Fort Myers · Lee County

Fort Myers Medical Malpractice Lawyer

You went in for treatment and came out worse, and nobody at the hospital will give you a straight answer about why. We can take it from here. Call 833-370-8692 for a free consultation. You pay us nothing unless we win. Our Fort Myers personal injury lawyers have taken these cases across Lee County since 1993.

Speak to a Lawyer How these cases work

90 days Mandatory notice before a suit can be filed.

Expert required A corroborating medical opinion comes first.

Outside the 50% bar Med-mal is exempt from the 2023 comparative negligence bar.

Lee County Our Fort Myers office takes these claims anywhere in the county.

In Lee County

Medical Malpractice claims in Fort Myers

The hospital put its own risk team on it early, and the records you need are held by the people you would be bringing a claim against. Meanwhile you are paying for the care that was supposed to fix the problem, and for the care it now takes to put it right. Finding out what actually happened is our job, and it starts the day you call.

Lee Health, which runs Lee Memorial Hospital and most of the hospital capacity in the county, is a public system governed by an elected board rather than a private company. That makes sovereign immunity the central fact of a Lee County malpractice claim: recovery is capped at $200,000 per person and $300,000 per incident, a written notice of claim has to be presented before suit, and anything above the cap depends on the Legislature passing a claims bill. Families are rarely told this and it is not something a case can be worked around after the fact, which is why we say it plainly at the first conversation rather than later.

Short answer

A Lee County medical negligence claim requires the Chapter 766 presuit steps before anything is filed: the complete records, a corroborating written opinion from a physician in the relevant specialty, then 90 days notice. Establishing who employed the provider who made the decision matters more here than almost anywhere, because it decides both what the claim is worth and what deadline applies.

What to do after a medical malpractice in Fort Myers

Ask for your complete records, in writing, now. Not the discharge summary and not a portal printout, which is a fraction of the chart. Ask in writing for the complete record: physician and nursing notes, medication administration, vital signs and monitoring, orders, imaging and the reports on it, and laboratory results. You are entitled to it, it is the foundation of any review, and requesting it commits you to nothing.
Write down the sequence while you still remember it. Who you saw and when, what you told them, what you were told, how long you waited and what changed. Names where you have them. Memory for this fades fast and it fades first for the timings, which is exactly what a review turns on. A family member’s notes made at the bedside are frequently the most useful document in the file.
Do not sign anything broad. Requests for records are routine and usually fine. Broad authorizations, arbitration agreements and anything resembling a release are not, and they are sometimes presented alongside ordinary paperwork. Bring the document to somebody before signing it. Reading it costs nothing, and an arbitration agreement signed at a bedside can decide the case before it starts.
Keep getting care, from somebody else if you need to. Nothing about a potential claim requires you to stay with a provider you no longer trust, and nothing about changing doctors damages a claim. What does damage one is a gap in treatment, because it becomes the argument that the harm resolved. Get the problem addressed and let the records of that treatment be made.
Ask early, because this claim cannot be started late. A medical case cannot simply be filed. The records have to be gathered and reviewed by a qualified physician who is willing to corroborate the claim in writing, and only then does the formal notice go out. That work takes months and costs real money before anything is filed. The practical deadline is therefore a long way ahead of the legal one.

Where these happen in Fort Myers

Lee County’s population changes size with the season while its hospital capacity does not, and subspecialty care is further away here than on the east coast. Both facts show up in these claims.

Seasonal capacity

For several months a year the county holds far more people than it does in summer, and the medicine has to stretch to cover it.
- Staffing rosters and assignment sheets, which document what the ratio actually was on the day
- Waiting times before assessment, which are recorded and are frequently the harm
- Agency and locum coverage brought in for the season, employed by somebody other than the facility
- Patients whose regular physicians and prior records are in another state
Distance to subspecialty care

Some care is not available in the county at all, which makes the decision to transfer part of the medicine rather than an administrative step.
- The interval between recognizing a problem and arranging transfer, measurable from the record
- What was communicated at handover, which is where a failure usually sits
- Two institutions holding two separate records of the same patient
- Transport time, which is geography rather than negligence and has to be separated from what preceded it
Emergency and urgent care

