October 9, 2012
Unfortunately, accidents are a part of life. Every day, people venture out… to work, to shops, and into vehicles. And every day, people suffer injuries due to the negligence, failures or misdeeds of others. In Florida, people injured in accidents that occur through the negligence or fault of others can often recover their lost wages and medical expenses. How the process of recovering these losses works, however, varies significantly based on the nature of your accident.
Damage Basics
Generally speaking, a person injured may recover lost wages, medical bills and expenses, the cost of future medical care related to the injury, damage to his or her property related to the incident, other expenses not covered by insurance, and damages for pain and suffering.
Florida has specific rules, though, regarding personal injuries arising from auto accidents. In most cases, under Florida’s “no fault” law, if you sustain injuries in an auto accident within the state, your auto insurance provider, through your Personal Injury Protection (PIP) coverage, bears the responsibility to pay most of your lost wages and medical bills; specifically, 60% of your lost wages and 80% of your medical bills. PIP is a mandatory coverage in the State of Florida. Florida does, however, allow drivers to elect to exclude wage loss reimbursement from their PIP coverage. Whatever portion of the lost wages that the insurer does not pay can be included in that person’s personal injury action against the at-fault driver.
Keep Your Bills
Regardless of whether you were injured in car accident, at work, or in a slip-and-fall, some helpful hints are universal. The chief among these is always to maintain meticulous records of everything related to your accident. This means that, when it comes to your medical bills, you should retain, in a single safe place, copies of any bill related to your injuries. These would include not only bills from doctors and hospitals, but bills for prescriptions, costs of over-the-counter medicines, bills for therapy, bills from medical labs for tests run on you, and so forth. Additionally, medical equipment counts, too. Be sure to keep your receipts for things like crutches, slings, or wheelchairs.
This record keeping task also applies to your missed work. You should maintain written records of the time you were away from work because of your injuries. Any time you miss from work, including sick leave, is something you should record. Also, if you receive a written opinion from your doctor regarding when you will be medically cleared to return to work, keep that with these records, as well.
Between working, driving, shopping, and the many other tasks that take us out of our homes, each of us faces a nearly daily risk of injury at the hands of others. If you suffer injury because of someone else’s negligence or mistake, it is important to work with an experienced Florida personal injury lawyer. Your lawyer can help you weigh settlement versus going to court, and serve as your guide throughout the process, to ensure you get all the compensation owed to you.
September 14, 2012
Vehicle accidents, especially ones with injuries, are unnerving and unsettling situations. While the stress of these trying situations will naturally be high, it is important to maintain your composure and remember these helpful tips. 
Safety First
Make sure to move yourself and any of your passengers out of the way of potential harm. Check on everyone involved in the accident. Call for emergency personnel if anyone was injured, including yourself, regardless of how insignificant those injuries might seem. Many times, injuries suffered in a car accident, including serious ones, may not present obvious symptom in the immediate aftermath of the accident.
If you can leave the vehicles where they are without posing a safety risk, do so. Being able to photograph the accident scene exactly as it looked can be very valuable to your attorney and your case. If leaving the cars where they are poses a safety hazard, though, pull them to the nearest safe place.
Collect Information
Also be sure to call police to the scene. The police report detailing the events of the accident is often one of the key pieces of evidence in a personal injury case. After calling the police, be sure to exchange insurance information with the other driver (or drivers) involved in the accident. Also collect the contact and license plate information of the other driver (or drivers,) and contact information from any witnesses to the accident. It is also a good idea to take down the names of the police officers who respond to your accident. Furthermore, you should remain at the scene of the accident until the police depart.
Once you’ve dealt with insurance and contact information, you should try to document the accident scene. If you have a camera on your cell phone (or other camera with you,) take photographs of the accident scene. These photos can be invaluable in recording injuries, damage to the vehicles, road conditions at the time of the accident, and many other pieces of information that you will likely forget as time passes and bits of your memory of the incident fade. With that in mind, also make notes of the accident. Chances are, even though you think you will remember everything about this terrible event, there are aspects (even important ones) that will escape your memory or at least become hazy.
Contact the Professionals
After leaving the accident scene, you should immediately contact your auto insurance company to notify them about the accident. Your agent should be able to give you useful information regarding what information your insurance needs from you. Next, contact an auto accident attorney promptly. Your attorney will need to begin work on certain aspects of the case quickly, like helping you gather evidence, contacting witnesses to obtain recorded statements, and retaining accident investigators and reconstruction experts to put together the factual components of your case. The more quickly you contact and retain an auto accident attorney, the better that attorney will be able to help you pursue your case, and get all of what you are entitled to under the law.
In our area, consider contacting experienced Jacksonville injury lawyer at the Dorsey Law Firm for help after an accident.
September 11, 2012
No one can give you a certain, definitive dollar-amount answer to that question, absent a jury verdict or a settlement. The value of any personal injury depends on so many variables and unknown factors that make each claim and each case unique. The uniqueness and individuality of each case is one of the reasons why the civil justice system is needed.
Compensatory damages: both easy, difficult to quantify
Conceptually speaking, your case is worth whatever amount of damages the jury determines you have suffered as a result of your injuries. Under Florida law, an injured person may collect two types of damages: compensatory damages and punitive damages. Compensatory damages are intended to, just as the name implies, compensate you for the injuries you suffered.
There are two types of compensatory damages: special damages and general damages. Special damages cover specific economic losses and usually are among the more easily quantifiable of damages awards. Special damages include economic losses like lost property, lost wages, lost earning capacity, or past and/or future medical expenses. The non-economic losses that make up general damages are much harder to quantify, as they include harms like physical and/or mental pain and suffering, disfigurement, disability, loss of enjoyment of life, and loss of consortium (which relates to damage to emotional physical aspects of a couple’s marital relationship.)
Punitive damages: only for outrageous actions
In some cases, a jury may award punitive damages in addition to compensatory damages. Punitive damages only arise when the defendant acted in an especially outrageous manner and, the defendant deserves to be “punished” monetarily for its unconscionable conduct. Punitive damages exist, like most punishments, to serve as a deterrent; hopefully preventing others from acting in a similar manner in the future. Many courts only allow a jury to consider punitive damages after deciding the compensatory award, and most courts also cap the amount of punitive damages a jury may assess.
The Variables of a Case’s Value
Legally, each case’s value is governed by the extent of your injuries, and the need (or lack thereof) for awarding punitive damages. In practice, though, several other elements, unrelated to the extent of your injuries or the defendant’s behavior, may factor in to how a jury values your case. These may include:
- How the jury views you (Do they find you likeable and believable?)
- How the jury views the respective attorneys (Again, whom do they find likeable, and credible?)
- Where the case is heard (Juries in some counties might be more receptive to injured persons than those in other counties.)
- The identity of the defendant or defendant’s insurance company (Does the defendant or the insurance company have a particularly notorious reputation, either in that community or generally?)
No two personal injury cases are exactly alike, and so no two personal injury cases are worth the exact same, even if the facts of the cases and the injuries resulting from the accidents are extremely similar. Evaluating the worth of a personal injury case takes years of experience. In our area you should contact a Jacksonville personal injury attorney to discuss the value of your case.
