Florida Personal Injury Laws

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.

Wrongful Death Claims in Tampa Bay

Welcome, and thank you for joining me. I’m Steve Brooks, a Florida wrongful death and personal injury attorney, practicing right here in the state of Florida. Today’s video tip is the first in a series about wrongful death cases, and what to do if you have a claim. What is a wrongful death claim? It is a death that occurs due to the negligence or conduct of another person or corporation.

Types of Accidents Involving a Claim

Common lawful death claims are the results of car, train, tractor, trailer and motorcycle accidents, medical malpractice, medical product effects, workplace accidents, and construction zone accidents. I will discuss these in more detail throughout this video series. Here are a couple things to consider before you pursue a wrongful death claim.

Wrongful death cases usually involve sudden and traumatic death. This is usually devastating for the family. Before speaking with an attorney, talk with your family and your supportive friends. This is a difficult time that requires balance and support from the people who are closest to you. Before choosing an attorney, go to their website. Check out their qualifications. Read their online reviews, and read their track record. See what kind of verdicts and settlements they’ve achieved. Talk to your friends and fellow church members.

Finding the Right Attorney

Choosing the right attorney is an important decision, so be diligent and wise and do your research. When meeting with an attorney, come prepared. Write down the details of the incident and any questions that you or your family may have about a potential wrongful death claim. For example, one of the things you’ll want to do is a timeline of your loved one’s situation, or to bring a file containing documents that are critical to the claim.

It is also important to act quickly, as there is a shorter-than-usual time limit for filing a lawsuit in wrongful death cases. If you wait too long, you could lose your opportunity to pursue a claim at all. Again, don’t wait and do your homework. If your family is facing financial hardship, compensation from a successful wrongful death suit may in addition to alleviating financial difficulties actually provide closure for some of the emotional pain. Brooks Law Group has a team of skilled wrongful death attorneys that can help you recover the money to which you’re attired. If you have lost a loved one as a result of negligence, you may have a case.

By: Stephen Brooks

Determining Fault For Auto Accidents

The fault is not always easily determined in an automobile accident case. Sometimes it will be clear-cut such as a rear-end collision, although even a rear-end collision is not always as simply as straight forward as it may seem. An attorney is going to investigate the cause or causes of any automobile accident and determine who is at fault, and sometimes it’s one party, and sometimes multiple parties can share responsibility for an accident. The starting point usually is looking at the traffic crash report included by the law enforcement officer at the scene. It will also be determined by interviewing the drivers or occupants of the cars, and interviewing any independent witnesses. In certain situations, it may also be necessary to hire an engineer or an accident reconstruction expert to help piece together exactly how the accident happened and who is responsible for it.

Talk to Insurance Company Following Accident In Orlando

If you get called by an insurance company after your car accident in Florida, don’t talk to them until you’ve talked to an attorney. You could really hurt your case. With other questions, call us at 1800-49-LEGAL. Here at Colling Gilbert Wright & Carter, we’re here to help.

By: Mel Wright

About Leifer Law Firm

I’m Corey Leifer from the Leifer Law Firm. We’re a personal injury firm that represents individuals who have been injured as a result of someone else’s negligence. Our main office is in Boca Raton, Florida, and we have satellite offices in Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach.  We handle a variety of personal injury cases including car, truck, and motorcycle accidents, wrongful death matters, slip and fall, medical malpractice, and defective products such as bad pharmaceutical drugs and defective medical devices.

Legal Philosophy

When someone hires our firm, they will be treated with respect, and they will benefit from our aggressive approach and attention to detail in order to get the best possible outcome for their case. As an attorney I think it’s very important that I’m accessible to my clients when they need to speak with me.  Therefore I have a 24-hour live answering service that gives clients the opportunity to call me after hours or on the weekends, and their calls will be transferred directly to my personal cellphone.

Consultations at our office are always free, and we never receive any legal fees or cost of any kind unless we’re successful in recovering money for our clients.

By: Cory Leifer

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

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.

Fair Compensation in Orlando

If you’re hurt in an accident, you should know that getting a fair settlement in a timely fashion without having to go through a lengthy trial, could have a lot to do with the lawyer who represents you.

Hire a trial lawyer who is well-known by the insurance companies. I’m David Best of the Best Law Firm. I’ve been representing injury victims for over two decades. If you’re injured, call me and put the Best Firm to work for you.

By: David Best

Misuse Of A Product

Misuse of a product is always going to be a defense by the defendants and by their insurance company in a product liability or a product defect case. That does not necessarily mean that you cannot recover for injuries that result from a defective product. But what you want to do is make sure that you contact a reputable law firm that handles product liability cases and that has a good track record of getting good results in a product defect case– to assess that case. But understanding that even misuse, while it will always be a defense in the case, it doesn’t excuse negligence or strict liability on the part of the manufacturer or designer or even the seller of that defective product that injured you.