What is a personal injury? This type of injury could happen in a wide range of circumstances, from car accidents to boating accidents to slip-and-fall events, and your damages may be minor or severe.
Personal injuries are most commonly caused by another party’s negligence, but in some cases, they result from intentional acts or situations of strict liability. The main concern in determining if your injury was a personal injury is fault.
Did another party’s actions cause you harm? If so, that other party may be negligent, and you might be able to pursue a claim to recover your damages.
Here’s How a Florida Personal Injury Attorney Can Help
An experienced Florida personal injury lawyer will evaluate your situation and help you figure out if another party was negligent. If there is significant evidence of negligence, we’ll answer your questions and explain the options for recovering damages.
We can then negotiate with the relevant insurance company (if applicable) or file a lawsuit to seek compensation for your injuries.
Founding attorney Ali Awad and the CEO Lawyer Personal Injury Law Firm offer free consultations for anyone who has suffered a personal injury or who may have been harmed by another’s negligence. If you’re not sure if you need a lawyer or what to do about your losses, please contact us.
We’ll review your case, answer your questions, and lay out all the options for securing. There is no obligation, and if we take your case, you won’t owe us anything until we win or settle it.
How Do You Know if Someone Was Negligent?
If you’re not sure, your attorney can help you determine if your situation qualifies based on the four elements of negligence:
- The defendant (the party you’re suing) owed you a duty of care. Did the other party have a duty to you in this particular situation? The answer depends on the circumstances, but in general, people usually have a duty to make a reasonable effort to avoid harming others. For instance, a person driving a car has a duty to obey traffic laws and avoid driving recklessly. A person operating a boat has a duty to follow local laws and avoid actions that could lead to an accident, like boating under the influence.
- The defendant failed in the duty of care. We’ll look at what happened and how the other party may have breached their duty of care. Examples might include speeding excessively on the road, producing a defective product, failing to fix a hazard on a property, driving a golf cart under the influence, etc.
- The breached duty of care caused your injuries. This part is pivotal. Even if you can prove someone was negligent or breached a duty of care, you won’t have a case if you can’t prove this failure caused your injuries. We’ll investigate the accident or situation and assemble evidence, then construct a strategy to show how the failed duty of care led to your injuries.
- You suffered damages due to these injuries. We’ll use your medical bills, car repair estimates, lost income estimates based on pay stubs or other documents, and other evidence to identify your damages.
When we talk about the defendant or the other party, this could be a person, such as a driver who ran a red light, but it could also be an entity, like a corporation or other organization. For instance, if you slipped and fell in a store, and we found evidence that the store was negligent, we could file a claim against the store.
What if You Don’t Feel Comfortable Suing the Other Party?
Many people suffer personal injuries because of friends, neighbors, family members, or local businesses. The reality is that negligence can happen in many ways and is sometimes the result of an honest mistake.
Additionally, people often tell us that they would feel bad about suing their neighbor, that they know their friend can’t afford to pay their bills, or that they don’t want to put their favorite local shop out of business.
If any of these situations sounds familiar, we recommend you speak with a personal injury lawyer. Your consultation is confidential, so if you decide not to pursue a claim, no one ever needs to know.
We may also be able to find solutions for your concerns that still allow you to recover some or all of your damages.
Here are some examples:
- Insurance coverage. Most successful personal injury claims are ultimately paid for by insurance companies, not individuals or small businesses. Car accident claims are usually paid for by one or both drivers’ insurance policies, depending on the particulars of the accident. (We’ll discuss car accidents in more depth later.) If you suffered a slip-and-fall injury or were otherwise hurt on the property of a business, it’s likely the business has a liability policy that would cover a patron’s injuries due to negligence. Even with injuries on private property, like the home of a friend or neighbor, there is often a homeowner’s or rental policy that may cover your injuries. So if your concern is the defendant’s inability to pay, please speak with a lawyer who can identify any relevant insurance coverage.
- Negotiating a deal. If there is no or insufficient insurance coverage, we may try to work out a solution that allows you to recover at least some of your damages. If the full value of your claim is simply too much for the defendant to pay, and there is no clear path to recovery, we won’t advise you to sue them. A lawsuit can be time-consuming and taxing, and there is no reason for you to go through that stress if we can’t collect your damages afterward. However, we may be able to negotiate a deal with the other party. For instance, maybe they will agree to pay an amount they can afford, even if it’s somewhat less than your claim is worth. If the alternative is winning a judgment you can’t collect, this could be a better solution for you.
Can You Sue for a Car Accident Even Though Florida Is a No-Fault State?
