Florida Personal Injury Laws

Additional Compensation, Big Rig Truck Hits A Car

When a truck driver of the big rig loses control and causes an accident which injures you, you can seek recovery from that driver and from his or her employer, or the person, or company owning the vehicle itself. Sometimes the driver himself or herself may not have direct insurance coverage and you actually obtain the recovery through the employer or the owner of the vehicle.

Brain Injury Lawsuit Filed By A Loved One

In Florida, a person can file a brain injury lawsuit on behalf of the loved one under certain circumstances. If you are a parent and it is a child who is a minor, yes, you can bring that lawsuit on behalf of your child. In other circumstances, it may require a guardianship to be set up so that you are appointed as the guardian by a guardianship judge in probate and estate court. Once you are assigned as the guardian by the judge, you then bring the lawsuit on behalf of the person in your capacity as his or her guardian.

Limits On Damage Recovery

There are no limits on the damages you can recover in a car wreck or a truck wreck case. However, the judge will tell the members of the jury that each juror is to user his or her best judgment and discretion in determining what the assessment will be as to those damages, and the judge will explain to the jurors that each is to be reasonable as the members of the jury discuss what is the appropriate amount to award in a given case.

Victim Of A Hit And Run

Two things you want to do if you believe you were the victim of a hit and run in Florida. One, you always want to make sure in Florida that you carry uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage under your own policy. Oftentimes, because of a phantom vehicle or a hit-and-run vehicle, you can look to your own insurance coverage to recover for your damages or loss if the at-fault hit-and-run driver is unable to be identified. Two, it’s imperative that you contact the police so that the hit-and-run crash is documented. That way, possibility, the police can identify the vehicle through witnesses, and at least it’s documented that there has been a crash that caused either injuries to yourself or property damage to your vehicle.

Recovery From An Accident

If you’ve been injured in an accident in the state of Florida, you can recover or may be able to recover certain items relevant to damages. They’re generally broken down into two categories which are economic damages and non-economic damages. Economic damages include things such as your past and future medical bills, your past lost wages, your future lost or diminished earning capacity, and any out-of-pocket expenses you might have had, which would include things such as property damage to your car. The second category is non-economic damages and that includes things such as inconvenience, physical pain, mental anguish, and lost or diminished capacity for the enjoyment of life

Defective Product Case With Limited Evidence

It is very difficult to pursue a product liability case without having the actual product that is alleged to be defective. Unfortunately, all too often, folks will approach our law firm about pursuing a product defect case or a dangerous medical device case, but that device itself or that product itself has been destroyed or is no longer in existence. If you believe that you’ve been injured by a defective product, you must take all steps to preserve that evidence which will become crucial in the case because both the defense and your own lawyers will have experts that will look at that device and determine whether or not it’s in fact defective. So, it’s very difficult to pursue a product defect case without the actual device that is alleged to be defective.

Witnessed A Car Accident

First, it’s important to contact the police. If you witness an automobile accident in Florida, you could be the only person that has relevant and material information to that particular crash that will help the police later, or will help lawyers later, or claims adjustors later, be able to determine who is at fault in the claims handling process. That’s the first thing. You absolutely need to make sure that you contact the police.

Second, if you safely can, you want to document what happened as much as possible. Identify the vehicles involved, witnesses who may have seen what happened, physical evidence that may be at the scene, debris in the roadway, skid marks. And in this day and age with technology and camera phones, if you can safely do it, it’s important that you document as best as you can any evidence there at the scene to help in the claims handling process down the road.

Insurance Companies Evaluating Your Losses

Insurance companies will evaluate your losses based on your economic and what we call your noneconomic damages. Your economic damages; what are your medical bills from the date of the crash up until the time of the trial or until the time of the settlement conference and what are your medical bills in the future that a doctor can determine are reasonably related to the crash itself. Also, what are your economic losses for missing work or your wage loss. Have you lost work as a result of this crash in the past, will you lose work in the future? So that’s the economic component that the insurance company will assess.

Aside from that is the noneconomic or the human damages element; what is the pain and suffering that you have experienced in the past and into the future related to a crash. What is your mental anguish, your loss of enjoyment of life? And while those damages are not as easily quantifiable as your economic damages, the insurance company will try to place a value on all of those damages together and that will determine what kind of money they may be willing to offer you to settle a case.

Orlando Medical Malpractice

I want to talk to you a little bit about medical malpractice. This firm has handled medical malpractice for many, many years, both for the defense and for the injured patient. In fact, I personally do a lot of medical malpractice.

Keys to Successful Malpractice Litigation

For starters, you have to have a case where some medical healthcare provider – a doctor or a hospital through its nurse or somebody – did something that a reasonably careful person wouldn’t have done, or they failed to do something that a reasonably careful healthcare provider would have done.

You might technically have a case if you’re not severely injured, but to make it make sense, to prosecute a case, for us to handle it, there needs to be some significant injury – not necessarily a horrible injury, but a significant injury. For starters, you have to have somebody who knows the medicine.

Malpractice Case Experience

We’ve handled so many of these cases. We know a lot of the medicine. We’re not doctors, but we do have doctors that we’ve worked with for many, many years to consult with us and tell us whether the healthcare provider deviated from the appropriate standard of care, or whether there was just an inherent risk in the procedure and there was no negligence.

But this is something that’s really hard for somebody – a lay person or an injured patient – to figure out by themselves. That’s why you probably, if you think you’ve got a medical malpractice case, you ought to call somebody who does a lot of that. We do, and we’d sure be happy to talk to you. Thank you very much.

By: David Best