Florida Personal Injury Lawyer Blog

Published on: December 3, 2020

Do I Have to Wear a Motorcycle Helmet? Florida Cycle Injury Lawyer Insight

Fort Myers motorcycle accident lawyer

Motorcycles are prevalent in the Sunshine State. More than 550,000 motorcycles are registered here, and biker tourism is a big draw. As a longtime South Florida injury lawyer, I am familiar with Florida’s motorcycle helmet law and have successfully handled my fair share of motorcycle accident claims in Fort Myers, Naples, and Key West. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reports more motorcyclists and passengers are injured and killed here annually than in any other state.

In motorcycle injury and wrongful death cases, the question “Do I have to wear a Motorcycle helmet in Florida?” often arises; whether riders have the right to forgo helmets and whether that decision impacts their injury claim is often the next question. The answers depend on how old you are, what kind of insurance you have, and whether you suffered head/neck/facial injuries.

Published on: November 25, 2020

Florida Personal Injury Lawyer on Avoiding Common Holiday Injuries

by Leland Garvin

Florida personal injury lawyer

It is the most wonderful time of the year – unless preparing for or partaking in it lands you in a hospital emergency room.

From ladder falls to parking lot pedestrian accidents, an experienced Florida personal injury lawyer knows all-too-well how life-altering these occurrences can be.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission reported that there were 18,400 reported injuries sustained by those decorating for the holidays in a single recent year. Many of these involved falls, often while hanging lights or other decorations from roofs or trees. Many suffered strains, sprains, and lacerations, but two died.

Further, the CPSC reported roughly 100 Christmas tree fires resulting in 10 deaths, 10 injuries, and $12 million in property loss. There are also 20 injuries caused by swallowing objects and dozens of burn injuries caused while cooking holiday meals.

On the road, injuries can result from drunk driving accidents caused by motorists over-imbibing at holiday parties. There are also pedestrian accidents at shopping centers, crosswalks, and other high foot traffic areas, often precipitated by distracted, rushed, or fatigued drivers.

Your health insurance may fully cover the costs of some of these injuries. However, if you are injuries are fairly serious, and someone’s negligence was at least partly to blame for what happened, you will want to consider talking to a Florida personal injury lawyer.

Published on: November 18, 2020

Unnecessary Treatments: Another form of Florida Nursing Home Abuse

by Leland Garvin

Florida nursing home injuries

Billing state and federal government agencies for an unnecessary treatment of nursing home patients not only cheats taxpayers, but it can also lead to Florida nursing home abuse. This type of healthcare fraud involves improper, inflated, or otherwise unlawful billing of government and private insurers that fund nursing home residents’ daily care. As our Naples, Florida nursing home abuse lawyers can explain, the vulnerable adults who live in these facilities are inevitably affected.

Unnecessary intensive care – particularly at the end of life – may result in significant profits for the nursing homes, but it can increase pain, exhaustion, and suffering of the patient. It can also delay palliative or hospice care and might even accelerate their decline.

In one study published not long ago in the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association, researchers reported a 65 percent increase in the number of nursing home residents receiving “ultra-high” rehab services – most within the last seven days of their lives. The study solely looked at New York nursing homes, but our Naples nursing home injury lawyers know this is a Florida issue as well.

The Naples Daily News reported that the state’s largest nursing home provider faces a $255 million judgment for systematic fraud of the government by providing unnecessary treatments to patients; as we will further detail, there is little doubt that this constitutes nursing home abuse.

Published on: November 13, 2020

Alcohol: The Leading Factor in Fatal Florida Boating Accidents

by Leland Garvin

Florida boating accidents

According to the U.S. Coast Guard’s latest 2019 Recreational Boating Statistics Report, alcohol is the primary contributing factor in fatal U.S. and Florida boating accidents. Even as deaths declined overall, alcohol continued to be a top factor in deadly boating incidents.

Of the 614 boat accident deaths reported in the U.S. last year, 141 (or 23 percent) were mainly attributed to alcohol consumption. This is even as boating deaths overall fell by 3.2 percent compared to the previous year. The total number of boating accidents in 2019 slightly increased, from 4,145 to 4,168 (about 0.6 percent). The number of injuries increased too, by about 2 percent.

