Bill refiled to allow more surviving family members to recover damages in medical negligence cases

Rep. Johanna López
A Central Florida lawmaker has refiled a measure that would repeal a Florida law that prevents certain plaintiffs from recovering non-economic damages in medical negligence cases.
HB 25 by Rep. Johanna López, D-Orlando, would create the “Keith Davis Family Protection Act,” in honor of a 62-year-old Navy veteran who died Oct. 15, 2020, of a pulmonary embolism while under a hospital’s care.
His daughter, Sabrina Davis, says her father was admitted with a swollen leg, and a history of blood clots, five days before his death from a “saddle pulmonary embolism.” She has championed the legislation for the past several years.
HB 25 would repeal Florida’s prohibition on the recovery of non-economic damages by adult children of a decedent, and parents of an adult decedent, in wrongful death actions that arise from medical negligence.
According to published reports, the state Department of Health and the state Agency for Health Care Administration investigated the Keith Davis case and found probable cause to believe the physician committed malpractice by failing to treat the blood clot.
The reports note the physician was fined $7,500 and ordered to undergo continuing education classes.
Davis said the hospital offered to discharge her late father’s medical bills and repay her for his funeral expenses if she agreed to sign a non-disclosure and non-disparagement agreement.
She declined and sought a lawyer. But the effort was fruitless, she told an interviewer, when lawyers discovered that her father was unmarried at the time of his death, and that Sabrina Davis was 30.
“I thought I was explaining myself incorrectly,” she told Florida Politics in December 2023. “That’s when the eighth lawyer brought me in and explained Florida Statutes 768.21 (8).”
Former Senate Democratic Leader Lauren Book of Lithia co-sponsored a companion to the López bill in December, 2023. The legislation stalled in Senate Judiciary three months later.
“We are working to ensure equal protection under Florida law and to bring our state into posture with the rest of the nation by eliminating arbitrary carve-outs which leave families of adult children and parents suffering in cases of medical malpractice,” Book said in a written statement.
HB 25 currently has no companion. It faces hearings in the Civil Justice and Claims Subcommittee and House Judiciary.
The 60-day legislative session convenes March 4.