Florida Personal Injury Laws

Key Information On Medical Device Injury

It’s important if you believe you or a loved one have been injured by a medical device. As in other product liability cases, you want to make sure that you preserve the evidence. Often times the laboratory at a hospital during perhaps a revision surgery and a hip surgery, when a defective hip is removed and a new one is put in, it’s important that that evidence be preserved. A lot of times it takes an attorney or a least a loved one to make sure that gets coordinated through the hospital’s laboratory so that evidence can be preserved. As in other cases, not only is it important to preserve the evidence that will become relevant to prove the product is defective later, but it’s important that the injuries are documented. That’s photographs, video documenting of the injuries that a person may be going through, which obviously they will heal over time. If that’s not documented in the beginning, that’s obviously crucial evidence that’s lost.

Entitled To File A Lawsuit

The way you will learn whether or not you’re entitled to file a lawsuit due to your accident, will come as a result of your obtaining the advice – the input of an attorney, once he or she has investigated and evaluated the case. That attorney will then tell you whether or not you have a viable case, and if so, when the time is to file that lawsuit.

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.

Premises Liability Claims in Orlando

Here at Best & Anderson we handle a multitude of cases and kinds of cases. One of those is premises liability. It’s probably the one concept in the law that most people don’t know or understand. Clearly, if you were walking down the sidewalk and a pit bull dog runs out of somebody’s yard and bites you, you would probably figure you have a case – and you probably would. But the rest of the concept is a little more complicated.

Business Premises Liability

If you go to a business – let’s say a convenience store, a bar even, a restaurant, or even an apartment complex – and you’re the victim of a crime, and the criminal is not even related to the business, most people think that’s just a criminal matter for the police. But, in fact, it may be a matter that can be handled in civil court, and you may be entitled to damages for your injuries.

You hear about people that have been abducted and attacked sexually at a business, and no one would ordinarily think they’d have a case because the business owner didn’t cause that directly. But if the business allows a condition to exist, a danger zone to exist, and they knew or should have known that there’s a danger there and they do nothing to correct it, they can be liable. That’s called a foreseeable zone of risk. So, if reasonable people that own a business know of prior criminal activities or the likelihood of disorderly conduct, they have to correct it.

Investigation & Litigation

If someone gets injured even by a criminal unrelated to the business, they could have a case. And you really don’t know ahead of time whether the insurance company or the business has told the truth. You don’t know whether there’ve been prior incidents on that property or not.

Even if you file a claim, you can’t find out what happened without doing investigation. That’s what we do. We get crime grids and we find out how many crimes have been committed on their property. Then, if we can establish that they knew or should have known that there was a danger and someone got injured from that, you could have a good case. Thank you for listening to me.

By: David Best

What Is A Deposition

In any case in litigation, the parties are permitted to take depositions of witnesses, including depositions of the parties in the case. A deposition is basically an interview or a sworn statement, where the attorney for one side sits down at a conference room table and questions the witness or the other party under oath to obtain information and answers about the case.

Comparative Negligence On A Pedestrian

Comparative negligence on a pedestrian accident case in Florida means that the relative fault of the parties involved in an accident is compared against each other. And in Florida, we’re a pure comparative negligence state, meaning even if you’re partially at fault or mostly at fault, you can still recover damages if another party is determined to be some percentage at fault. Just your damages are reduced by the amount that is determined to be your share of fault. It’s important in a pedestrian accident case that you have attorneys that know how to handle those cases because you are always going to be blamed in a pedestrian accident case for causing your injuries, and it’s important that you have reputable attorneys that have handled pedestrian accident cases to assess comparative fault issues in a pedestrian accident case.

Importance Of A Doctor Post-Injury

If the accident you’ve been involved in has resulted in you feeling injured, then it is important that you go to the doctor so that your injuries not only can be treated, but so that your injuries can also be documented for the claims handling process. Never allow a lawyer or a law firm to dictate your medical treatment. If you feel injured, if you feel hurt, if you feel different than you did before an accident, it’s imperative that you go to a doctor, you seek medical treatment, so that you can be adequately treated for your injuries and so that your injuries and damages can be adequately documented.

Slip and Fall Case Orlando

If you slip and fell at somebody else’s property or at a business establishment you may be entitled to a recovery. If they had a dangerous or defective condition on their property that they didn’t fix or repair or didn’t warn you about you may have a way to recover against them. It’s important though to document that right away and to talk to an attorney to look into it to see if you have a valid legal claim. If you have any question about that type of case or any premises liability case call me. Nathan Carter at Colling, Gilbert, Wright & Carter 1-800-49-LEGAL.

By: Nathan Carter

Contingency Fees

In Florida, attorneys are permitted to represent you as consumers on a contingent fee basis. Oftentimes, when you’ve been involved in a catastrophic injury case or accident or situation, those cases will take years sometimes to travel through the litigation process. If you’ve suffered a catastrophic injury and you have mounting medical bills and are unable to work, a contingent fee representation system such as the one we have in Florida permits you and your attorneys to match the resources of the insurance industry or the trucking industry to help you along in your catastrophic injury case. All that means is you don’t pay your attorney fees until the end of the case, and only pay them if there’s been a recovery in the case. The attorneys get a percentage of that recovery for attorney fees. It also allows your attorneys to advance the costs of your case, and then only recoup those costs at the end of the case if there’s been a successful recovery on your behalf.