Sued Over a Car You Sold but Never Took Off the Title

Attorney Answer

This is a real exposure, not a nuisance claim. In Florida, a person whose name stays on a vehicle's title can still be treated as an owner and held responsible for how the car is driven afterward. There is a statutory way out for sellers, but it depends on specific steps at the time of the sale — not on the fact that the sale happened.

Start with the statute. Fla. Stat. § 319.22(2)(a) provides: "An owner or co-owner who has made a bona fide sale or transfer of a motor vehicle or mobile home and has delivered possession thereof to a purchaser shall not, by reason of any of the provisions of this chapter, be deemed the owner or co-owner of such vehicle or mobile home so as to be subject to civil liability for the operation of such vehicle or mobile home thereafter by another when such owner or co-owner has fulfilled either of the following requirements:" The two requirements follow. The first is making proper endorsement and delivery of the certificate of title as the chapter requires. The second is delivering to the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles — or placing in the mail addressed to it — either the properly endorsed certificate of title or a notice in the form the department prescribes. Paragraph (2)(b) adds that a seller must notify the department within 30 days after the sale, and that doing so satisfies the second route.

So the question is not whether you meant to sell the car. It is whether you did one of those two things. The case law is blunt about that. In Christensen v. Bowen, 140 So. 3d 498 (Fla. 2014), the Florida Supreme Court treated a titleholder as a beneficial owner of the vehicle, holding that title carries ownership unless it is bare — as where a sale has been completed with delivery — and that the titleholder's subjective intent is not what decides it. If your name remained on the title, expect the other side to lean on exactly that. Whether your sale left you holding bare title, and whether you satisfied one of § 319.22(2)(a)'s two routes, is the heart of your defense.

There is also a ceiling. Fla. Stat. § 324.021(9)(b)3 limits a natural-person owner who loans a vehicle to a permissive user to $100,000 per person and $300,000 per incident for bodily injury and $50,000 for property damage, plus up to an additional $500,000 in economic damages where the user was uninsured or carried less than $500,000 combined. Whether that cap applies to a seller in your position is a question for your lawyer, and it does not shelter any claim that you were negligent yourself.

What you can do

1. Send every page of the suit papers to your auto insurer, including the insurer that covered you when you owned the car. Prompt notice is usually a condition of coverage and of any duty to defend you.

2. Ask a Florida attorney about the deadline printed on those papers. It is short, and missing it can produce a judgment without any hearing on whether you were still an owner.

3. Find the sale documents: the bill of sale, a copy of the title you signed, any notice of sale you sent the department, texts or messages arranging the sale, and anything showing the date you handed over the keys.

4. Request the vehicle's title and registration history from the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. It will show what was recorded and when.

5. Send the other side's adjuster or lawyer to your insurer or your attorney rather than answering questions about the sale yourself.

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. The crash here happened before March 24, 2023, so the four-year period that the former version of Fla. Stat. § 95.11 set for negligence actions is the period that applied to a claim arising from it; a wrongful-death claim runs on a two-year period under Fla. Stat. § 95.11(5)(e). Whether a suit filed now on an older crash gets the older period is a question about how the 2023 amendments apply, and it belongs with a lawyer rather than a page. Meanwhile the deadline that matters most to you right now is the one on the papers you were served, which comes from court rules and runs in weeks, not years. Have a Florida attorney check every date in your file.