Outsized Verdicts Persist in Florida Despite Tort Reform: What Businesses and Insurers Need to Know

Introduction

When Florida enacted House Bill 837 (“HB 837”) in March 2023, the defense bar, insurance industry, and corporate risk managers hoped the era of the Florida nuclear verdict was ending. More than three and a half years later, that hope remains unrealized. Post-reform cases are now reaching Florida juries, which are increasingly returning multimillion-dollar verdicts against corporate and insured defendants.

The Trend Towards Outsized Verdicts

A “nuclear” verdict is a jury award of many millions of dollars (often defined as $10 million or more) that bears no reasonable relationship to a plaintiff’s actual economic damages. The same dynamic increasingly produces outsized verdicts below that threshold, where economic damages are a small fraction of the total award. Florida plaintiffs’ attorneys routinely pursue such verdicts even where liability is defensible and economic damages are manageable.
These verdicts stem primarily from exorbitant non-economic damages grounded in jurors’ perceptions of plaintiffs’ pain and suffering. Plaintiffs’ attorneys amplify those perceptions through theatrical presentations of suggested dollar values for non-economic harm, known as “anchoring” arguments, including “per diem” frameworks. A frequent device in Florida (though prohibited in states such as Virginia and Illinois) is asking jurors to award an hourly minimum wage for every waking hour the plaintiff will spend in pain. These arguments resonate with jurors who sympathize with plaintiffs or harbor anti-corporate and anti-insurance sentiment.

HB 837 and Its Limitations

HB 837 replaced pure comparative negligence with a modified regime that bars recovery for a plaintiff found more than 50% at fault. It also revised the rules for presenting evidence of past medical expenses, requiring disclosure of referral arrangements such as letters of protection, to tie admissible amounts more closely to what a plaintiff (or the plaintiff’s health insurer) actually paid. The expectation was that greater transparency, combined with a meaningful fault threshold, would rein in outsized verdicts.

Critically, HB 837 did not alter how evidence of non-economic damages may be presented to jurors or how juries may calculate such damages. With HB 837 restricting their options, personal injury attorneys have doubled down on strategies for soliciting large non-economic awards. Recent verdicts suggest those awards are rising across the Sunshine State and are increasingly unrelated to the dollar amounts of plaintiffs’ medical bills.

Recent Verdicts

According to a 2026 Marathon Strategies study, Florida had 20 nuclear verdicts in 2025 and ranked fifth nationally for nuclear verdicts against corporate defendants, up significantly from tenth place in 2024. These studies show that Florida is among the most litigious states for personal injury claims, and the problem extends well beyond the $10 million threshold. Several verdicts from the past year illustrate juries awarding pain and suffering damages many multiples above past medical expenses:

• Huber v. Jayram, Inc., d/b/a Parkside Food and Gas (Leon County, June 10, 2026). A customer struck by a closing security gate shutter at a Tallahassee gas station obtained a $4,440,958.42 verdict. Against past medical expenses of $39,319.87, the jury awarded $3,879,111.25 in pain and suffering, nearly 99 times those expenses.

• Rattansingh v. Soares and SDM Transport Inc. (Orange County, February 11, 2026). In a trucking collision with disputed liability and causation, the plaintiff obtained a $4,713,327.31 verdict against a motor carrier and its driver. Against past medical expenses of $113,327.30, the jury awarded $3,300,000 in non-economic damages, 29 times those expenses.

• McMillan v. GEICO General Insurance (Seminole County, January 23, 2026). In an uninsured/underinsured motorist case arising from successive collisions, with negligence admitted but causation and damages disputed, the jury returned a $4,405,392.91 verdict. Against past medical expenses of $122,742.91, the jury awarded $3,185,000 in pain and suffering, nearly 26 times those expenses.

• McClellon v. GM Expedite LLC (Middle District of Florida, October 8, 2025). A passenger rear-ended by a tractor-trailer obtained a $6,500,000 verdict. Against past medical expenses of $124,000, the jury awarded $5,860,000 in pain and suffering, 47 times those expenses.

In September 2026, Morgan & Morgan obtained two substantial jury awards despite legitimate defenses raised by the corporate defendants. In Jacksonville, a plaintiff obtained an $18 million verdict after counsel asked the jury for only $12 million, with past medical damages of around $100,000. When a jury is capable of awarding 50% more than plaintiff’s counsel sought (and 180 times past medical expenses), businesses and their insurers must be on high alert.

Less than a week later, Morgan & Morgan obtained a verdict of more than $9 million in a Tampa case involving heavily contested liability and strong comparative fault defenses. When a jury hears robust evidence of a plaintiff’s own responsibility for his injuries and still returns a “near-nuclear” verdict, defense stakeholders must reckon with how today’s jurors view corporate defendants.

The nuances of these verdicts will be debated, but jurors’ message to corporate defendants in Florida negligence cases is clear: tort reform has not tempered their propensity to award massive non-economic damages. If anything, the pattern suggests an uncomfortable truth: more jurors than ever may view a personal injury judgment as a means of shifting the risk and costs of accidents from the “ordinary” person to corporate entities, irrespective of legal arguments about liability, causation, or damages.

Industry Impacts

Transportation

Motor carriers remain prime targets, as many of the highlighted verdicts arose from motor vehicle collisions. Carriers should confirm that primary and excess limits are adequate for verdicts in the $5 million to $20 million range and prepare to meet anchoring arguments with a credible alternative damages framework. They should also expect rising premiums as freight operators bear the brunt of increasing legal costs driven by an emboldened plaintiffs’ bar.

Hospitality and Retail

Hospitality and retail operators face greater exposure than ever in Florida premises liability claims. Employee training, prompt incident documentation, and early evaluation of serious injury claims are essential, while similar concerns over rising insurance premiums and defense costs loom large.

Insurers

For insurers, Florida’s trend toward outsized verdicts demands a revised exposure calculus. The McMillan verdict arose in a case brought directly against GEICO as an uninsured/underinsured motorist carrier, illustrating that jurors will impose substantial non-economic awards when an insurer sits at counsel table. Claims professionals should value exposure based on Florida’s actual verdict environment rather than reform-era expectations, document timely and reasonable handling of policy-limits demands, and engage trial counsel early in claims alleging permanent injury.

Conclusion

HB 837 did not change the most important engine of outsized verdicts in Florida: the unrestricted presentation of non-economic damages to sympathetic jurors. Until that changes, transportation, hospitality/retail, and insurance clients in Florida should assume that any claim alleging permanent injury may carry multimillion-dollar exposure, regardless of disputed liability or modest economic damages. The companies best positioned to manage that risk will evaluate claims early, resource them for trial, and develop a damages strategy that confronts anchoring arguments head-on.