Déjà Vu: House Subcommittee Passes ‘Free Kill' Bill Governor Vetoed Last Year

By Christine Sexton, Florida Phoenix

October 16, 2025

Florida’s Republican-controlled House, undeterred by Gov. Ron DeSantis’s veto earlier this year of identical legislation, is pushing ahead again with an effort to broaden the class of people who can bring wrongful death lawsuits against physicians.

“If you’re feeling a little déjà vu today, it’s because you should be feeling a little déjà vu. We heard this exact bill in this committee,” Fort Pierce Republican and HB 6003 bill sponsor Rep. Dana Trabulsy said Wednesday.

The GOP legislator made her comments before a House panel voted overwhelmingly for the bill that allows parents of single, childless, adult children to sue for non-economic damages such as pain and suffering arising from alleged medical malpractice.

Florida also bans adults (defined as 25 and older) from pursuing wrongful death claims for single parents who die from medical malpractice, and the bill would remove that ban, too. The Legislature adopted the bans during the 1990s as the state wrestled with rising malpractice premiums but Florida remains one of the few states to have such restrictions in place.

HB 6003 cleared the House Civil Justice & Claims Subcommittee with two dissenting votes, although some representatives hinted that their continued support would hinge on changes, including caps on noneconomic damages that could be recovered in all medical malpractice lawsuits.

“While I vote up on this bill today, I am hopeful that in the future, either in this chamber or the next, that reasonable limits will somehow find their way into this bill, thereby achieving the balance and allowing us to achieve justice without inadvertently creating another injustice to replace that one,” said Jacksonville Republican Rep. Dean Black.

HB 6003 reignites a long-standing fight between trial attorneys, organized medicine, and insurance companies over Florida’s medical malpractice laws and the amount of noneconomic damages plaintiffs can recover.

Florida has not had caps on pain and suffering awards in medical malpractice lawsuits since 2014, when the Florida Supreme Court ruled that they are unconstitutional. But the makeup of the court has changed since then, with the majority of the justices having been appointed by DeSantis.

The insurance and business communities see HB 6003 as a vehicle to reinstate the caps, hopeful that a reconfigured DeSantis-appointed court will uphold them.

Representatives of families who’ve been barred under the law from filing lawsuits have repeatedly traveled to Tallahassee to share their stories of heartbreak and testify against what they call the “free kill” law as well as a regulatory system they say allows bad doctors to continue to practice medicine.

Opponents have dubbed the efforts to alter the law as “jackpot justice.”

Both sides squared off at the first stop of the bill.

Tallahassee orthopedic surgeon Andy Borom said he was “offended” by the “free kill” title.

“As if there’s a bunch of physicians who spent their entire adult lives training and taking care of patients who are sitting around salivating at the opportunity to kill people for free. That’s just gross,” he said.

Borom, 58, has been practicing medicine for 25 years. He said he’d consider expediting his retirement if the Legislature were to allow more lawsuits to be filed without capping noneconomic damages.

“There’s enough things that are punishing about the practice of medicine,” said Borom. “Right now, Medicare is cutting rates, the cost of medical practice goes up well in excess of the costs of reimbursement, and then you throw on the hazard of medical liability, which oftentimes doesn’t always comport with actual malpractice, sometimes it’s just somebody looking for a buck.”

He said the legislation could expedite his retirement by 10 years.

“That’s about 40,000 patients that won’t be seen, about 5,000 surgeries that won’t get done,” he said.

Jacksonville resident Cindy Jenkins shared the story of how her 25-year- old daughter, Taylor Jenkins, died in a Florida hospital after waiting for emergency surgery. Devastated, she said she paid for a private autopsy, the results of which, she said, caused the medical examiner to change the cause of death on her death certificate.

She told the committee that following the experience she “set out on a mission to hold the hospital and doctors accountable and, with all due respect to those in favor of this law, I learned that the doctors got a free pass because my daughter had been 25 for two and a half months.”

Jenkins said she filed a complaint against the physician with the Florida Department of Health but that it was dismissed.

As she concluded her testimony, Jenkins countered the claims DeSantis made at a press conference announcing his veto, when he criticized the legislation because it did not reinstate caps on noneconomic damages. She also addressed opponents’ assertions that as many as 1,500 additional lawsuits could be filed if the law was changed.

“I do not want the grave of my dead child danced on nor 1,500 people per year to be able to have access to the courts in return for hurting the masses. I will wear the badge ‘free kill mom’ like honor,” she said, adding, “I will never agree to trade off opening courts to a small percentage of the people to hurt everybody.”

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