Page summary: The reviewed 1990 materials document a survivor expansion and medical-negligence exclusion, but do not meaningfully analyze the exclusion’s interaction with the 1972 remedial exchange, section 768.20, and Martin’s merger rule. Documentary silence supports a question, not mind-reading.
1972: one action and a remedial exchange
Chapter 72-35 created the integrated Act. Martin described the death-causing personal-injury remedy as merging into the wrongful-death action: the decedent’s pain and suffering was eliminated and survivor pain and suffering substituted. Kluger supplies the access-to-courts framework.
1990: expansion accompanied by an exclusion
SB 324 and companion CS/HB 709 proposed including nonminor children within the survivor definition. Enacted Chapter 90-14 simultaneously created the medical-negligence exception now codified as subsection (8).
What the documents show, and do not show
The CS/SB 324 analysis, CS/HB 709 materials, and committee and floor recordings describe how the expansion and exclusion were presented and processed. In the copies reviewed, no developed analysis was located connecting all four parts of the existing structure: the 1972 substitution, section 768.20’s single representative action, Martin’s merger explanation, and the effect of removing specified survivor damages in medical-negligence cases.
- Documented fact
- The reviewed materials describe the expansion and exclusion but do not expressly perform that interaction analysis.
- Reasonable inference
- The remedial interaction may not have been squarely presented or evaluated in the surviving documentary process.
- Not established by silence
- The files do not prove what every legislator privately knew, assumed, or intended.
- Pending argument
- Travis Brett Creighton argues that a court should evaluate the combined remedial effect rather than subsection (8) in isolation.
See the functional-barrier analysis and History timeline.
Published September 11, 2026. Expanded and sources rechecked September 12, 2026.