Clay Yarborough has unfinished business in 2025 Session

Sen. Clay Yarborough. Image via Florida Senate.

Sen. Clay Yarborough will chair the Senate Judiciary Committee again, and is looking to land a bill that proved elusive in 2024 this coming year.

“One of the issues I worked on last year that we didn’t get resolution on was a wrongful death exception,” the Jacksonville Republican said.

SB 248 died in the Fiscal Policy Committee. It would have closed a loophole that currently stops the families of certain people over the age of 25 from suing for medical malpractice.

The so-called “free kill” loophole has been on the books for 34 years, Yarborough noted. And it “leaves a gap for those families” without legal options.

“It’s those families that then really have no avenue if there was a legitimate case of negligence,” Yarborough added.

“It’s not that we want to increase legal burdens in our state, but there still needs to be accountability and it leaves these families with no avenue to pursue that, and so that to me is the unjust part because specifically it’s if you’re not married, if you have no kids over 25, and you’re over 25, then there’s no way to seek the accountability for what may have been an act of medical negligence.”

Caps on damages may be one compromise that leads to a successful final product, Yarborough said.

But a lot depends on leadership and what Gov. Ron DeSantis wants to see as well.

Yarborough is also looking at appropriations and infrastructure projects for his district, which includes part of Duval and all of Nassau counties. Road and water projects are particularly key. And the politics of Jacksonville, which has a Democratic Mayor at present, don’t factor into what he says he will carry.

“I would hate for yet another year to go by, if there’s a neighborhood being flooded, for example, and they could benefit from a drainage rehabilitation project or you know something in another part of the city if it’s a road project that is really needed as part of a state road improvement or something like that, then we need to focus on that,” Yarborough said.

Yarborough expects to have more to say in the coming weeks as leadership’s agenda becomes clear.