As our Fort Myers boating accident attorneys are aware, similar data has been reported in Florida. In 2018 (the most recent year for which statistics are available), there were 54 boating deaths statewide, according to the Florida Fish

& Wildlife Conservation Commission – more than reported in any other state. Among fatal boating accidents, 22 percent were attributed to alcohol and/or drug use.

Published on: November 4, 2020

What if there isn’t enough insurance coverage to pay my claim?

by Leland Garvin

Florida injury lawsuit

When considering whether to file a Florida personal injury lawsuit, it is important to ask: Who is going to pay?

Insurance companies often cover most injury claims. Typically, these policies cover auto accidents or injuries on someone else’s property (premises liability claims such as slip-and-falls, third-party criminal attacks, dog bites, etc.). But as our Fort Myers personal injury lawyers can explain, this is not always the only source of recovery. In some instances, it can be worthwhile to pursue a defendant’s personal assets in addition to collecting from the insurance policy.

It is not usually the first avenue of compensation we discuss for the simple fact that many personal injury lawsuit defendants simply do not have enough personal assets to make pursuing a claim against them worth the time. But if one’s injuries are serious and there isn’t enough insurance to cover the claim, it may be an additional avenue to pursue.

Published on: October 28, 2020

Florida Car Accident Lawsuit May Be Impacted by Not Wearing a Seat Belt

by Leland Garvin

Florida seatbelt laws require all motor vehicle drivers and passengers to wear a seat belt to lower the risk of serious injury and death caused by car accidents. Failure to do so could result in a ticket, but worse, it could be the difference between minor and life-altering injuries. For this reason, courts have held that Florida car accident lawsuit plaintiffs could have their damages reduced if they were not wearing a seat belt at the time of the crash. As our Naples injury lawyers can explain, this is what is known as “the seat belt defense.”

To be clear: Not wearing a seat belt does not kill your case. After all, the cause of the crash probably had nothing to do with whether you buckled up. Where it becomes relevant is the issue of damages or the value of your claim.

As long as another driver was liable for the crash, you still have the legal right to pursue and collect damages for your injuries. However, the amount of money you ultimately collect for your claim may be reduced if you do not wear a seat belt. This is primarily thanks to the pure comparative negligence doctrine that Florida follows.

Published on: October 21, 2020

Florida PIP: Is It Still Possible to Collect From the At-Fault Driver?

by Leland Garvin

Florida PIP lawyer

When answering calls from Fort Myers car accident victims, our attorneys have found that Florida PIP is one of the most misunderstood concepts.

“Why am I fighting with my own insurer?” “Can I still sue the person who hit me?” “What is the ‘no-fault’ system anyway? Someone is at-fault, right?”

Understandably, people are confused because Florida is one of just a few states that still uses this kind of system to handle auto accident claims, and there are all kinds of exceptions and caveats. PIP is not supposed to deny you the opportunity to have your damages covered, but many crash victims find navigating the system difficult and frustrating. Our team at Garvin Injury Law can help you get answers and determine how to maximize your odds of receiving full and fair compensation for your injuries.

Published on: October 14, 2020

Key West Injury Lawyer Explains Negligence Per Se

by Leland Garvin

Key West injury lawyer

In most Florida injury lawsuits, the injured person (plaintiff) needs to show the person or entity they are suing (defendant) violated a duty of care that was owed, resulting in the injuries and financial damages at issue. In some cases, however, the plaintiff can establish the duty of care and the breach of duty using the doctrine of negligence per se. The phrase “per se” in Latin means “in itself” or “by itself.” As a Key West injury lawyer can explain, negligence per se is a legal term that refers to a violation of some statute, law, or regulation enacted to protect individuals in the plaintiff’s same position. Where the doctrine applies, one need only prove the defendant’s actions were the proximate (legal) cause of their injuries.

