Florida Tort Reform and Your Collision Claim: What Changed, and Who Lost Leverage
Short answer: Florida did not change what your policy owes you. It changed whether being owed it is ENFORCEABLE at small dollar amounts. The one-way attorney fee statute that made a $900 underpayment worth a lawyer's time no longer exists in the current Florida Statutes. Assignments of post-loss benefits, the instrument that let a glass shop fight the insurer so you did not have to, are void for motor vehicle glass under policies issued or renewed on or after July 1, 2023. The negligence clock is two years in the current statute, and a driver found more than half at fault for their own harm now recovers nothing. Which of these rules applies to YOUR claim depends on dates (policy issuance, accident date, filing date), so this page states the date logic on its face rather than pretending one rule covers everyone.
What this page will show you
- The auto-glass story, which is the collision industry's own chapter of this reform: the assignment ban, the steering ban that came with it, and the two new duties written into the repair-shop law
- The state's own litigation numbers: auto glass lawsuits by year, from the Senate staff analysis, which is where the legislature says out loud what problem it thought it was solving
- What did NOT change: the Florida claim-settlement statute that still owes you pre-loss condition, equivalent parts, an estimate copy and notice before storage payments stop
- What the one-way fee statute said while it existed, quoted from the archived 2022 statutes, and what its absence from the current statutes means for a small repair dispute
- The two general changes most likely to touch a crash: the two-year negligence clock and the greater-than-50-percent bar, quoted from the current sections
- The effective-date architecture, stated plainly, because a 2022 crash and a 2024 crash can sit under different rules
- What this page deliberately is not: a tort-reform opinion piece. Florida's fight over this reform has loud advocates on both sides; we quote the enacted text and let you draw conclusions
Scope, stated up front: "Florida tort law" is enormous and almost none of it is ours. This page is about auto insurance claims and collision repair. Slip-and-fall, medical malpractice and the general litigation debate are somebody else's page.
The glass chapter: chapter 2023-136, read section by section
Windshields are where Florida's assignment-of-benefits era ended for cars, and the legislature wrote the ending as a package. All three pieces are current law, read on the state's own sites.
The assignment ban. Fla. Stat. 627.7289: "A policyholder or any other person may not enter into an assignment agreement of post-loss benefits for motor vehicle glass replacement or repair, including, but not limited to, for calibration or recalibration of advanced driver assistance systems ... under a policy of motor vehicle insurance issued or renewed in this state by an authorized insurer on or after July 1, 2023. Any such assignment agreement entered into in violation of this subsection is void and unenforceable." Note the trigger: the POLICY's issue-or-renewal date, not the date of your cracked windshield. The definition is deliberately wide: any instrument, "regardless of how such agreement is named or styled," reaching claim payments and calibration alike.
The steering ban that rode with it. The same act created 627.7291: no insurer, agent, adjuster, or anyone acting on their behalf "may not require a claimant to use a particular company or location" for windshield replacement, repair, or calibration under a personal auto policy. Two carve-outs matter: insurers may still EXPLAIN comprehensive coverage benefits, and a policy may lawfully contain a "repair arrangement", a network deal, but then the insurer "must provide an actuarially sound discount" for it. And subsection (4), in terms: "This section may not be construed to create a private cause of action." The steering rule is real and it is regulator-enforced; you do not get to sue on it.
The two duties added to the repair-shop law. The same chapter amended 559.920, the statute listing unlawful acts by motor vehicle repair shops. New (17): offering "a rebate, gift, gift card, cash, coupon, or any other thing of value in exchange for making an insurance claim for motor vehicle glass replacement or repair" is unlawful, the parking-lot gift-card pitch is banned by name. New (18): a shop must give written or electronic notice, in at least 12-point type, of "whether the calibration or recalibration of the advanced driver assistance system is required as part of the replacement or repair of motor vehicle glass to make such system operable," performed to a standard that "meets or exceeds the vehicle manufacturer's specifications." Florida glass work now carries a statutory calibration-disclosure duty, the subject our windshield recalibration guide covers in depth.
Why did glass, of all lines, get its own act? Because glass is where assignment litigation concentrated in cars, a zero-out-of-pocket repair (see Florida's glass rules) plus a signed-over claim made every windshield a potential lawsuit the shop could run without you.
