Florida Statutes Section 768.19, running from the date of death. That’s not always the same as the date of injury. If someone lingers in ICU for three months after a defective medical device causes catastrophic harm, the wrongful death clock starts when they die, not when the device failed.
Defense attorneys in Broward County are already weaponizing these deadlines. I’ve seen insurers stall on settlement negotiations for 18 months, then suddenly claim the case is time-barred. Document the injury date, the discovery date, and the original sale date of the product from day one.
Florida’s Comparative Fault Rule Hits Product Cases Hard
Florida switched to modified comparative negligence in March 2023. If a jury finds you more than 50% responsible for your own injury, you get nothing. Before that, you could recover damages even if you were 99% at fault — your award just got reduced by your percentage of fault.
Defense lawyers use this aggressively in product cases. They’ll argue you misused the product, ignored warnings, or modified it in a way that caused the injury. Say you’re injured by a table saw that didn’t have a blade guard. The manufacturer argues you removed the guard yourself. If the jury believes that and assigns you 51% fault, your case is over.
The flip side: if you’re 40% at fault, your damages get reduced by 40%. A $100,000 verdict becomes $60,000. This is why documentation matters so much. Photograph the product exactly as it was when the injury happened. Keep the packaging and instructions. Get witness statements if anyone saw the incident. The manufacturer will have engineers and lawyers reconstructing the scene to shift fault onto you.
Florida courts apply this rule even in strict liability cases. Strict liability means the manufacturer is liable without proof of negligence, but it doesn’t mean your own conduct is irrelevant. The 4th DCA upheld a 40% fault reduction in a 2024 design defect case where the plaintiff admitted he didn’t read the warning label.
Who You Can Sue and What You Can Recover
Florida’s strict liability doctrine extends beyond manufacturers. Distributors, wholesalers, and retailers are all potentially liable. The sporting goods store that sold you the defective helmet can be a defendant even if they didn’t make it. This is strategic — the retailer often has insurance and is easier to locate than a foreign manufacturer.
Economic damages are straightforward: medical bills, lost wages, property damage. Keep every receipt and pay stub. Florida Statutes Section 768.76 limits attorney fees on small claims under $2,000, but most product liability cases involve damages well above that threshold.
Non-economic damages cover pain, suffering, disability, disfigurement, and loss of enjoyment of life. There’s no cap in product liability cases unless the case somehow crosses into medical malpractice territory (which has caps under Florida Statutes Section 766.118, but those rarely apply to defective products).
Punitive damages are available if you prove intentional misconduct or gross negligence under Florida Statutes Section 768.72. This is the manufacturer who knew about the defect, ran the numbers, and decided it was cheaper to pay injury claims than issue a recall. Punitive damages are capped at three times compensatory damages or $500,000, whichever is greater, but the cap disappears if the defendant’s net worth exceeds $2 million and they acted with specific intent to harm.
Wrongful death claims under Florida Statutes Section 768.21 allow recovery for funeral expenses, lost financial support, and loss of companionship. The estate can also recover for the decedent’s pain and suffering between injury and death if they survived for any period of time.
Filing a Product Liability Case in Broward County
Product liability cases worth more than $50,000 file in circuit court. Broward County requires e-filing through the Broward County Clerk’s website — paper filings are rejected under Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.080. You’ll need a complaint that identifies the product, the defect, the injury, and the legal theory (strict liability, negligence, breach of warranty, or all three).
A jury demand is standard. Judges in the 17th Judicial Circuit issue case management orders within 120 days under Administrative Order 2024-10-AD, setting deadlines for discovery, expert disclosures, and mediation. Discovery in product cases is document-heavy: design files, safety testing results, complaint logs, recall notices, and internal communications about the defect.
Expert witnesses are mandatory. You need an engineer or scientist to testify that the product was defective and that the defect caused your injury. The defense will have their own experts. Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.280 requires expert disclosures months before trial, including the expert’s qualifications, opinions, and the basis for those opinions.
Broward County saw 89 product liability filings in 2024. That’s out of 1,247 statewide. The majority settle before trial, but settlement negotiations don’t start in earnest until both sides have completed depositions and exchanged expert reports. Manufacturers rarely make serious offers until they know what your expert is going to say on the stand.
