The Personal Injury Claim Process in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach County
By Richard P. Pravato, Board Certified in Civil Trial Law Published October 19, 2026
Two questions come up in almost every first meeting about a personal injury claim. What happens now, and how long is this going to take. Nobody has walked the client through the process, and most injured people have never been near a lawsuit.
The second question used to have no good answer. It depends, and anyone handing you a firm number on day one is guessing. Florida changed that on January 1, 2025. A judge now puts every civil case on a written schedule within 120 days of filing. How fast your case moves stopped being the insurance company’s decision.
By the end you will know what each stage is for, which deadline drives it, what a rejected settlement offer can cost the side that refused it, and how likely your case is to reach a jury. I am Richard P. Pravato, Board Certified in Civil Trial Law. Florida injury claims are the only work I have taken since 1996.
Key takeaways
- Florida law gives you two years to file most injury claims, so a case cannot sit untouched while you decide what to do.
- Since January 2025 the court sets the schedule, not the insurer. A case management order arrives within 120 days and names a projected trial period.
- The statewide time standard for a civil jury case is 18 months from service to final disposition. The court aims at it. Nobody can promise it.
- A formal settlement proposal can push attorney’s fees onto whichever side turned one down and then missed by 25 percent. It runs in both directions.
- Juries decided about 1 in every 250 Florida circuit civil cases last court year. Broward tried more of them than any other circuit in the state.
How long does a personal injury lawsuit take in Florida?
Florida’s time standard for a civil jury case is 18 months, measured from service on the last defendant or 120 days after the case starts, whichever comes first, through to final disposition. Complex cases get 30 months. The rule setting those numbers calls them a presumptively reasonable time period. That wording is careful on purpose. It is a target the court works toward, not a date anyone can promise you.
Four things decide where your own case lies. How long your treatment lasts comes first. Settle before the doctors can say what your future holds, and you may pay for care nobody saw coming. Then the number of defendants, how hard the other side fights over fault, and the judge’s calendar.
A broken bone that heals cleanly moves differently from a spinal injury. That is the honest answer to how long a personal injury case takes here.
The stages of a personal injury claim, start to finish
Here are the steps in a personal injury lawsuit, in the order they happen. A rule or a statute drives each one, so the personal injury lawsuit timeline fits in one table.
| Stage | What happens | What sets the clock |
|---|---|---|
| Treatment and investigation | You get care while evidence is preserved and records gathered | Two years to file, Fla. Stat. 95.11(5)(a) |
| Claim and demand | A demand package goes to the at-fault insurer and the sides negotiate | No fixed deadline |
| Filing suit | The complaint is filed and served on each defendant | 20 days to answer, rule 1.140(a) |
| Case management | The court assigns a track and issues a written schedule | 120 days from filing, rule 1.200 |
| Discovery | Disclosures, records, depositions and expert work | 60 days for first disclosures, rule 1.280 |
| Motions | Summary judgment and challenges to expert testimony | 40-day response, rule 1.510 |
| Settlement proposals | Formal offers that can shift attorney’s fees if refused | Fla. Stat. 768.79 and rule 1.442 |
| Mediation | A neutral mediator helps the sides try to settle | Court referral, rule 1.700 |
| Trial | Jury selection, evidence, verdict | The projected trial period, rule 1.440 |
A personal injury case timeline is not evenly spread. Almost all those deadlines fall in the first four months, and one long stretch carries the rest.
Before a lawsuit: treatment, evidence and the demand
The first stage of the personal injury claims process has nothing to do with a courtroom. You get treated. We start protecting evidence: preservation letters for surveillance video and vehicle data, medical records, witness contact details. All of it before memories fade. Florida law gives you two years to file most injury suits, and missing that date ends the claim.
Evidence gathered early often decides the case. Here is what that looks like in a real file. A client was badly hurt making a U-turn in Fort Lauderdale, and the officers wrote him up for the right-of-way violation. A forensics firm pulled the event data recorders from both cars. The other driver had been doing over 100 mph in a 45 zone, which the report never accounted for. The carrier paid its full $100,000 policy limits.
