Florida Personal-Injury Demand Package and Response Checklist

A personal-injury demand package is not one standard form. Its contents depend on the claim, audience, available coverage information, factual and medical record, financial support, recovery interests, lawyer-selected positions, and delivery instructions. Start with the exact matter, client, responsible lawyer, recipient and claim identifiers, scope, source cutoff, requested sections, approved demand terms, reviewers, and release authority.

Keep an ordinary presuit demand separate from a proposal for settlement under § 768.79 and Rule 1.442, a civil-remedy notice, a PIP demand, a medical-malpractice presuit notice, a sovereign-immunity claim, a UM or UIM notice or consent issue, and any court-ordered settlement process. The lawyer selects the lane and its authority before staff applies a template, date, service route, or status label.

The responsible lawyer decides liability, fault, causation, injury characterization, damages, coverage, recovery interests, admissibility, value, amount, deadline, negotiation position, legal citations, and what the firm will send. Staff can preserve sources, build verified indexes and tables, assemble the approved package, control versions, and document transmission without making those decisions.

Preserve each as-received incident record, photograph, video, witness statement, medical record, diagnostic report, bill, provider ledger, explanation of benefits, wage or loss record, insurance communication, benefit or recovery document, and client-impact source. Give each item a stable source ID, version, date or period, page count, origin, storage link, and verification status. Keep originals separate from working copies and summaries.

Florida Statutes § 627.4137 describes specified liability-insurance disclosures following a written claimant request, including a 30-day response requirement for the insurer disclosure addressed by the statute and immediate amendment upon discovery of facts calling for one. That is not a universal deadline to answer a personal-injury demand. The lawyer decides whether the statute and its insurer, insured, agent, or self-insured branches apply, the request language, recipient, timing, sufficiency, amendment implications, and any response. Staff records the exact request, delivery evidence, received disclosure, policy copy, stated coverage information, later amendments, and exceptions without treating the disclosure as a coverage opinion.

Use the medical-record chronology as a navigation layer, not as evidence or a medical opinion. Each material entry should link to the exact provider, record type, date label, page, and source wording. Keep service, order, result, procedure, signature, and posting dates distinct; preserve negation, uncertainty, copied-forward history, corrections, addenda, conflicts, and gaps.

Staff and AI must not diagnose, interpret imaging, decide causation, necessity, relatedness, prognosis, permanency, impairment, or evidentiary weight. A trained human opens every cited source, and the lawyer or qualified professional controls every medical or legal characterization used in the demand.

A provider bill, provider ledger, explanation of benefits, payment, adjustment, write-off, collection notice, and balance are different records. Build a source-linked ledger that preserves the source's transaction label and keeps charges, allowed amounts, insurer responsibility, insurer payments, patient responsibility, patient payments, adjustments, refunds, and balances separate. Show approved calculations with their operands, sources, formula, cutoff, precision, and independent recomputation.

Florida Statutes §§ 768.0427 and 768.76 address different medical-expense, letter-of-protection, collateral-source, subrogation, and reimbursement issues. They do not turn the staff ledger into a recoverable-damages calculation. The lawyer decides applicability, required disclosures, evidentiary treatment, reimbursement rights, notice, and the amount or characterization used in a demand.

CMS describes Medicare conditional payments and its recovery process following a settlement, judgment, award, or other payment. Use the lawyer-approved Medicare Secondary Payer workflow and distinguish an interim conditional payment amount from a final recovery demand. Staff should not call every possible recovery interest a lien, infer that a balance is final, or treat a portal status as the lawyer's resolution decision.

Build the package index from the lawyer-approved category map and frozen source set. For each proposed item, record its stable ID, neutral title, source class, author or holder, displayed date or period, page count, pinpoint support, version, confidentiality treatment, verification status, and proposed package location. Do not treat the index, chronology, or ledger as a replacement for the underlying evidence.

Then create an assembly manifest listing the exact files, order, exhibit labels, page ranges, redactions, confidentiality handling, and relationship to the approved proposition or demand section. A second reviewer should be able to reproduce the complete proposed package and identify every omission, duplicate, superseded item, broken citation, or unresolved exception.

Build a claim-to-source matrix before drafting. Each proposed material statement or amount should have a proposition ID, section, exact wording or calculation, source and pinpoint citation, classification, verification status, and lawyer approval. Give an approved AI system only the authorized input set and instructions; require visible gap markers and prohibit new facts, citations, theories, medical conclusions, amounts, deadlines, or demand terms.

Florida Ethics Opinion 24-1 is an advisory opinion, not a binding court rule. It emphasizes confidentiality, competence, supervision, accurate work, billing, and lawyer responsibility when generative AI is used. Verify the exact product, account, retention, training, sharing, integrations, access, export, deletion, and incident controls before protected information is exposed. A confident AI output, second AI review, or citation-looking reference is not source verification.

Compare the complete draft against the proposition matrix, chronology, ledger, index, source set, correspondence, and instructions. The lawyer approves every substantive statement and the final amount, terms, response language, date, and release decision.

Review the exact files that will leave the firm—not an earlier draft or source folder. Verify the recipient and delivery route, claim identifiers, clean approved letter, signatures, amount and terms, response language, exhibit order, file names, page counts, bookmarks, redactions, confidentiality, accessibility, metadata, hidden text, comments, prompts, placeholders, and delivery limits. Confirm that every manifest entry matches the release set.

Transmit only after documented lawyer approval. Freeze the exact as-sent letter and attachments together with recipient details, channel, sent time, delivery or upload proof, failures, and sender. Submitted, delivered, acknowledged, responded, accepted, settled, and paid are separate statuses.

Preserve every email, letter, portal item, enclosure, delivery event, voicemail record, and contemporaneous call note in its original context. Give each event a stable ID and record the source-displayed date, received date, parties, channel, exact amount or term, requests, conditions, attachments, status, verification, owner, and lawyer instruction. Never replace an earlier offer, request, correction, or communication with the latest version.

Keep demand, sent, delivered, acknowledged, sender-stated response, internal target, lawyer-calculated deadline, offer, expiration, agreement, settlement, release, payment, clearance, and closure dates separate. Staff should not characterize language as an offer, counteroffer, acceptance, rejection, denial, waiver, coverage decision, bad-faith event, release, or settlement without lawyer approval, and should route any possible formal litigation offer or proposal immediately.

Florida Statutes § 90.408 addresses admissibility of compromise evidence for a stated purpose; it does not justify labeling every settlement communication privileged or categorically confidential. Preserve the exact communication and applicable confidentiality instructions while the lawyer determines its legal treatment and permitted use.

Florida Statutes § 627.4265 addresses payment after a written settlement agreement between a person and an insurer and states a 20-day tender rule subject to the agreement and release language. Sending a demand does not trigger that rule. The lawyer decides whether the statute applies, when a written settlement was reached, what the agreement requires, whether a release condition is satisfied, what date controls, and what action follows. Staff records the source events and follows the lawyer's written instructions rather than starting a universal settlement-payment timer.

If the claimant is a minor or ward, create a visible § 744.387 court-approval and guardianship branch and stop for lawyer direction; staff must not infer settlement or release authority from a parent or other person's signature. Keep Medicare, Medicaid under § 409.910, ERISA, workers' compensation, provider, and other asserted recovery interests in separate lawyer-controlled tracks through approved resolution, payment, or holdback evidence.