While motor vehicle accidents aren’t the only category of personal injury cases, they are very common, and we often receive questions about Florida’s no-fault laws. The answer is yes; in some cases, you can sue for a car accident, but only if your injuries were very substantial.
First, let’s talk about Florida’s car insurance requirements. Most states require liability insurance for both bodily injury and property damage liability.
However, in order to use another driver’s liability insurance for your injuries or car damage, you need to prove the other driver was at fault. This process can be time-consuming and difficult, especially without help from an attorney.
Florida does things a little differently. Every driver is required to have $10,000 each in personal injury protection (PIP) and property damage liability (PDL).
PIP pays for up to 80 percent of your own medical bills or other expenses related to injuries in an accident, including lost wages and funeral expenses.
The upside of PIP is that it eliminates the need for bodily injury liability insurance in less severe accidents. It also saves everyone time and money because you don’t need to prove the other party was at fault to collect damages (and they don’t need to prove you were at fault).
Disputes over fault are among the most significant difficulties policyholders face in trying to get their claims approved, making PIP very beneficial. Additionally, it frees up the court system to focus on more severe personal injury cases instead of becoming backlogged with minor car accident cases.
The downside of PIP is that the policy limit is $10,000, so if you have severe injuries, you could still have significant expenses. If your damages exceed $10,000, you can use your medical payments or MedPay coverage if you have it—MedPay is optional.
When your injury-related damages substantially exceed your PIP and MedPay coverage, you may be able to file a lawsuit against the other driver, in which case you will need to show they were at fault.
This also means that other injured parties can sue you for a serious car accident in which you were at fault. Because PIP takes the place of bodily injury liability insurance in many smaller cases, it isn’t required in Florida.
However, if you don’t have bodily injury liability coverage and you cause a severe accident, you could be personally liable for the other person’s damages, so it’s never a good idea to go without bodily injury liability insurance.
The required PDL coverage is liability insurance, and it will pay for another party’s property damage (usually vehicle repairs or replacement) up to the policy limit. Florida only requires $10,000 in PDL, but you can buy higher amounts of coverage.
It’s also important to understand that PDL only covers your liability to others, not your own property damage. If the other driver is at fault, you can make a claim on their PDL policy. If you are at fault, your damage may be covered by your own insurance if you have Collision coverage, which pays for property damage regardless of fault.
This is also an optional policy that we recommend.
Is Boat Insurance Required In Florida?
Florida has more boats than any other state, with over a million registered as of 2022. Unfortunately, the state also leads the country in deaths from boating accidents, with 32 boating fatalities and 165 injuries in the same year.
A boat accident could leave you with medical bills, lost income, chronic pain, and a lot of questions about how to cover your expenses.
Boat insurance is not required in Florida, but most boat owners understand the importance of insuring a large investment like a boat. If you were injured in a boating accident, there may be an insurance policy that covers your injuries, depending on the owner’s insurance policy.
However, there can be many liable parties in a boat accident, so we might pursue damages from another party. Here are some of the potentially liable parties in a boating accident:
- The boat captain (or boat operator for smaller watercraft).
- The captain or operator of another boat that hit yours.
- The boat owner. This person may or may not be driving the boat, but in some cases, they are responsible even if they weren’t operating the vessel. For instance, a boat owner can be liable if they hire someone who operates the boat negligently or if they allow a friend to drive the boat and the friend carelessly causes an accident.
- A passenger. In some cases, an intoxicated or belligerent passenger can cause an accident—for example, by interfering with the boat operator or causing another passenger to fall off the boat.
- The boat manufacturer or a component manufacturer. If your accident was caused by a defective boat or engine, the manufacturer could be liable.
- A third-party company that serviced the boat. If a repair worker made a mistake that caused the boat to malfunction and you were injured, the repair company might be at fault.
As you can see, identifying the liable party or parties may be very challenging, but an experienced personal injury lawyer can help you ascertain who was at fault and explain your options for pursuing damages.
What Is Premises Liability?
Premises liability refers to situations where a person is injured on another party’s property due to the owner’s negligence. It’s important to note that the owner is not necessarily liable simply because you were hurt on their property, but liability isn’t always clear the minute you suffer an injury, either.
If you were injured on someone else’s property, we recommend discussing the incident with an attorney who can help you figure out what happened.
Often, people think of slip-and-fall accidents when they consider premises liability. That is one common example, but there are many other types of premises liability that aren’t as well known; some people don’t even realize they may have a case after their injury.
