Families
Recognize whether Florida’s survivor restrictions may affect your family and why an attorney may decline before investigating the merits.
Florida law • family loss • public accountability
When a medical death is treated differently.
Florida law permits specified families to recover for mental pain and suffering after a wrongful death, then removes those damages from specified adult-family survivors when the claim is medical negligence. Other procedural and time barriers can prevent any court from reaching the evidence.
The issue in plain English
One death. Different legal treatment.
The disputed classification turns on the cause of death and the survivor’s family relationship, not on whether negligence can be proven.
Death caused by ordinary negligence
Florida’s Wrongful Death Act can permit adult children, when there is no surviving spouse, and qualifying parents of an adult child to seek specified noneconomic damages.
Death caused by medical negligence
Section 768.21(8) removes those specified mental-pain-and-suffering and companionship damages for the same classes of adult-family survivors.
Precision matters: the law does not legalize killing, excuse all malpractice, or erase every possible economic claim. “Florida Free Kill” is advocacy shorthand for the asserted practical effect in cases where excluded noneconomic damages are the only meaningful recovery and Chapter 766 makes a case economically impossible to bring.
Use the work
Choose your path.
Start with the question or role that brought you here. The guided routes lead to the same underlying sources without requiring every reader to begin in the same place.
Attorneys
Review the operative statutes, controlling cases, primary sources, pending challenges, and attorney practice evidence.
Policymakers and advocates
Trace the human effect, legislative history, crisis premises, judicial treatment, repeal efforts, and reform options.
Researchers and journalists
Inspect sources, methods, data limits, claim labels, citation guidance, and interview paths.
Connected barriers
The problem is larger than one sentence in one statute.
Damages exclusion
Section 768.21(8) removes specified wrongful-death noneconomic damages from adult children and parents of adult children in medical-negligence cases.
Presuit economics and classification risk
Chapter 766 ordinarily requires investigation and corroboration before suit. Counsel also must anticipate whether a court may later classify a claim as medical negligence.
Repose
Section 95.11 imposes an outside time limit that can extinguish a medical-malpractice action, subject to limited statutory exceptions.
For legal readers: the Demonstrative Composite Restatement shows how separate wrongful-death, probate, presuit, damages, counsel, and repose rules may operate together.
Why this site exists
Grief became an investigation.
After losing both of my parents to care I believe involved medical negligence, I learned that the merits were not the only threshold question. Family status, expert costs, procedural rules, and absolute time bars could determine whether any court would ever hear the evidence.
A documented public record
Research built to be checked.
This project follows enacted text, decisions, legislative records, court filings, public-records productions, and clearly labeled project analysis.
The researcher behind the record
Travis Brett Creighton
Travis began this work after losing both parents to care he believes involved medical negligence. His investigation expanded into an independent reconstruction of Florida’s medical-malpractice wrongful-death and repose history.
He is the founder, author, and researcher of Florida Hellthcare. Journalists, attorneys, scholars, families, and policymakers are invited to examine, test, and challenge the record.
Support the continuing work
Help preserve, investigate, and publish the record.
The work has required public-records fees, clerk records, archival research, litigation records, technology, travel, and sustained personal time. Support can help address past costs and liabilities while making the next stage possible.
What support can sustain
Research acquisition, preservation, hosting, AI and software subscriptions, computing hardware, copying, travel, lodging, meals, publication, and related project needs.
Transparency before contribution
Florida Hellthcare is an independent project, not a tax-exempt charity. Support is generally unrestricted unless a specific written restriction is accepted.
Project updates
Continuing work and project updates.
A Remedy Given, Then Forgotten: Florida’s 1972 and 1990 Wrongful-Death Changes
What the reviewed 1990 materials document—and do not meaningfully analyze—about the 1972 remedy, section 768.20, Martin, and subsection 768.21(8).
Demonstrative Composite Restatement: The Florida Medical-Negligence Death Remedy and Procedure Act
A complete twelve-section analytical restatement of the combined operation of Florida wrongful-death, probate, presuit, records, damages, counsel, limitation, and repose provisions.
What, If Any, Claims Reach Court? Building a Statewide Record of Florida Medical-Malpractice Cases
How 1,907 records were assembled and reviewed, why complaints matter, what the September 4, 2026 OSCA production adds, and what filed cases cannot show.