Florida Car Accident Funding After HB 837: What Changed and What It Means for Your Case

The changes at a glance

If you have a Florida car accident case, or you are about to have one, the ground rules changed on March 24, 2023. That is the day Governor DeSantis signed House Bill 837, the largest rewrite of Florida civil litigation law in decades, and most of it took effect at signing. Four of its changes matter most for car accident cases:

None of this changed what pre-settlement funding is. Funding is still a non-recourse advance against your expected recovery. You repay only if your case wins or settles. What HB 837 changed is how Florida cases are valued and how fast some of them resolve, and both of those things run straight through a funding decision.

First, how Florida car accident claims actually work

Florida is a no-fault state for the first dollars. Your own personal injury protection coverage pays up to $10,000 of medical bills and lost wages regardless of who caused the crash, under Fla. Stat. § 627.736. Two features of PIP trip people up:

• You must get initial treatment within 14 days of the accident, or the benefits are lost.
• Unless a provider certifies an emergency medical condition, the medical payout is capped at $2,500 rather than $10,000.

Everything beyond PIP comes from a liability claim against the at-fault driver. For the pain and suffering component of that claim, Florida imposes a permanency threshold under Fla. Stat. § 627.737. Broadly, the injury must involve one of:

• significant and permanent loss of an important bodily function
• permanent injury within a reasonable degree of medical probability
• significant and permanent scarring or disfigurement
• death

Economic damages like medical bills and lost income do not require the threshold.

HB 837 left that structure alone. PIP, the 14-day rule, and the permanency threshold all still work the way they did. What the reform changed is the litigation around the liability claim: when it must be filed, what happens when fault is shared, how the insurer's conduct is judged, and what the jury sees on medical damages.

What changed on March 24, 2023

The negligence deadline was cut from four years to two

An action founded on negligence must now be brought within two years, under Fla. Stat. § 95.11(4)(a). Before HB 837 it was four. The change applies to causes of action accruing on or after March 24, 2023, which for a car accident case effectively means the date of the crash.

Two years is shorter than it sounds. Serious injuries take months to reach maximum medical improvement, and settlement talks often start only after that. The practical effect is that Florida cases now get filed earlier, litigate on a tighter clock, and give plaintiffs less room to wait out a lowball offer while unrepresented.

The 50% bar replaced pure comparative negligence

Florida used to be a pure comparative negligence state: a plaintiff 80% at fault could still recover 20% of their damages. HB 837 replaced that with a modified system. Under Fla. Stat. § 768.81(6), a party found more than 50% at fault for their own harm recovers nothing. At 50% or below, damages are still reduced in proportion to fault, so a $100,000 case with 30% fault pays $70,000.

Bad faith got a rulebook that favors early tenders

Before HB 837, an insurer that mishandled a clear claim risked a bad faith judgment above the policy limits, and that risk gave plaintiffs leverage. The reform rewrote Fla. Stat. § 624.155. An insurer that tenders the lesser of the policy limits or the amount demanded within 90 days of getting actual notice of a claim with sufficient supporting evidence cannot be sued for bad faith on that claim. The statute also says mere negligence by the insurer is not bad faith by itself, and it places a duty on claimants and their representatives to act in good faith in providing information, making demands, and setting deadlines.

The leverage did not disappear, but it moved. Carriers now have a strong reason to pay clean, limits-capped claims quickly, and plaintiffs have less room to build an above-limits case out of an insurer's slow handling.

Medical damages are now measured by what was actually paid

Fla. Stat. § 768.0427, created by HB 837, standardized what juries see on medical damages. Evidence of past medical expenses that have been satisfied is limited to the amounts actually paid, whatever the source of payment. The statute also requires disclosure when treatment is provided under a letter of protection, the arrangement where a provider treats now in exchange for payment out of the eventual settlement or judgment.