Here are some other examples of potential premises liability situations:
Negligent Security
A business has a responsibility to provide a reasonable level of protection for customers. If you were mugged in a poorly lit parking lot or attacked in a motel room after the assailant easily broke in, it’s possible the business owner failed to offer adequate security.
Another example might be if you walked into a grocery store and were shot during a robbery. If we found out that the same store had been robbed several times previously and the owner made no attempt to improve security (for example, installing security cameras or a silent alarm), then the owner might have been negligent.
Negligent security can occur in other ways. For instance, if you go to a Black Friday sale at a retailer and you’re injured by other overzealous customers trying to get the best deal, that might also be a case of negligent security.
The negligence is related to the fact that the store’s management should have expected large crowds at a heavily advertised Black Friday sale and should have provided appropriate security to keep things from getting out of hand.
Hazards on a Property
Other premises liability cases result from a person encountering an unexpected hazard that injures them. Slip-and-fall accidents are an excellent example of this, but there are many other ways to be harmed by hazards on another party’s property. Here are some examples:
- You trip on a garden hose or gardening tool your neighbor left on their walkway. A homeowner has a responsibility to take reasonable care to remove these kinds of hazards from walkways so people don’t trip when approaching the front door.
- You are walking through a store when a large item falls off a top shelf and hits you. Store management has a responsibility to regularly check the aisles for hazards like these and correct them. It will be necessary to show that management either knew or should have known about the problem before the item fell on you.
- You trip on a snagged carpet or damaged floor tile or fall in a stairway because the lighting is poor, and you can’t see where you’re going. Again, these are issues that should be addressed by regular maintenance.
- You’re driving a golf cart on the greenway when one of the wheels gets caught in an unexpected hole or depression in the grass, causing the cart to flip. The golf club may have failed to maintain the course properly and missed the potential hazard.
The negligent property owner can defend themselves by arguing that the injured person was warned of the hazard and chose to ignore it. For instance, most stores will put out “Wet Floor” signs to warn guests to be careful if an area has been mopped recently.
If you ignored the sign and hurried carelessly across the floor, the owner could argue that you were the negligent party. Additionally, if you are injured after barging past an “Employees Only” sign on a door, it will be difficult to prove the store was negligent.
In many cases, “Employees Only” signs are used to keep customers out of areas with possible hazards.
What About Dog Bites?
Florida has strict liability for dog bites—in other words, the dog’s owner is typically liable if their dog bites someone in most circumstances. As long as you were in a public place or legally in a private place, you can seek compensation from the canine’s owner for your damages, such as medical bills, lost income, permanent scarring or disfigurement, etc.
This also holds true if you were injured by a dog that didn’t bite you. For example, if a neighbor’s dog jumps on you and knocks you down, breaking your arm, the owner could be liable.
In some cases, the neighbor’s homeowner’s insurance might cover your damages, but if not, the owner might be personally liable.
Dog owners sometimes claim the dog was defending them from a trespasser, as this is an exception to the strict liability statute—in other words, the defense is that the victim was not legally on private property. However, the owner can’t claim you were trespassing if your job required you to be on the premises—for example, if you were delivering mail or food.
Unfortunately, we see a lot of cases where dogs get excited and run up to food delivery workers, causing injuries. In these situations, the injured person may be able to pursue damages from the dog’s owner because they were not trespassing by delivering food.
Florida law also allows owners to avoid liability in some situations by posting a “Bad Dog” sign in their yard to warn others about an aggressive animal. The sign must be noticeable and easy to read, and it will not protect the owner in all situations.
If the victim was a small child or the owner was negligent, you may still be able to pursue a claim.
Are There Other Types of Personal Injury Cases?
Yes. The above are examples of personal injuries we see frequently, but a person can be injured in almost any situation.
If you suffered any kind of injury and believe or even suspect it was caused by another party’s negligence, we advise you to speak with a lawyer to learn more about your options.
How Can You Get Help From a Florida Personal Injury Law Firm?
Please contact the CEO Lawyer Personal Injury Law Firm for a free consultation about your case. Our experienced legal team will learn more about your injuries, investigate further if necessary, and explain your options for pursuing compensation.
We work on a contingency basis, so we don’t get paid unless you do, and there are never any upfront costs.
Attorney Ali Awad founded the CEO Lawyer Personal Injury Law Firm, which is now one of the fastest-growing law firms in the country. He and his team have more than twenty years of combined experience and have recovered millions of dollars in compensation for injured people and their families.
In his spare time, Mr. Awad makes entertaining yet educational posts about legal topics for more than a million followers on social media. You can work with him today when you call (833) 254-2923.
