An Old Injury Claim and an Attorney You Cannot Reach

Attorney Answer

You may well be right about the deadline — but do not stop there. The first thing to find out is whether either lawyer actually filed a lawsuit, because a case that was filed in time is a different situation entirely, and it may still exist. That is a question you can answer yourself, today, for free.

Here is why it matters. A limitations period governs when a lawsuit must be filed, not when a case must be finished. If a complaint was filed before the deadline ran, the clock stopped mattering at that moment, and the case may be sitting somewhere — active, dormant, or dismissed — under your name. Court records are public. The clerk of court in the county where the crash happened maintains a searchable index of civil cases, and clerks are used to this call. Ask whether any case was filed with you as the plaintiff, and ask what its status is.

If nothing was ever filed, the deadline is the problem. For negligence claims arising before March 24, 2023, the period was four years under the earlier text of Fla. Stat. § 95.11. A claim from 2016 is very likely outside that period. I am not going to tell you it certainly is: whether anything tolled or interrupted the period, and how the change in the law interacts with an older claim, are not questions a page can settle on facts it cannot see. But you should treat the answer as probably yes, and act quickly rather than slowly.

There is a second claim buried in what you described, and it is the one worth a lawyer's attention. When a lawyer takes a case, cannot be reached, transfers it, and the client never learns what happened, the question of whether the lawyer's handling caused a loss is a separate kind of case with its own rules, its own proof requirements, and its own deadline — one that can be shorter than you expect and that can start running when you knew or should have known there was a problem. That deadline is a reason to move now rather than after you have finished investigating. This page is not the place to evaluate that claim, and neither is a self-assessment; it needs a Florida attorney who handles claims against lawyers.

You are also entitled to know what happened to your own matter. Write to both firms and ask for your file and a written statement of the case's status. Even if the firms have closed or moved, files and successor contacts can usually be traced, and The Florida Bar publishes a public directory of licensed Florida attorneys that will give you a current address for a lawyer whose name you remember.

What you can do

1. Call or search the clerk of court in the county where the crash happened and ask whether a civil case was ever filed in your name. Get a case number if there is one.

2. Look up both lawyers in The Florida Bar's public member directory to get current contact information, or the firm that took over their practice.

3. Write to each firm and ask for your complete file and a written status of the matter. Keep copies of the letters and the date you sent them.

4. Gather what you still have from 2016 — the crash report, the MRI report, physical therapy records, any fee agreement, and any letters or texts from either lawyer.

5. Write down the timeline as best you remember it: when you hired each lawyer, when contact stopped, and when you realized nothing was happening. Those dates matter to more than one question.

6. Take all of it to a Florida attorney who handles legal malpractice claims, this month rather than later, and ask both questions at once — whether anything remains on the accident claim, and whether there is a claim about how it was handled.

Most lawyers offer a brief initial call at no cost, and a few minutes on your specific facts is worth more than any general guidance, including this page.

⏱ Time limits apply. For negligence claims arising before March 24, 2023, the former four-year period under the earlier text of Fla. Stat. § 95.11 applied; a 2023 law shortened the period to two years under § 95.11(5)(a) for later claims. A claim about how a lawyer handled a case runs on its own separate deadline, which is not the same one and can be shorter than people assume. Whether either period has run on your facts — and whether a filing already stopped one of them — depends on records only a Florida attorney reviewing them can assess. This page does not calculate any date.