Billed-versus-paid gaps were a real part of how Florida cases were valued before 2023. Compressing them lowered the paper value of many files, which is exactly the kind of repricing an underwriter has to get right.

The crash date decides which rules apply

Because HB 837 applies prospectively, Florida currently runs two regimes side by side, and the crash date picks between them.

Crash before March 24, 2023: the old four-year deadline and pure comparative fault. As of late 2026 these cases are almost out of runway. The last of them time out by March 2027, so an older crash that never became a lawsuit has months, not years.

Crash on or after March 24, 2023: the two-year deadline, the 50% bar, the insurer safe harbor, and the paid-amount evidence rules. By now this is the overwhelming majority of active Florida car accident files.

Why liability evidence matters more than it used to

Under pure comparative fault, a liability dispute moved a case's value up or down. Under the 50% bar it can move the value to zero, which means the evidence that pins down fault percentages carries more weight than it did before 2023.

This shows up most in the cases where fault is genuinely arguable: intersection collisions with conflicting accounts, lane-change disputes, left-turn cases where oncoming speed is contested, and some pedestrian and motorcycle cases. In those files, the police report, scene photos, dashcam or surveillance footage, and independent witnesses are no longer just helpful. They are the difference between a recoverable case and a barred one.

A funding review reads the same evidence the same way. Clear rear-end liability with documented injuries funds much the way it always has. A contested-fault file gets a closer look at what the liability proof actually shows, not because the case is bad, but because the 50% line is now a cliff rather than a slope.

What the 90-day tender rule does to settlement timing

The bad faith safe harbor quietly changed how fast different kinds of cases resolve. When liability is clear and the damages plainly exceed a small policy, the carrier's cheapest move is to tender the limits inside the 90-day window and take bad faith off the table. Those cases now tend to resolve in months.

Contested cases moved the other way. With less above-limits exposure to fear and a plaintiff on a two-year filing clock, carriers can afford to make plaintiffs prove it. Suit gets filed earlier, litigation costs land sooner, and the wait falls on the plaintiff's household.

That split is exactly where non-recourse funding fits. A fast limits tender may mean you never need funding at all. A contested case that will spend two years in litigation is the situation funding was built for: it lets you pay rent and medical costs from the advance instead of accepting whatever ends the wait fastest.

What we look at on a Florida file

Five things decide most Florida car accident funding reviews, and all five live in your attorney's file rather than in your inbox.

• The crash date and filing status. Which regime applies, how much of the two-year window is left, and whether suit is on file.
• The liability evidence. What the police report, photos, and witnesses say about fault percentages, measured against the 50% bar.
• The permanency documentation. Whether a physician has tied a permanent injury to the crash within a reasonable degree of medical probability, since pain and suffering value rides on it.
• The policy limits. Whether the recovery is realistically capped by a small policy, and whether a limits tender has been made or is likely.
• The medicals and liens. Paid amounts, letter of protection arrangements, and health insurer or hospital liens that come off the top of any recovery.

None of that is something you should have to assess yourself, and a thin-looking file is not a reason to stay quiet. Send it in. The review is free and it does not obligate you to anything.

Common questions

Where this leaves things

HB 837 made Florida car accident litigation faster at the edges and harder in the middle. Clean cases against small policies resolve quicker than they used to. Contested cases run on a shorter filing clock, face a fault cliff at 51%, and get valued on paid medical amounts. The reform rewarded documentation and punished delay.

What has not changed is that almost none of this can be judged from the outside. The crash date, the liability proof, the permanency findings, the policy limits, and the lien picture decide what a Florida case is worth and when it will pay, and they are knowable only from the file. If you are waiting on a Florida case and the wait is doing damage, we will read the file and give you a straight answer.

This article reflects Florida law as of August 24, 2026. HB 837 is still being interpreted by Florida's appellate courts, so how its provisions get applied may develop over time. Diamondback Funding re-verifies statutory citations quarterly. If you're reading this well after the verification date above, check current status with your attorney.