The action shall be brought by the decedent’s personal representative, who shall recover for the benefit of the decedent’s survivors and estate all damages, as specified in this act, caused by the injury resulting in death. When a personal injury to the decedent results in death, no action for the personal injury shall survive, and any such action pending at the time of death shall abate. The wrongdoer’s personal representative shall be the defendant if the wrongdoer dies before or pending the action. A defense that would bar or reduce a survivor’s recovery if she or he were the plaintiff may be asserted against the survivor, but shall not affect the recovery of any other survivor.
Fla. Stat. § 768.20
Parties
Known as the Florida Wrongful Death Act
The act spans §§ 768.041 to 768.81 (79 sections).
Applied in 14 court decisions — leading case Engle Cases 4432 Individual Tobacco v. Various Tobacco Companies (2014)
Most recently applied in Mary Sowers v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (September 2020)
History.--s. 1, ch. 72-35; s. 1168, ch. 97-102.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: Online Sunshine (Florida Legislature). Reproduced from public-domain Florida statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.