A high volume of first presentations in this county happen at an emergency department or an urgent care center rather than with a regular physician.
- The workup done before a decision to discharge, and the return precautions given
- Symptoms attributed to something else, particularly cardiac and neurological presentations
- The return visit, which is a second record and usually where the picture becomes clear
- Whether the facility was licensed and equipped for what was in front of it
Outpatient surgery and procedures

A good deal of surgery here happens in a center or an office, with different monitoring and different transfer arrangements from a hospital.
- Anesthesia and post-anesthesia monitoring, which is where these cases turn
- Discharge criteria, and whether they were applied to the patient in front of the staff
- Arrangements for a patient who deteriorates, and how long they actually took
- Facility policies and protocols in force on the day, which we can get

What causes them

Surgery on the wrong site or the wrong side, and instruments or sponges left behind
Anesthesia errors, including airway management and monitoring during and after a procedure
Medication and dosing errors, including interactions nobody checked and allergies already in the chart
Laboratory or imaging results that were produced correctly and never communicated to the patient
Injuries during labor and delivery, including delayed response to fetal distress

The injuries we see, and what each one turns on

Permanent loss of function

Nerve damage, loss of a limb, loss of sight, incontinence and chronic pain, which change what somebody can work at and how they live rather than simply costing money. These are proved with treating records and with the account of the people who see somebody every day.

Death

Where a patient dies, the claim is brought by the personal representative of the estate rather than by the family directly, and Florida decides by statute which survivors may recover and for what. Opening the estate is a probate step with its own timetable, and it is worth starting early because it is frequently the thing that holds everything else up.

A cancer at a later stage than it should have been

The harm in a delayed diagnosis case is rarely that treatment became impossible. It is that a curable disease became a chronic one, or that a treatment which would have been modest became extensive. Proving it means establishing what stage the disease was at when it should have been found, which is done from the imaging and the pathology rather than from argument, and it is why these cases turn on the studies that already exist.

What Florida law requires you to prove

The presuit process, in order

A medical negligence suit cannot be filed in Florida until the presuit requirements of Chapter 766 have been met. The records are gathered and reviewed, and a qualified medical expert in the relevant specialty has to provide a verified written opinion corroborating that there are reasonable grounds, under Fla. Stat. § 766.203. Only then does written notice of intent go to each prospective defendant, and under Fla. Stat. § 766.106 no suit may be filed for 90 days after that. The limitations period is tolled during the window, and both sides investigate informally within it.

The deadlines, which run differently here

Medical negligence has its own limitations rules under Fla. Stat. § 95.11: generally two years from when the injury was discovered or should have been discovered with due diligence, and in no event more than four years from the incident itself, with narrow exceptions including concealment and a separate provision for young children. Because the investigation and the corroborating opinion have to be completed before notice can even be sent, the working deadline sits well inside the statutory one.

Two things that surprise people

The modified comparative negligence bar Florida adopted in 2023, which stops anybody more than 50 percent responsible from recovering, expressly does not apply to medical negligence claims under Chapter 766. Separately, Article X, Section 25 of the Florida Constitution gives patients a right of access to records of adverse medical incidents made or received by a health care facility or provider. It is an unusually powerful right, it is underused, and it is one of the first requests we make.

The full statutory detail, and the parts that differ by claim type, sit on our statewide medical malpractice page rather than being restated in every market.

How we prove it in Lee County

The records in a Lee County case are usually in one place rather than scattered, which helps. What does not help is that a seasonal patient’s prior records, and sometimes their prior physicians, are somewhere else entirely.

What we go after, and when

The complete chart from every facility and physician group involved, requested by name rather than by summary
Prior records from out of state where the patient is seasonal, which is what establishes the baseline
The actual imaging files rather than the reports on them, including any prior studies for comparison
The electronic record audit trail, showing access, timing and anything added after the fact
Records of adverse medical incidents, which patients have a constitutional right of access to in Florida
Staffing rosters and assignment sheets for the shift, which are the answer to a capacity question
The employment or contracting arrangement for every provider involved
Policies, protocols and transfer agreements in force at the facility on that date

All of that goes to a physician in the relevant specialty for a written review before anything is filed, at the firm’s expense. It is slow and it is expensive, and it is the only honest way to tell somebody whether they have a claim.

A setting a medical malpractice claim in Fort Myers typically arises from

Who would handle your case

Being hurt in Fort Myers is hard enough without working out the legal side on your own. The trial lawyers below have handled medical malpractice claims across Florida since 1993, and one of them will take yours from the first call to the last check. They will tell you what your case is worth and why, and they will be straight with you about the parts that are hard.

