Florida Hellthcare

Florida law • family loss • public accountability

When a medical death is treated differently.

Florida law allows some families to recover for mental pain and suffering after a wrongful death—then removes those damages from specified adult-family survivors when the claim is medical negligence. A separate statute of repose can close the courthouse door with time alone.

Understand the law Examine the sources

The issue in plain English

One death. Different legal treatment.

The disputed classification turns on the cause of death and the survivor’s family relationship—not on whether negligence can be proven.

Death caused by ordinary negligence

Florida’s Wrongful Death Act can permit adult children, when there is no surviving spouse, and qualifying parents of an adult child to seek specified noneconomic damages.

Death caused by medical negligence

Section 768.21(8) removes those specified mental-pain-and-suffering and companionship damages for the same classes of adult-family survivors.

Precision matters: the law does not legalize killing, excuse all malpractice, or erase every possible economic claim. “Florida Free Kill” is the name advocates use for the practical effect in cases where excluded noneconomic damages are the only meaningful recovery and the expense of Chapter 766 presuit review makes a case economically impossible to bring.

Three connected barriers

The problem is larger than one sentence in one statute.

01

Damages exclusion

Section 768.21(8) removes specified wrongful-death noneconomic damages from adult children and parents of adult children in medical-negligence cases.

02

Presuit economics

Chapter 766 ordinarily requires investigation and corroboration before suit. When the principal damages are unavailable, experts and counsel may be economically unobtainable.

03

Repose

Section 95.11 imposes an outside time limit that can extinguish a medical-malpractice action even before a claimant discovers enough to pursue it, subject to limited statutory exceptions.

Why this site exists

Grief became an investigation.

After losing both of my parents to care I believe involved medical negligence, I learned that the merits were not the only threshold question. Family status, expert costs, procedural rules, and absolute time bars could determine whether any court would ever hear the evidence.

Read the story and method

A documented public record

Research built to be checked.

This project follows the statute from the 1972 Wrongful Death Act and the 1975 malpractice reforms, through the 1990 exclusion, the decisions in Carr, Mizrahi, McCall, Kalitan, and Santiago, and the 2025 veto and 2026 session.

Follow the timeline

Use the work

Choose your path.

Families

Understand the classification, preserve records, and share an experience without publishing private medical information.

Share a story →

Lawyers & researchers

Review statutes, cases, bill histories, constitutional questions, and the developing repose research.

Open the library →

Policymakers & media

Trace what was enacted, what courts relied on, what changed, and what repeal efforts actually did.

Open the action center →

Project updates

What changed, and what comes next.

An open invitation to test the research

This project is strongest when every historical and constitutional proposition is treated as testable. Attorneys, insurance historians, actuaries, health-policy researchers, archivists, journalists, and medical […]