Barnett v. State, Department of Financial Services
Survivors of a mass shooting sued DCF for negligently failing to protect the victims from the shooter, and disputed whether section 768.28(5)'s $200,000 aggregate cap applied once to all claims or separately per victim. The Florida Supreme Court held that the phrase 'same incident or occurrence' refers to the injury-causing event (here, the shooter's single criminal episode), not to each individual victim's shooting and not to the state actor's negligent omissions, so a single $200,000 aggregate cap limits recovery for all claims from the mass shooting.
Key facts
- Survivors of a mass shooting sued the Department of Financial Services for negligently failing to protect victims from the shooter.
- The trial court and parties disputed whether Florida's $200,000 aggregate cap on state liability applied once per shooting or separately to each victim.
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Why it matters
This is the controlling Florida Supreme Court authority on how the section 768.28(5) aggregate cap applies to multi-victim events, foreclosing plaintiffs' per-victim aggregation theory in mass-casualty tort suits… — full analysis with a trial
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