A formal demand waits until the full extent of the injury is clear. Then a demand package goes to the at-fault insurer with the records, the bills and the proof of fault. A lot of cases end right there.
Filing suit, and which court hears your case
A lawsuit is what happens when the offer is not fair. Filing is not a sign that talks failed. Often it is the only thing that makes an insurer take a file seriously, and most cases still settle after it.
Cases worth more than $50,000 belong in circuit court, a limit that rose on January 1, 2023. That covers most serious injury claims. South Florida has three circuits and the law in each is identical. Miami-Dade is the Eleventh, Broward is the Seventeenth, Palm Beach is the Fifteenth. The complaint is served on each defendant, who then has 20 days to answer it.
The schedule the court sets, and what changed in 2025
Here is what the court does with your case once it is filed. Florida used to let a civil case drift until somebody asked for a trial date. Now the court sorts every case into one of three tracks: streamlined, general or complex. It must then issue a case management order no later than 120 days after the action starts. Guides to the personal injury litigation process written before 2025 miss this.
That order is a real schedule. It sets deadlines for adding parties, finishing discovery, filing summary judgment motions and completing mediation, and it names a projected trial period. The rule requires the order to say its deadlines will be strictly enforced unless changed by court order.
Continuances got harder in the same package. The rule on moving a trial date now opens by saying motions to continue trial are disfavored and should rarely be granted. Broward built its own plan around the same 120-day rule. Your case now moves on the court’s calendar, not the adjuster’s.
Discovery: where the facts come out
Discovery is the stage where each side hands over what it has. Within 60 days after the complaint is served, both sides owe initial disclosures: who has knowledge of the case, the documents they may use, a computation of damages, and a copy of any insurance policy that might pay a judgment. That last one surprises people. You get to see what coverage is really behind the claim.
After that come written questions, requests for records, and depositions, where witnesses answer under oath. The defense can also have a doctor of its choosing examine you, and you can then ask for a copy of that examiner’s full written report. Our guide to what happens after a deposition covers the stage people ask about most.
Experts are hired and deposed here too, and medical bills get tested. A 2023 evidence statute controls what a jury may hear about what your treatment cost.
Motions, and the offer that can cost the side who refuses it
Defendants often ask the judge to end a case early through summary judgment, arguing no reasonable jury could find for you. If one is filed against you, you get 40 days to respond, and the hearing must be set at least 10 days after that deadline. Since 2025 a lawyer must also confer with the other side in good faith before filing most other motions.
One device changes the economics of a whole case. The Florida statute on proposals for settlement lets either side serve a formal offer. Turn down your proposal and come in at least 25 percent above it at judgment, and the defendant can be ordered to pay your fees and costs. Refuse theirs and come in 25 percent below it, and you can owe the defense its fees and costs.
Timing is set by rule. A proposal to a defendant cannot be served earlier than 90 days after that defendant is served with process, or later than 45 days before trial. The other side then has 30 days to accept. The Supreme Court did amend the rule on January 1, 2026, but the changes were to its wording rather than to what a proposal has to say. Anything telling you the requirements changed that day is overstating it.
Here is what that does in practice. A client was servicing propane tanks behind a Pompano Beach bakery when they exploded, burning his arms and face. A Broward jury returned $1,387,060.58 and put the bakery at 55 percent fault. The verdict beat our own proposal for settlement, so the defense was ordered to pay a further $137,500 in fees and costs.
Mediation
The personal injury mediation process is a settlement meeting run by a neutral third party. Nearly every South Florida case reaches one before trial. The mediator cannot impose anything and instead moves between the two sides, looking for a number both will live with.
