Florida Personal Injury Laws

Paying Back Your Health Insurance Company

If you’ve been hurt in an accident and you have health insurance, your health insurance likely has paid some or all of your medical bills related to your injuries. In that event, you likely are going to be required to pay back or reimburse your health insurance company for whatever money your insurance company has paid out on your behalf. The reason for that is, here in the state of Florida, a health insurance company who has paid benefits for you typically has a statutory lien against any money that you recover in your case. So if you, through the assistance of your attorney, recover money for your accident case, then you may have to take some of that money and pay it back to your health insurance company.

Workers Compensation Immunity

Typically in Florida employers have what we call workers’ compensation immunity, meaning that you cannot sue them if you’ve been injured at the workplace or on the job, but that only applies if your employer carries workers’ compensation coverage for you.

So if you’re injured at the workplace, or on the job, or at a construction site and you do not have workers’ compensation benefits that provide you medical treatment or loss of wages, it’s imperative that you contact a reputable law firm to assess whether or not you have a viable claim against your employer for that injury that you’ve suffered on the job.

Defective Product Injury Claim

If you’ve been injured by a product, it may very well be that the product had either a design defect or a manufacturing defect, which are two variations of product liability or product defect law. A design defect means that the product was designed in such a way that it was unreasonably dangerous and maybe could have been designed more safely. A manufacturing defect means that the product, although it may have been designed appropriately, suffered from a defect at some point during the manufacturing process. Either way, if the defect caused an injury, you may have a basis for the claim.

The best way to determine whether or not the product may be defective is to contact an experienced product liability attorney, who generally is going to be able to research and provide information with respect to any recalls or other lawsuits or litigation involving the same or similar products.

Bicycle Accident Led To An Injury

If you’re injured while riding your bicycle here in Florida, you can sometimes recover benefits under your automobile insurance policy if you have one. That generally depends on whether your injuries where the result of an accident involving a motor vehicle. So as an example, if you’re riding your bicycle and you’re hit by a car, then you certainly may be entitled to benefits under your no fault coverage under your auto insurance policy and if you have UM, which uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage under your auto policy, then that may also provide benefits for you as well. On the other hand, if you’re riding your bicycle and you’re injured just because you ran off a curb or hit a tree and had nothing to do with a motor vehicle, you probably are not going to be entitled to benefits under your auto insurance policy.

Legally Responsible For A Defective Product

Typically in the state of Florida, every company or individual responsible for getting a product into the hands of you as consumers is responsible for selling, or manufacturing, or designing, or marketing a defective product. It’s incumbent upon you, and it’s important, to find an attorney with a good reputation of handling product defect cases to assess everyone who is responsible for getting that product designed, manufactured, and ultimately sold to you as consumers, to assess liability on the part of each and everyone of those potential defendants.

Valuing A Personal Injury Case

Well unfortunately there’s no magic formula to determine exactly how much your personal injury cases worth. An experienced attorney is going to draw a number of sources to try to help make that determination. No matter what, making that determination early on in the case is often very very difficult because that assessment generally can’t be made with any reasonable degree of certainty until a tremendous amount of information is obtained about the case including the strength of the evidence involving the liability of the parties and the nature in extent of any damages that you may have suffered. The value of the case can often very or differ from the beginning of the case to the end as additional information is obtained. The most important thing is you should communicate with your attorney throughout the case regarding his or her assessment of the value. An attorney is going to look at various sources including verdicts and settlement reporters to see what other cases have settled for, and what the jury verdicts have been in other similar cases. An attorney will also draw his or her personal experienced in handling other similar cases to help give you a better idea of what your case may be worth.

Injury Is Apparent After An Accident

If you’ve been in a car accident, whether you feel pain immediately at the scene or not, you should go see a doctor right away. The reason for that is there are many times that you can have any injury that is not immediately apparent to you and sometimes doesn’t develop into pain or discomfort for a few hours or a few days. Rather than wait and give it an opportunity to develop, it’s best to see a doctor immediately. That way, you can document any complaints or symptoms you may have, and that way you get a full checkout to ensure that you don’t have some hidden or unknown injury that could be problematic or of greater concern to you.

Boating Accident Claim

An important consideration for most everybody considering pursuing a boating accident claim, is how much is it going to cost to hire an attorney to do so. Most attorneys will evaluate your case free of charge. They’ll meet with you or speak with you over the phone, get the initial information, try to determine how the accident happened, how you were injured, what the basis of your claim is, and will assess for you, for no charge, whether or not you have a viable claim. If you do have a claim to move forward, then the attorney will talk to you further about the fees and costs involved in pursuing your claim beyond that.

Orlando Personal Injury Case Valuation

The value of a personal injury claim is just that, it’s personal. It varies with every case, and there are different factors that work into how we value what a case is worth. It might be your lost wages. It might be the effect on other people, other family members that depend on you. So, there are many different things that go into valuing a personal injury claim. If you have a question about your personal injury claim, call me. I’m Ron Gilbert with Colling, Gilbert, Wright & Carter, 1-800-49-LEGAL.

By: Ron Gilbert