Plaintiffs’ attorneys have been filing tens of thousands of civil lawsuits more than usual in the runup to the signing of a comprehensive tort reform bill by Gov. Ron DeSantis, according to multiple court system observers.
More than three-quarters of the civil cases filed from Jan. 1 to March 22 – two days before House Bill 837 was signed – were filed between March 17 and March 22, according to the Florida Courts E-Filing Portal. In addition, more than 6,100 cases were filed on March 24, the date of the signing, while only 505 were filed on Monday, the data shows.
“Clerks of court across the state saw a tremendous increase in civil filings in anticipation of the passage and signing of House Bill 837 into law,” the president of Florida Court Clerks and Comptrollers, Carolyn Timmann, said in a comment emailed to the Florida Record. “Our primary concern is having adequate resources to process the high volume of cases and appropriately serve all parties and the judiciary.”
FCCC does expect some delays in the system’s ability to process the lawsuits, but county clerks of court have vowed to work diligently to deal with the workload.
Michael Carlson, president and CEO of the Personal Insurance Foundation of Florida, also said last week that some attorneys had been scrambling to file an “avalanche” of lawsuits before the measure took effect.
“This ends in Florida today (March 24),” Carlson said. “It’s a turning point for civil justice in our state.”
HB 837 makes a series of changes designed to improve the state’s legal climate and lower the costs it imposes on businesses and consumers. The measure will cut the statute of limitations for filing general negligence lawsuits in half, from four years to two years; raise the standard of proof for demonstrating that an insurer has acted in bad faith; add more uniform standards for the calculation of medical damages in personal injury cases or wrongful death; and do away with the one-way attorney fee statute and restrict the use of attorney fee multipliers in litigation.