Suing the Government in Florida

You Can Sue the Government in Florida. The Rules Are Different.

When a county bus, a state road crew, or a public hospital injures you, Florida law allows the lawsuit.

Section 768.28 waives the state's sovereign immunity for negligence, the same immunity that once barred these cases entirely.

The waiver comes with a price: recovery is capped at $200,000 per person, and the claim must survive notice requirements that kill cases before they start.

The Legislature voted to raise those caps in 2025 and again in 2026, and the governor vetoed both bills.

So the 2010 numbers still control, and the procedure still decides who recovers.

Here is how a Florida government injury claim actually works, from first notice to the Legislature's own payout process.

Who Counts as "the Government" Under Florida Law

The statute reaches further than most people expect. Sovereign immunity rules apply to claims against:

• The state and its agencies, including the Department of Transportation whose crews maintain every interstate and state road
• Counties and municipalities, from Miami-Dade to the smallest Panhandle town, including their police and fire departments
• School boards, whose buses carry hundreds of thousands of children daily
• Sheriff's offices and their patrol fleets
• Public hospital districts, which operate some of Florida's largest trauma centers
• Transit authorities, water districts, housing authorities, and the rest of the special-district ecosystem

The first question in any serious Florida injury case is whether a government entity sits anywhere in the liability picture, because the moment one does, every deadline and dollar figure changes.^[1] A crash with a city garbage truck is not a normal crash claim wearing a uniform. It is a different legal animal.

The Presuit Notice That Decides These Cases

Before any lawsuit, § 768.28(6) requires presenting the claim in writing to the responsible agency, and for most claims also to the Department of Financial Services. The presentment deadlines are absolute: three years from when the claim accrues for injury cases, two years for wrongful death.

Then the government gets time to investigate: six months for most claims, 90 days for medical malpractice and wrongful death. Silence past the deadline counts as a denial, and only then can suit proceed. The ordinary statute of limitations keeps running through all of it, so the notice period has to be managed inside the filing deadline, not after it.

Get the sequence wrong, notify the wrong entity, or let a deadline pass, and the claim is over regardless of how negligent the government was. Courts enforce these requirements literally. This is the trap that catches unrepresented claimants and general-practice referrals alike, and it is why government cases should be in experienced hands the week they arise, not the month before the deadline.

The $200,000 Cap, and the Claims Bill Path Above It

However badly a government entity hurt you, § 768.28(5) caps what it can pay through the courts: $200,000 per person, $300,000 per incident. A jury can award more, and juries do. The excess simply cannot be collected from the entity without one more step.

That step is the claims bill: a private act the Florida Legislature must pass, and the governor sign, authorizing payment above the cap. Families with catastrophic verdicts spend years lobbying Tallahassee for them. Some claims bills pass and pay millions. Many die in committee session after session while the family waits. It is a political process wearing a legal costume, and any honest valuation of a catastrophic government case has to account for it.

The caps themselves have become an annual Tallahassee fight. The 2025 raise (HB 301) passed the Legislature and was vetoed. The 2026 version (HB 145), which would have lifted the caps to $350,000 and $500,000, passed and was vetoed on June 30, 2026.^[2] Until a raise survives a signature, the 2010 numbers govern every case.

Two more limits complete the picture: punitive damages are never available against a government entity, and the individual employee who hurt you is personally immune unless they acted in bad faith, with malicious purpose, or with wanton disregard. The entity, within its caps, is almost always the real defendant. Where the caps make the difference between recovery and ruin, our Florida damage caps page shows how government cases compare to every other kind.

The Government Cases We See Most in Florida

Transit and fleet crashes. City buses, county trucks, school buses, and police vehicles log millions of Florida miles a year. When one causes a crash, the claim runs through § 768.28 with all its machinery, a sharp contrast to the ordinary crash claims covered by our Florida car accident lawyers.

Road defect and signal cases. Malfunctioning traffic lights, missing signage, standing water on state roads, and construction zones without proper warnings put FDOT or a local government in the case. Notice and maintenance records decide these, and they take time to force out.

Public hospital negligence. Some of Florida's biggest trauma centers are public entities, which means a malpractice claim against them carries both Chapter 766's presuit gauntlet and sovereign immunity's caps and notices, stacked.

Premises cases on public property. Falls in government buildings, drownings at public pools, injuries in county parks. Ordinary premises law supplies the duty; § 768.28 supplies the procedure and the ceiling.