Buckman v. McDonald, 50 Fla. L. Weekly D1985 (Fla. 2nd DCA Sept. 5, 2025):

The plaintiff sued the defendant for negligence following an accident in Florida. The plaintiff contended that the negligence caused her to sustain permanent injury. She sought treatment from providers in Florida and then years later, in Massachusetts. The defendant argued in closing that the jury should not award the plaintiff any damages, or alternatively, that none of the Massachusetts expenses were related, because they were caused by a subsequent fall and arthritis. The jury awarded the plaintiff only a fraction of her claimed medical expenses, that did not include these treatments.

After the trial, the defendant moved to setoff the jury’s award with discounts that her insurer had negotiated for the Massachusetts expenses, along with the full $8,000 in PIP benefits that she had received for an MRI.

On appeal, the plaintiff argued that the trial court incorrectly applied Florida law in setting off the contractual adjustments for the Massachusetts expenses, which the jury had effectively found were unrelated. She also asserted that there should not have been a set off for the PIP benefits that paid for an MRI bill that the jury did not award.

Although section 768.76(1) requires that the damages awarded be reduced by all amounts from PIP or health insurers, it is axiomatic that all parts of a statute must be read together to achieve a consistent whole. Accordingly, the court concluded that the total of all amounts “paid for the benefit of the claimant,” must be read in the context of the damages that the jury awarded for losses sustained.

Here, the jury determined that the defendant’s negligence did not cause the plaintiff to incur expenses for either the Massachusetts treatment or for the MRI, and did not award the plaintiff and damages for those losses. As such, the trial court erred in entering a setoff for those amounts.