Reading aid: These short definitions explain how terms are used on this site. They are general educational descriptions, not legal advice, and a definition may change with the statute, decision, procedure, or factual setting being discussed.
Wrongful-death and malpractice terms
- Wrongful-death action
- A civil action brought by the decedent’s personal representative for the benefit of the estate and the survivors authorized by Florida’s Wrongful Death Act.
- Survivor
- A person included within the statutory definition for a particular remedy. Ordinary family usage and statutory eligibility are not always the same.
- Personal representative
- The person or entity authorized to administer the estate and bring the wrongful-death action. A survivor generally does not file a separate wrongful-death action in the survivor’s own name.
- Medical negligence or medical malpractice
- A claim arising from the alleged failure of a healthcare provider to meet the legally applicable professional standard of care. Negligence, causation, damages, and procedural requirements remain separate questions.
- Presuit
- The investigation, notice, screening, and response process generally required by Chapter 766 before a Florida medical-negligence action may be filed.
- Noneconomic damages
- Damages for nonfinancial harms identified by law, such as specified mental pain and suffering or loss of companionship. They are distinct from provable economic losses.
- Section 768.21(8)
- The provision at the center of this project. It excludes specified adult-family survivors from recovering certain noneconomic wrongful-death damages when the death resulted from medical negligence.
Time-limit terms
- Statute of limitations
- A filing deadline that ordinarily begins from an event or from actual or legally attributed discovery, depending on the governing law.
- Statute of repose
- An outside deadline measured from a specified act or event. It can end a claim even when the injury or evidence was not discovered earlier, subject to the text and recognized exceptions.
- Tolling
- A rule that pauses or extends a limitations period in defined circumstances. Tolling should not be assumed to apply to a repose period.
Court and research terms
- Holding
- A legal proposition necessary to a court’s decision. It is different from background discussion, a party’s argument, dicta, a dissent, or a question the court did not decide.
- Certified question
- A legal question formally identified for review by another court. The wording of the question is not itself a ruling that the asserted proposition is correct.
- Allegation
- A factual or legal contention made by a party or source. An allegation is not an adjudicated fact merely because it appears in a complaint or public record.
- Case-number record
- An entry associated with a court case number. Counting case numbers does not necessarily count unique injuries, claims, families, defendants, or final merits decisions.
- Primary source
- The original legal or official record being discussed, such as a statute, court opinion, docket, bill history, journal, agency production, or authenticated public record.
- Project analysis
- An inference, comparison, legal argument, classification, or research conclusion developed by Florida Hellthcare. It is not an official government conclusion unless an identified source independently says so.
Privacy and publication terms
- Anonymous use
- Use without publishing the respondent’s requested name or attribution. Context can still identify someone, so anonymity cannot be guaranteed merely by removing a name.
- De-identified
- Processed to remove or reduce direct and indirect identifiers. De-identification lowers risk but may not make re-identification impossible.
- Aggregate use
- Use in combined counts, ranges, themes, or summaries rather than as an individually presented account.
- Encrypted at rest
- Stored in a form intended to be unreadable without the separately configured key. This protects stored database content but does not eliminate risks at the sender’s device, during authorized viewing, in exports, or when both the database and key are compromised.
- Directory email verification
- Confirmation that someone used a short-lived link or code delivered to an email address in the imported attorney directory. It is evidence of access to that mailbox at that time, not conclusive proof of identity, Bar status, or authorship.
Advocacy terminology
- “Florida Free Kill”
- Advocacy shorthand for the practical effect asserted in a limited category of medical-negligence wrongful-death cases. It is not statutory language and does not mean Florida law legalizes killing, excuses all malpractice, or eliminates every possible economic claim.
- Medical-Record Reform
- This project’s proposal for more uniform, chronological, integrity-verifiable records and accountable human-supervised tools. It is a reform concept, not an existing Florida mandate or completed technical standard.
For the project’s formal distinctions and correction process, read Research Standards, Sources, and Corrections. For controlling language, follow the cited primary authority and check its current status.