JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Duval County courts saw a torrent of new civil lawsuit filings in March as plaintiffs tried to predate sweeping legal reforms approved by the Florida Legislature.
According to the Clerk of Courts, almost 7,000 cases were filed or awaiting processing last month, compared to just 576 in January and 512 in February.
The deluge came ahead of a raft of changes making it harder to sue insurance companies, property owners and others accused of wrongdoing.
Senate bill sponsor Travis Hutson (R-St. Augustine) said the bill will reduce the number of plaintiffs who believe they’ve “won the litigation lottery.”
But Jacksonville personal injury lawyer Curry Pajcic, president of the Florida Justice Association, calls it “an inhuman ... black-hearted bill.”
The bill gets rid of several longstanding elements of personal injury law, including the right of successful plaintiffs to recoup their legal fees. It also makes it impossible for people to recover any damages if they are more than 51 percent responsible for an accident – often the case in slip-and-fall lawsuits, where someone may be not be paying scrupulous attention when the accident occurs.
But one of the most dramatic changes makes criminal perpetrators responsible parties in civil lawsuits. In the case of the Parkland massacre, for instance, that would mean a jury must consider how much liability Nikolas Cruz bears in the crime. If a jury found Cruz 99 percent responsible for the violence, he would be 99 percent responsible for any damages.
“It’s insanity,” says Pajcic. “If a pedophile kidnaps your child and rapes your child and murders your child, you're angry at the daycare for failing to protect your child. But with this bill, the daycare can blame the very pedophile they're supposed to protect your child from. And that's wrong.”
“The legislators advocating it recognize that the criminal is not going to pay,” says Jacksonville attorney Barry Ansbacher. “What they're really doing and saying, ‘We want to make property owners, business owners and schools less responsible for ensuring public safety.’ And that's really the net effect.”
Sen. Jennifer Bradley, (R- Flemming Island) proposed an amendment that would have eliminated the criminal-fault element. “Where is the fairness in allowing a jury to apportion the fault to the criminal, the rapist, the, murderer, and relive the property owner of its fault for failing to protect the victim in the first place?” she asked during floor debate in the Senate.
Her amendment failed.
Hutson didn’t respond to a request for an interview or comment. But during floor debate, he defended this element of the bill.
“We trust our juries to make life and death decisions in capital punishment cases, right? But now we’re saying that just because this [criminal’s] name is going on a verdict form they’re going to get confused? They’re not going to understand? It’s going to be more difficult to them? I don’t buy that argument.”
Hutson added, “the lawyers will figure it out.”
The bill, which was backed by business and insurance companies, also reduces the statute of limitations for filing negligence claims from four to two years.
Unlike every other new bill, which takes effect the July after it’s passed, this one took effect immediately. One day after lawmakers approved it, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed it into law, issuing a statement saying, “Florida has been considered a judicial hellhole for far too long.”
The bill’s hasty timeline is the reason Duval and other Florida counties saw a surge of new filings, as plaintiffs tried to avail themselves of the old rules before they lost the chance.
It’s also the reason lawmakers truncated public comment on the bill, including from several disabled people who’d traveled from around the state to oppose it (the subject of a particularly affecting ad by the advocacy group Accountable Florida).
“The insurance industry hoisted this bill on the legislature on a Wednesday, and the first hearing was on Friday. No one had even seen the bill,” says Pajcic. “And then they rushed it through the legislature in 15 days. And then they made the bill effective on the date the governor signed it, March 24. Every other bill becomes effective July first. Why? Because the insurance companies will start to start piling up these profits now. They don't want to wait till July the first or October the first.”
“It was Christmas in March for the insurance industry,” says Ansbacher.
Asked about the flood of new filings, the Duval Clerk of Court issued this statement:
Clerks across the State of Florida saw a significant increase in civil filings in anticipation of the passage and signing of House Bill 837 into law. Duval was no exception. Our office’s primary focus has been on processing all of these new filings as quickly as possible. In fact, we have now already processed the vast majority of the newly filed cases. Our normal standard is processing all newly filed cases within 3 business days and, due to the extremely hard work of our team, we anticipate being back to that goal in the near future. We will also continue to coordinate with our partners in the judiciary to address the requirements of this higher volume of cases.