A recent ruling by Florida’s Second District Court of Appeal dealt with negligence per se in an elevator accident. In the case of Vogel v. Cornerstone Doctors Condominium Association, Inc., the question was whether the defendant property owner acted reasonably with regard to the safety of its elevator. In that case, the Defendant owned a two-story building that houses medical offices. Plaintiff was a patient who went to his doctor to give them his new insurance card. On his way in, he rode the elevator to the second level without issue. Upon departure, he approached the elevator again and found the doors were open. He stepped inside but soon discovered the elevator floor was not properly level, as it was about two feet below the landing. Unfortunately, he did not realize this until after he had taken a step in, and as a result, fell, suffering personal injuries to his neck and back.

Published on: September 30, 2020

6 Factors Impacting Your Fort Myers Personal Injury Lawsuit Timeline

by Leland Garvin

Fort Myers personal injury lawsuit

Aside from how much money a case is worth, Fort Myers personal injury lawsuit plaintiffs often want to know how long their case will take to resolve. Most are not thrilled to hear the ever-popular lawyer answer: It depends. But the truth is that determining how long a case will take to resolve can be more of an art than a science. First, know that settlements can often be preferable to litigation. They take less time and tend to use fewer resources. You may never even need to file a lawsuit if your injury attorney can successfully negotiate a fair resolution with the insurer(s) involved. While this is oversimplified for purposes of making this a brief blog post; for a settlement to be reached, both sides need to agree on two main issues: Liability and fair value.

Liability refers to which party is legally responsible for paying. Florida follows a system of “pure comparative fault,” essentially meaning a plaintiff (the person filing the case) could be 99 percent liable – and still collect the remaining 1 percent of damages from the other at-fault party. However, your damage award is going to be proportionately reduced by your degree of fault. So if you are 40 percent liable, your total damages will be reduced by 40 percent.

Fair value refers to how much your case is reasonably worth in light of the severity of your injuries, how much physical pain you suffered, the totality of your medical expenses (past and future), the time you had to take off work, the impact to your future wage-earning capabilities and the extent to which this has impacted your personal life. Understand that for cases involving serious injuries, it is probably impossible to resolve in less than a few months because it is going to take at least that long (usually longer) to accurately determine the full severity of your injuries, the long-term estimate of future medical expenses and how these injuries are going to impact the rest of your life.

It should go without saying that you or your attorney will need to prove causation, that is that the injury for which you are seeking “fair value” was actually caused by (or made worse as a result of) the crash or incident. This is an often contested area as many of us have some evidence of the natural aging process going on in our body at a time that we may become injured.

Needless to say, there can be more than a few points of disagreement. When those differences cannot be resolved, cases end up going to trial.

Published on: September 23, 2020

Teen Drivers at Higher Injury, Death and Crash Risk in Older, Smaller Vehicles

by Leland Garvin

teen driver crash risk

Car accidents are the leading cause of death for Florida teens, and adolescents face four times the crash risk as drivers over 20, particularly within the first 18 months after receiving their driver’s license. Part of the reason for that could be immaturity, which could lead to dangerous actions behind the wheel that heighten the crash risk. But a new report also finds teen drivers have a greater chance of serious injury or death in a crash because they’re more likely to be driving older, smaller cars.

As one research scientist for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety stated, “Despite everything we know about young drivers and crash risk, teens are still driving the least safe vehicles. Small vehicles do not protect as well in a crash, and older vehicles are less likely to be equipped with essential safety equipment.”

The study authors examined data from deadly crashes that occurred between 2013 and 2017. What they discovered was that among teen motorists killed in these crashes, those operating older vehicles faced four times the fatality risk as those driving newer models. Furthermore, nearly 70 percent of teens who died in collisions were in vehicles that were older than six years. Teenagers also spend more than half their drive time in a vehicle that’s more than a decade old. Nearly one-third of those who died were in vehicles that were lighter and smaller. Less than 4 percent of teen drivers who lost their lives in crashes were in vehicles under three years old.

Our Fort Myers car accident lawyers understand parents’ reluctance to pay a lot of money for their teenager’s first vehicle. But what many probably are not aware of is how much less safe those older cars are.

Florida Personal Injury Law Blog