Methodology note: This project is building a statewide record of filed Florida medical-malpractice cases. The work can show what entered court. It cannot, by itself, count meritorious claims that never reached a clerk.
The question
The central question is direct: what, if any, claims involving the § 768.21(8) carve-out reach court? The answer requires more than searching for the advocacy phrase “Florida Free Kill.” Pleadings must be read for the decedent, claimant relationships, theory of liability, and remedies requested.
How the first approximately 1,900 case numbers were found
I manually identified approximately 1,900 distinct case numbers through public-records requests and the search or filtering tools offered by individual clerk of court portals. These are not records supplied by the Office of the State Courts Administrator. I have separately purchased the medical-malpractice case-number data OSCA holds electronically from 2000 forward, but I have not yet received that production.
Clerk systems vary by county. Their case types, party searches, date ranges, document labels, downloadable records, and electronic coverage are not uniform. A result found in one portal may require a different method in another. Duplicate cases, transfers, consolidated matters, classification errors, missing pleadings, and incomplete older electronic records must be checked rather than silently counted.
Why complaints and amended complaints
I primarily targeted complaints and amended complaints. A complaint ordinarily identifies why the action was filed, who seeks relief, which defendants and theories are alleged, and which remedies are requested. In a wrongful-death case, those allegations may show the survivor relationships and categories of damages relevant to whether the statutory carve-out is implicated.
A remedy request can help classify a case, but its absence is not conclusive. Pleadings may use general language, be amended later, omit family details, include alternative theories, or reflect strategic drafting. A complaint also states allegations, not adjudicated facts. The analysis must preserve those distinctions.
Information being extracted
- court, county, case number, filing date, and case type;
- decedent and estate status when stated;
- survivor relationships alleged in the pleading;
- medical-negligence and alternative liability theories;
- damages or other remedies requested;
- amendments, transfers, consolidation, dismissal, and available disposition information; and
- source location and a note describing any uncertainty.
What filed cases cannot show
Court records reveal only the claims that entered the judicial system. They cannot directly reveal how many potential claims were rejected by attorneys, abandoned because expert and presuit costs were unaffordable, lost before the family understood the law, or never investigated because legally available damages could not support the expense. Accordingly, an absence of filed carve-out claims would be important evidence of what reached court, but it would not by itself measure the larger population of claims prevented from reaching court.
That missing population requires other evidence, including documented attorney intake and declination information, family accounts, presuit notices that did not become lawsuits, expert-cost evidence, and carefully designed surveys or interviews. Those sources present their own selection and verification limits. They should complement the docket record, not be merged into it without labels.
What the OSCA production may add
When received, the purchased OSCA case-number data can be compared with the manually assembled record. The comparison may reveal missed counties or periods, different coding practices, duplicates, and cases that require pleading retrieval. Receipt will not eliminate the need to inspect complaints because a case number or administrative classification alone does not establish that the carve-out applied.
Supported conclusions and remaining unknowns
The dataset can support carefully qualified findings about filed cases located through the stated methods, the contents of available pleadings, and observable patterns in requested remedies. It cannot prove the total number of negligent deaths, the merits of unadjudicated allegations, or the number of potential claims that never reached court. Publication of counts should include the retrieval date, inclusion rules, duplicate handling, missing-document rate, and corrections log.
This is continuing research. Attorneys, clerks, researchers, and families who can identify a missing case, a classification problem, or a better source are invited to contact the project.