How insurance companies handle these claims

Medical files are not handled by an ordinary adjuster. There is generally a risk manager involved from the day the incident is reported internally, frequently before the patient has any idea something went wrong, and counsel is assigned early.

It was a known complication: Sometimes it genuinely was, and a bad outcome on its own is not negligence. Medicine carries risk that no amount of care removes. The question is narrower: whether the care fell below what a reasonably prudent similar provider would have delivered, and whether that failure caused the harm. Those are two separate elements, both have to be proved, and a corroborating physician review is what answers them honestly rather than hopefully.
The blame is moved onto the patient: You did not follow instructions, you missed appointments, your own condition explains the outcome. It is worth knowing that the 50 percent bar which ends ordinary negligence claims does not apply to medical negligence, so this argument reduces a claim rather than ending it. It is answered from the chart, which usually records what the patient was actually told and when.
An early offer, before the review is finished: It arrives priced on what is known in month two, which in a medical case is very little. Where a child or a catastrophically injured adult is involved, the future care costs are the entire claim and they take a professional to quantify. A release cannot be reopened when the life care plan is finally written.

What a claim can include

Life care costs after a catastrophic injury

Attendant care, equipment, home modification, therapy and the replacement schedule for all of it, set out in a life care plan so that it is a number rather than an argument.

What a family may recover after a death

The claim is brought by the personal representative of the estate, and Florida decides by statute which survivors may recover and for what. It is worth asking about early, because the answer is narrower than most families expect.

The cost of putting it right

The corrective surgery, the extended treatment and the care that would not have been needed had the first thing gone as it should. It is the head of loss most specific to these cases and it is documented by the providers who came afterward.

Another setting a medical malpractice claim in Fort Myers arises from

Why Wolf & Pravato in Fort Myers

A Lee County medical negligence case is filed in the Twentieth Judicial Circuit at the Lee County Justice Center, and the firm has an office on Colonial Boulevard in Fort Myers rather than a referral arrangement with somebody here. These claims are worked and tried on this coast rather than sent across the state.

Richard Pravato is one of 861 lawyers Board Certified by The Florida Bar in Civil Trial law, out of a membership over 109,000. The certification is about trial experience rather than advertising spend, and it is the part of a firm’s record that an insurance company checks.

Nothing is charged for the first conversation and nothing is charged at all unless there is a recovery. If we do not think you have a claim, we would rather tell you now than a year from now.

Call 833-370-8692 Free consultation. No fee unless we win.

Questions

Fort Myers medical malpractice questions

Is it worth bringing a claim if recovery is capped?

Often yes, and sometimes the cap does not apply at all. Not every provider working inside a public system is a public employee, and an independent physician group or a contracted specialist may carry ordinary private coverage with no cap on it. Establishing exactly who employed the person who made the decision is the work that determines whether this is a capped claim or a much larger one, and it is done early rather than discovered late.

My parent is only here part of the year and their doctors are up north.

It adds a step rather than a problem. The prior records from out of state are worth obtaining early, because they establish the baseline against which the care here is measured, and they are frequently what shows that a finding was new. A claim for care delivered in Lee County is brought here regardless of where the patient lives or where their regular physicians are.

I was seen and sent home, and came back much worse two days later.

That sequence is one of the more provable patterns in this practice, because there are two records and the interval between them is fixed. What a review looks at is the workup done before the discharge, the instructions given about when to return, and whether the findings available at the first visit should have prompted something else. None of that depends on anybody’s recollection.

Do I need a medical expert before I can sue?

Yes. Chapter 766 requires a corroborating written opinion from a qualified medical expert that there are reasonable grounds to believe negligence occurred. That review happens at our expense during the presuit investigation, and if the expert does not support the claim, we tell you so.

The hospital asked me to sign something. Should I?

Not before someone reads it. Requests for records are routine and usually fine, but broad authorizations, arbitration agreements and anything resembling a release are not. Bring the document to us before signing; reading it costs you nothing.

The questions that come up on every kind of claim, deadlines, fees, recorded statements and fault, are answered on our Florida injury claim FAQ.

Tell us what happened

A lawyer will listen, tell you what Florida law does with those facts, and be straight with you about whether it is worth bringing. We are at 1825 Colonial Blvd, Fort Myers, FL 33907.

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