Preserving Evidence Before You File
The product itself is your most important piece of evidence. Don’t throw it away, don’t repair it, don’t let the manufacturer “inspect” it without your attorney present. Photograph it from every angle in the condition it was in when the injury happened. If it’s a vehicle, don’t let the insurance company tow it to their preferred shop until you’ve documented everything.
Packaging and instructions matter in failure-to-warn cases. If the box had a warning label, keep the box. If the manual had safety instructions, keep the manual. If you bought the product online, screenshot the product listing and any reviews mentioning similar problems.
Medical records create the link between the defect and your injury. Get treated immediately and tell your doctor exactly how the injury happened. “Patient reports injury from defective pressure cooker” is better than “patient reports burn injury” in the ER notes.
Report the incident to the Consumer Product Safety Commission at https://www.cpsc.gov if it’s a consumer product, or the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration at https://www.nhtsa.gov if it’s a vehicle. These agencies track defect reports and sometimes issue recalls based on patterns. Your report becomes part of a federal database that your attorney can use to show the manufacturer had notice of the problem.
What Most People Don’t Know About Product Recalls
A recall doesn’t automatically mean you have a case, and the absence of a recall doesn’t mean you don’t. Recalls are voluntary unless a federal agency forces the issue. Manufacturers sometimes issue “silent recalls” — contacting owners directly without a public announcement — to avoid bad press and class action exposure.
If a product is recalled after your injury, that’s powerful evidence the manufacturer knew it was defective. But recalls have limits. They usually offer a repair, replacement, or refund — not compensation for injuries that already happened. You still need to file a lawsuit to recover medical bills and pain and suffering.
Defendants will argue that a recall proves they acted responsibly. Don’t buy it. The question is when they knew about the defect and what they did about it. If 200 people reported injuries before the recall, the company’s “responsible” recall doesn’t erase liability for injury number 201.
Finding the Right Attorney for a Product Liability Case in Fort Lauderdale
Product liability cases are expensive to litigate. You’re going up against corporate defendants with deep pockets and law firms that specialize in defending these claims. Most plaintiffs’ attorneys work on contingency — you don’t pay unless you win — but not every personal injury lawyer handles product cases.
Look for someone who’s actually tried product liability cases to verdict, not just settled them. Ask how many product cases they’ve handled in the last two years and what the outcomes were. The Florida Bar certifies attorneys in civil trial law — that’s not required, but it’s a good sign they have courtroom experience.
Expect the attorney to bring in experts early. A good product liability lawyer has relationships with engineers, toxicologists, and accident reconstructionists who can evaluate your case before it’s filed. If the attorney says “let’s file first and figure out the experts later,” that’s a red flag.
Contingency fees in Florida typically run 33% to 40% of the recovery, depending on whether the case settles or goes to trial. Florida Statutes Section 768.28 caps fees at 25% of the first $1 million in structured settlement cases involving the government, but that rarely applies to product cases against private manufacturers.
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The Reality of Going Up Against Manufacturers
Manufacturers don’t settle cases to be nice. They settle when the cost of losing at trial exceeds the settlement amount, factoring in the publicity hit and the risk of punitive damages. That calculation doesn’t happen until you’ve built a case strong enough to scare them.
Expect the manufacturer to claim the product was fine and you caused the injury through misuse or alteration. Expect them to drag out discovery. Expect them to file motions to dismiss, motions for summary judgment, and motions to exclude your expert. The companies that make defective products have been defending these lawsuits for decades. They know every procedural delay in the book.
But they also know when they’re going to lose. A clear manufacturing defect with serious injuries and a sympathetic plaintiff is a case most manufacturers would rather settle than take to a Broward County jury. The question is whether you can survive the war of attrition long enough to get them to that point.
Florida law gives you a path to hold manufacturers accountable when their products cause harm. But the path has gotten narrower since 2023, and the deadlines are shorter than they used to be. If you’re injured by a defective product in Fort Lauderdale, the clock is already running.
