Florida Personal Injury Laws

Time Limit To File A Personal Injury Lawsuit

In Florida, you typically have four years from the date of the accident or negligence to bring a lawsuit or claim for your personal injuries if you’ve been injured in an accident. Circumstances specific to your case could make that period shorter, so it’s important to consult with an attorney at the earliest possible time to talk about the deadlines and statutes of limitations applicable to your case.

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.

Collecting Damages For Injuries

Collecting damages for injuries in an accident case requires quite an impressive effort. It means getting an attorney who can go after those damages for you. It means pursing a defendant or the person legally responsible for causing those damages. In most accident cases, it is the insurance company of the other party which will be paying for the damages or paying an amount of money for the assessment of damages. In some instances, you may be going after a corporation, and it is the corporation itself paying those damages.

Law Firm Overview

Hi. I’m Joe Lipsky. I’m a personal injury attorney here in Florida. My job is to represent victims who have been seriously injured in accidents. I help people throughout the state who have been involved in any kind of personal injury case, including car accidents slip and falls, and attacks on other business properties. With my team here in our office, I handle all the cases personally. Unlike many attorneys who do personal injury work, every case that comes into my office is handled solely from beginning to end by me. In courtrooms and trials is where I get justice for my clients, whether it be for your medical bills, your loss wages, or your pay and suffering. We use the latest technology. Our office is completely paperless. We use iPads at trial. We are on the cutting edge to do everything we can to maximize our recovery for you. I have more than 20 years of personal injury experience trying cases on behalf of victims who have been injured in any type of accident here in Florida. I have clients who I’ve represented from across the United States, South America, Central America, and Europe. We handle all types of cases. We get maximum results for our clients based on one thing: dedication and hard work. If you hire us, if you allow us the privilege of working on your case, you will have us working full time as your attorneys and your advocates. We fight to get you everything you’re entitled to, and we do not rest until we’re able to do that.

Complicated Pedestrian Accident Cases

Pedestrian accident cases in Florida are typically complicated cases. Often times you don’t have surveillance of the incident itself. If there’s no witnesses, it can often times be your word against the word of the other driver. Obviously drivers in a vehicle who may have caused or been at fault for a pedestrian accident case– they’re always going to try to blame you or blame the pedestrian. So it’s important that you have a law firm that has handled pedestrian accident cases, that can get the proper experts, that can access the vehicle that was involved, because often times the black box data, or the event data recorder within that vehicle can prove critical evidence to speeds, braking, throttling, maneuvering. You want to make sure that that evidence is obtained before that it goes stale.

About David Best

Hi. I’m David Best. I’m one of the founding partners of Best & Anderson. I grew up in Central Florida, in Orlando, from the first grade through the 12, and then I went to Florida State where I majored in math. Then, I moved to Washington to work for the National Security Agency, and went to law school at night and graduated from American University. I came straight down and took the bar, passed it the first time.

Experience

Since then I’ve tried literally hundreds of cases in state court, federal court, all over Florida and in other states, and have even appeared and prevailed in the United States Supreme Court, which very few people have done. I hate to brag, but I’ve been rated the highest rating that the group that rates lawyers can give for 20 years.

Best & Anderson

And our firm then, Best & Anderson, has a preeminent rating by that same company. We can’t affect our ratings. Other lawyers and judges rate us just the way they think we are, and we don’t even have access to how our friends and colleagues rated us. But we are rated the highest we can be, and I’m proud of that.

You hope you don’t have to go to trial, but you want a lawyer that can do it if the case didn’t settle. I think that we have a good law firm. We can try a case, but we settle them because the insurance companies respect us. Thank you for listening to me.

By: David Best

Legal Background

When I went to law school, I had an interest in civil litigation. When I got out I decided I wanted to litigate files. So I went to the best place to cut your teeth doing that, which is insurance defense. After a while I decided I was tired of defending insurance companies and I wanted to make a difference for people who were hurt. In my prior experience, working on the other side. I learned defense tactics, insurance companies policies and and procedures on how they defend claims, on how they defend, mechanisms that they use to defeat claims, defeat suits. My goal is to make sure that the client knows that they are the most important client on my roster. I’m always available. My cell phone is given to them at every client intake meeting. I take calls at all hours of the night, even answer mundane questions like, “What’s happening with my pit payments?” Big firm results, small firm attention, we do everything we can to make sure that our clients know that they are very important to us.

Legal Philosophy

I’ve talked to some of my clients even after they were not my clients, even after we settled their cases just about how their life is going. We want them to think of us as friends, we want them to think of us their companions in this process. We’re not just someone– I mean we are working for them but we’re not just someone that’s working for them, we’re working towards a common goal, which is to make them whole from their injuries. When I can get a settlement that I consider to be good or high quality based on their treatment, injuries, and medical history, that is my favorite part of my entire job. A lot of firms think of their clients as an end result. That’s not how we operate. This is a business but at the end of the day we’re trying to obtain the best result we can for every client we can. Not because of the bottom line, but because when you come in here, we care about you. You are part of our family.

By: Alexander Knapp

Do You Always Need a Lawyer?

Many people ask that question. The truthful answer is no. There are many cases people can handle on their own. If you only have a few aches and pains after a crash and you fully recover after a few weeks, honestly there’s no need for a lawyer. The insurance company will probably be happy to give you a little money to sign a release. But don’t sign anything until you’re sure you’re okay.

Free Consultations

Well, the simple answer is call us. We never charge to discuss a case; and we’ll be happy to tell you your rights and how you could best protect yourself and your family and whether you need a lawyer or not. No presssure. No conditions. We’re happy to help. I’ll even send you my book Smart Lawyer, Smart Clients: What to do in Case of a Car Crash for free.  I’m Evan Fetterman. If you need legal help, call me.

By: Evan Fetterman

Semi-Truck Accident Attorney

Retaining an attorney after you’ve been injured in a big rig trucking accident is essential, but you want to get not just a good lawyer, the best lawyer. You want someone who is qualified, someone who has had experience in handling, in litigating, and hopefully in taking to verdict some big rig tractor trailer truck cases. You need a lawyer who knows the federal regulations. You need a lawyer who is trusted by other lawyers. It’s not good enough to just research a lawyer on the Internet. You want to find out his or her reputation by checking with other lawyers or by checking with organizations to see what her qualifications are and what she has been doing over the course of her career.