The Senate's own staff analysis puts numbers on that, and they are the most quotable thing in this whole subject because they come from the state rather than from either lobby. Under the heading "Windshield Litigation," the analysis reports figures the Florida Department of Financial Services provided on "the volume of windshield litigation involving an AOB":
| Year | 2011 | 2014 | 2017 | 2020 | 2022 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Auto glass lawsuits | 435 | 6,753 | 21,851 | 21,094 | 33,196 |
The full series the analysis prints runs 435, 1,200, 3,329, 6,753, 11,077, 17,768, 21,851, 14,539, 16,168, 21,094, 24,080, 33,196 for 2011 through 2022, a dip in 2018 and then a climb to roughly seventy-six times the 2011 figure. Whatever you think should have been done about that, it is the fact pattern the legislature was looking at, and the same analysis describes the mechanism plainly: where the policyholder has signed an assignment, "the shop can either negotiate with, or file a lawsuit against, the insurer if the two sides do not agree on the claim amount."
The act itself took effect on 25 May 2023 as chapter 2023-136; the assignment ban then keys off each policy's own issue-or-renewal date, per the statute quoted above.
What did NOT change, and it is the half nobody mentions
A reform story invites the conclusion that consumers were left with nothing. Florida's motor-vehicle claim-settlement statute, Fla. Stat. 626.9743, is untouched by any of the above and it is specific. Read in full on the state's site, it says an insurer may not, where liability and damages are reasonably clear, recommend that a third-party claimant "make a claim under his or her own policy solely to avoid paying the claim" (2). Where the insurer elects to repair and "specifically requires a particular repair shop," it "shall cause the damaged vehicle to be restored to its physical condition as to performance and appearance immediately prior to the loss at no additional cost to the insured or third-party claimant other than as stated in the policy" (3), Florida's pre-loss-condition duty, and it bites hardest exactly when you were steered. The insurer "may not require the use of replacement parts ... which are not at least equivalent in kind and quality to the damaged parts prior to the loss in terms of fit, appearance, and performance" (4). If a partial loss is settled on an estimate prepared by or for the insurer, you get a copy (7). Betterment and depreciation deductions must be itemised to the dollar and explained in writing on request (6). And before payment for authorised storage stops, the insurer must give notice with 72 hours to move the car (8).
Total-loss valuation methods, and the sales-tax timing rule that goes with them, are in the same section; how that plays out is covered in total loss: why the first check is low. None of these are things you sue on cheaply any more, that is what the first half of this page is about, but they are things a complaint to the Department can be built on, and they are current law.
The fee statute that made small fights possible, and its absence
Until recently, Florida carried one of the strongest consumer fee-shifting rules in insurance law. Here is what s. 627.428 said, quoted from the archived 2022 Florida Statutes on the Senate's own site: upon judgment against an insurer in favor of an insured or beneficiary, the court "shall adjudge or decree against the insurer and in favor of the insured or beneficiary a reasonable sum as fees or compensation for the insured's or beneficiary's attorney prosecuting the suit in which the recovery is had."
That is a one-way street: if you won anything, the insurer paid your lawyer; if you lost, you did not pay theirs. The economics of a small underpayment dispute ran on it.
Search the current Florida Statutes for 627.428 and the official site returns "The statute you have selected cannot be found." The section's own 2022 history line shows the December 2022 special-session acts (chs. 2022-268 and 2022-271) cutting property insurance out of it first; the 2023 civil-remedies act finished the job, and the current compilation carries no automatic insurer-pays rule for these suits. What fee-shifting survives in Florida litigation is narrower and situation-specific, and we are not going to map it here; the point for a repair dispute is that the AUTOMATIC one is gone. A $900 short-pay that was economically litigable in 2021 mostly is not in 2026: which moves the real leverage to the free routes: the state complaint process, the appraisal clause, and documentation. That is not a legal opinion; it is arithmetic.
The two general changes a crash actually feels
The clock. Current 95.11(5)(a): "An action founded on negligence" must be commenced within TWO years, a change made by chapter 2023-15. The House's own final analysis of the bill states the change and, crucially, its reach: it "reduces the statute of limitations for general negligence cases from 4 years to 2 years, with this change applying to causes of action accruing after the effective date of the bill," and records that the act "was approved by the Governor on March 24, 2023, ch. 2023-15, L.O.F., and became effective on that date." So the dividing line is accrual, and the legislature said so in terms: if your crash predates 24 March 2023, the four-year period is the one the analysis describes as applying, and if it is close to that line the boundary is a question for a lawyer, not a web page. Note also that suing your OWN insurer on the policy is a contract action on a written instrument (a different subsection, five years), and your policy may say something shorter. Three different clocks can touch one crash.
