Florida court rewrites workers’ comp deadline rules, overturns 26 years of precedent
Florida’s appeals court has rewritten how workers’ comp carriers must calculate claim deadlines, overturning 26 years of settled precedent.
In an en banc decision handed down on March 23, 2026, the First District Court of Appeal ruled that the word “toll” in section 440.19(2) of the Florida Statutes means to suspend or stop temporarily the two-year statute of limitations clock – not to extend it by creating a separate one-year filing window, as the same court had held since 1999.