Palm Beach County shows how seriously the courts treat it. The Fifteenth Circuit’s published form case management order for general-track cases makes finishing mediation a prerequisite to trial. It requires the lawyers who will actually try the case to attend. And it requires that if insurance is involved, an adjuster with authority up to the policy limits must attend. An adjuster in the room with real authority is a different negotiator from one on a phone elsewhere. Our explainer on how car accident mediation works covers the day itself.
Trial, and what percentage of personal injury cases go to trial
A case that does not settle moves to a calendar call, a pretrial stipulation and then jury selection. A civil jury in Florida is six people. The jury decides fault and damages, including each side’s share of the blame. Under Florida’s 51 percent rule, a claimant found more than half at fault recovers nothing, so that one question can decide everything.
Trial is also rare, and the court system counts exactly how rare.
A verdict is not always the end. There can be post-trial motions and an appeal, and the money still has to be collected. Liens from health insurers, Medicare, Medicaid and providers also come out of the recovery before you see your share.
What is different in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach County
Same law, different dockets. The statutes and the court rules are identical in all three counties. What differs is how each circuit and each judge runs the calendar.
| County | Circuit | County seat | Cases a jury decided, 2023-24 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Broward | Seventeenth | Fort Lauderdale | 212 of 23,503, or 0.9% |
| Miami-Dade | Eleventh | Miami | 117 of 28,788, or 0.4% |
| Palm Beach | Fifteenth | West Palm Beach | 62 of 15,096, or 0.4% |
Broward tried more circuit civil cases to a jury than any other circuit in Florida that year, 212 out of 815 statewide. One county held about a quarter of every civil jury trial in the state, on roughly a tenth of the cases. A defendant deciding whether to pay fairly in Fort Lauderdale is weighing that against a court which actually tries cases.
Our own verdicts track those three dockets. A West Palm Beach jury returned $3,500,000 against a funeral home that lost a family’s cremated remains and forged documents to hide it. A Miami-Dade jury put a restaurant at 95 percent fault after four days of trial, and returned $300,000.
What you can do to help your case
Five habits make a measurable difference, and all five are yours. See a doctor fast: Florida no-fault benefits are payable only if initial care is received within 14 days of a crash. Keep every appointment, because gaps in treatment are the first thing an adjuster points at. Save your bills and anything arriving from an insurer or a provider. Stay off social media about the crash. And do not give a recorded statement to an adjuster before you have talked to a lawyer.
Common questions about the personal injury claim process
Will my personal injury case go to trial?
Three things make a trial likely, and none is your choice. An insurer that denies responsibility, one that disputes how badly you were hurt, and one that will not put a fair number on the file. We build every case as though a jury will decide it, because that preparation is what gives a settlement its value.
What does litigation mean in the personal injury case process?
Litigation is everything after a lawsuit is filed: pleadings, case management under rule 1.200, discovery, motions, mediation and trial. A claim, by contrast, is the stage before suit, handled directly with the insurance company. Most claims end without litigation ever starting.
Does filing a lawsuit mean I have lost the chance to settle?
No. Settlement talks continue through every stage, and most filed cases still end in an agreement. Filing often raises an offer, because the defense now has deadlines, disclosure duties and a trial date to answer to.
What working with our firm looks like
You never pay us up front. We take injury cases on contingency, so our fee comes out of a recovery and there is no fee if we do not win. The first conversation is free.
What you get is a case built for a jury from week one, whether or not it reaches one. We handle every call from the adjuster, and we serve the proposals that put the other side’s fees at risk. We appear before the Eleventh, Fifteenth and Seventeenth Circuit judges often enough to know how each runs a calendar. The outcomes are on our case results page.
Talk to us about where your case would start
Anyone hurt in Broward, Miami-Dade or Palm Beach County can ask us what the next twelve months would look like. Call the Law Offices of Wolf & Pravato at 954-522-5800. We will review your situation free of charge and explain your options.
This article is general information, not legal advice, and every case turns on its own facts. Court rules and procedures change, so the deadlines and requirements in your case may differ.
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