The bar. Current 768.81(6): "In a negligence action to which this section applies, any party found to be greater than 50 percent at fault for his or her own harm may not recover any damages." Also chapter 2023-15. Florida moved from pure comparative negligence, which the House analysis traces to the Supreme Court's 1973 Hoffman v. Jones decision and the Legislature's 1986 codification of it, to the modified approach. The analysis works the arithmetic with a car crash: on $100,000 of damages, a plaintiff 49 percent at fault recovers 51 percent; more than 50 percent at fault recovers nothing. In a disputed-liability crash the fault percentage is no longer just a discount on your recovery; past the midpoint it is the whole recovery. Medical-negligence cases under chapter 766 are carved out.
The same 2023 act also rewrote bad-faith standards, the Legislature's summary says it "provides standards for bad faith actions" and "limits applicability of provisions relating to attorney fees in certain actions against insurers." We have read the act's bill page and the sections above first-party; we have not yet read the amended bad-faith section end to end, so this page stops at naming the change rather than characterising it. One adjacent section we DID read, 624.1551, conditions extracontractual suits on a prior adverse adjudication, and on its face it is titled and written for PROPERTY insurers; do not let anyone tell you a rule without showing you who it binds.
The date architecture, in one place
For the glass assignment ban: the POLICY issue-or-renewal date on or after July 1, 2023, controls (627.7289(1)), under an act effective 25 May 2023. For the negligence clock and the fault bar: chapter 2023-15 took effect 24 March 2023, and the House analysis states the two-year period applies "to causes of action accruing after the effective date of the bill", so accrual, not filing date, is the test. For the fee-statute history: property insurance came out of 627.428 in the December 2022 special-session acts, and the section is absent from the current statutes. Two people can read this page with the same damage and different rights. If your dates are close to any of these lines, that boundary IS your legal question.
Related
- Auto glass disclosure laws by state
- Windshield recalibration: what you're owed
- When insurance won't pay for a proper repair
- Deny and delay: the states that name it in law
- Find your state insurance regulator
Sources
Read in full on the State of Florida's own sites on 2026-08-15:
- Fla. Stat. 627.7289 and 627.7291, 2025 Florida Statutes (both created by ch. 2023-136, per their history lines).
- Fla. Stat. 559.920, 2025 Florida Statutes, subsections (17) and (18) added by ch. 2023-136.
- s. 627.428, 2022 Florida Statutes (archived) for the one-way fee text and its history line; the current-statutes lookup returning "cannot be found," read the same day.
- Fla. Stat. 95.11 and 768.81, 2025 Florida Statutes.
- Fla. Stat. 624.1551, 2025 Florida Statutes.
- Fla. Stat. 626.9743, 2025 Florida Statutes, read in full, the what-did-not-change section.
- CS/CS/HB 837 (2023) bill page, Florida Senate: effective date 3/24/2023, chapter 2023-15, and the Legislature's own summary language quoted above. Its final House staff analysis was read the same way as the glass analysis (PDF text layer, in the browser) and supplies the accrual rule, the approval date, the Hoffman v. Jones history and the worked 49/51-percent example.
- CS/SB 1002 (2023) bill page: chapter 2023-136, effective 5/25/2023. Its engrossed text was read for the package's structure; every operative claim above is quoted from the CURRENT statute sections, not the bill.
- Senate Rules Committee staff analysis of CS/SB 1002, the "Windshield Litigation" table and the AOB-mechanism sentence. Read by decompressing and extracting the PDF's own text layer in the browser on 2026-08-15, because the file has no HTML edition; the figures are the analysis's, attributed there to the Florida Department of Financial Services. Note a trap the analysis illustrates: it describes the steering provision as "s. 627.7290," which is the draft numbering, the enacted section is 627.7291. Analyses describe a version; statutes are the law.
This page is not legal advice, and it does not tell you whether to sue anyone. Deadlines and applicability turn on facts we cannot see from here.
General consumer information: not legal, insurance, or financial advice. Requirements, coverage, and practices vary by state, policy, and manufacturer.
Where this fits
Each link says what it is for. We add one only when a reader on this page has a real reason to need that page next.
- What an Insurance Complaint Sets in Motion in Florida (the other half of Florida claim law: what the regulator can do, and the 2023 estimate-alteration rule)