Florida Medical Malpractice Lawyer
Surgery has a risk list, and every patient signs it. What nobody signs up for is the thing that was not on the list: the infection nobody caught for four days, the scan that sat unread, the medication dose that made sense to no one once the chart was reviewed. Families leave the hospital with a result they cannot explain, and the explanation they get is usually a shrug and the phrase these things happen.
I am Louis P. Meyer, Esq., a Senior Attorney at Kanner & Pintaluga, P.A. in Tampa. My practice focuses on personal injury cases across Florida, including medical malpractice claims. This page explains how malpractice cases work in Florida, because they do not work like any other injury case, and the differences start before a lawsuit can even be filed.
What this practice covers
Medical malpractice is a claim that a health care provider, a physician, a hospital, a nurse, a surgeon, fell below the accepted standard of care and that the failure caused injury. The patterns repeat: delayed diagnosis of cancer, stroke, or infection; surgical errors and retained instruments; medication errors; failures in monitoring after a procedure; birth injuries; and emergency room failures to recognize a deteriorating patient.
I handle the full presuit and litigation process for malpractice claims across Florida: obtaining and reviewing the complete medical records, having the care evaluated by qualified medical experts, serving the statutory presuit notice, and negotiating or litigating through the presuit investigation period and beyond. Not every case survives that review, and saying so up front is part of the job.
Most bad outcomes are not malpractice, and the law makes you prove the difference first
Medicine is not a guarantee business. Infections happen after clean surgery. Cancers get found late even with careful doctors. A malpractice case requires proof of three separate things: the care fell below the standard a reasonably careful provider in the same field would have given, that failure caused the injury, and the injury produced real damages. A bad result with competent care is a tragedy. A bad result caused by careless care is a case. The honest work of malpractice evaluation is telling those two apart, and families deserve that evaluation done on the records and by experts, not on hope or anger.
Florida law builds that screening into the process itself. Before suit, a claim must be investigated, and a verified written medical expert opinion must support reasonable grounds for the claim. The claim then goes through a presuit notice and an investigation period before any complaint can be filed. Providers also investigate during that window, and they can make an offer, reject the claim, or admit liability. Cases that clear presuit with strong expert support are in a fundamentally different position from cases filed on instinct.
How I approach this work
Records first, and all of them, because the summary a patient receives is not the chart a case is built on. I work with medical experts in the relevant field to evaluate the standard of care and causation, and I will not serve a presuit notice until an expert has put an opinion in writing as Florida law requires. Under Fla. Stat. § 766.106, the presuit notice triggers a ninety day investigation period, and the presuit process pauses the filing deadline while it runs, which is one more reason the calendar in a malpractice case has to be managed from the first week. You will hear from me whether the records support a claim, and if they do not, you will hear that plainly, with the reasons. Malpractice cases are expensive and slow, and nobody is served by pretending otherwise.
Questions people ask about Florida medical malpractice
What is presuit notice, and why can I not just file a lawsuit?
Under Fla. Stat. § 766.106, before filing a medical malpractice suit in Florida you must serve a notice of intent on each provider you intend to sue, and the provider then has a ninety day presuit investigation period. Before that, your claim must be investigated and supported by a verified written medical expert opinion. A complaint filed without completing presuit can be dismissed, so the process is not a courtesy. It is a gate.
What does the medical expert actually do in my case?
A qualified expert in the same specialty reviews the medical records and gives a written opinion on whether the care met the standard and whether a failure caused the injury. Expert testimony is also required at trial in nearly every malpractice case, because juries are not expected to know medical standards on their own. If no credible expert will support the claim, there is usually no claim to bring.
How long do I have to bring a malpractice claim in Florida?
Under Fla. Stat. § 95.11(4), a malpractice action generally must be started within two years of when the incident happened or when it was discovered, or should have been discovered with reasonable diligence. An outer time limit can bar even undiscovered claims in most situations, and the presuit process must fit inside these deadlines. Because discovery questions are fact specific, old injuries deserve a prompt review rather than an assumption.
The hospital offered to talk about what happened. Should I go in unprepared?
Be careful. Providers and their insurers evaluate exposure from the first internal review, and conversations you have can be documented in ways you do not control. You are entitled to your medical records, and getting the complete chart, including nursing notes, orders, and imaging, matters more than any meeting. Understand the record before you discuss the event with the institution that created it.
What damages can a malpractice case include?
Medical bills for corrective care, future treatment costs, lost earnings and earning capacity, and the human losses Florida law recognizes, including pain, suffering, and loss of the capacity to enjoy life. Where malpractice causes a death, the claim proceeds under Florida’s wrongful death framework through the personal representative for the estate and the survivors. Each category must be proven, which is why damages get documented as carefully as the medicine.
How much does it cost to have my case reviewed?
A records review and expert screening are how malpractice cases begin, and in my practice you will get an honest assessment of whether the records support a claim before any suit is filed. What I will not do is file first and investigate later. In malpractice, the investigation is the case, and a claim the experts will not support helps nobody, least of all the family living with the outcome.
The bottom line
A malpractice case is won in the chart and in the expert review, months before a courtroom is involved. Florida’s presuit system forces that discipline on everyone, and it rewards families who start with complete records and honest questions. The medicine decides whether a case exists. The process decides whether it survives.
Louis P. Meyer, Esq.
Senior Attorney, Kanner & Pintaluga, P.A.
100 S. Ashley Drive, Suite 610, Tampa, FL 33602
Phone: 561-206-2949
Email: lmeyer@kpattorney.com
About the Author
Louis P. Meyer, Esq. is a Senior Attorney at Kanner & Pintaluga, P.A., where his practice focuses on personal injury cases and first party property damage claims across Florida, including medical malpractice claims. He was selected to Florida Rising Stars in 2024, 2025, and 2026. He is bilingual in English and Spanish, writes the LouisTheLawyer publication on Substack, and hosts the podcast Off The Record by Louis Meyer. He holds an LL.M. from the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University, a J.D. from Whittier Law School, and a B.A. from UCLA, graduating with Honors. He was admitted to The Florida Bar on November 23, 2020, Bar No. 1024811. This page is general information about how medical malpractice claims work in Florida. It is not legal advice or a medical opinion about any specific treatment or injury.
Louis P. Meyer, Esq., Senior Attorney, Kanner & Pintaluga, P.A., 100 S. Ashley Drive, Suite 610, Tampa, FL 33602. Phone: 561-206-2949. Email: lmeyer@kpattorney.com.
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