Broward injury attorney

Published on: August 12, 2020

Property Damage Options When Involved in an Accident

The first thing you feel after being in a car accident where no one got injured is relief that the accident was not worse than it was. Only then do the worries about finances start. How much will it cost to fix your car? Will you be able to get to your job while your car is being repaired, and if so, how much will you have to pay for alternative transportation, such as rideshare rides or a rental car? Do you have the money to pay your insurance deductible? How much will your car insurance premiums increase as a result of the accident? If you have to go to court, how much time and money will that cost? Your options for the most cost-effective way to pay for property damage vary according to the circumstances of the accident. Freeman Injury Law can help you choose the best course of action.

Florida Car Insurance Basics

Everyone who registers a vehicle in Florida must have two kinds of insurance. The first is Personal Injury Protection (PIP) insurance, which covers medical bills and injury-related lost income only; it does not pay for property damage. The other is property damage liability insurance, which pays for repairs to the other driver’s car if the accident is your fault. What do you do about repairing your own car, then? It depends.

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Published on: August 5, 2020

Florida Punishes Car Owners Who Fail to Carry Insurance – PIP Setoff

By Dean Freeman

You probably have some kind of car insurance, since the law requires it. However, oftentimes you may not know what your car insurance actually pays until it’s too late. After a car accident, you call your insurance company, they might ask you follow-up questions by mail or phone, and then a month or more later, one of the people involved in the accident gets a check covering the some of their eleigible expenses. Just what are all those details that the insurance companies are working out before they decide how much to pay? Different types of car insurance pay for different things, and in some cases, they can even cancel each other out. If you are not sure if the amount that the insurance company offered you after your accident is correct, contact an attorneybefore you accept the settlement offer.

What is PIP Insurance?

All registered vehicle owners in Florida must carry PIP insurance, as well property damage liability insurance. PIP stands for Personal Injury Protection, which covers up to $10,000 of medical expenses and lost income when someone gets injured at an accident, regardless of who is at fault for the accident. In order to get PIP insurance to cover your accident-related expenses, you must seek medical treatment within 14 days of the accident. If a driver collides with a pedestrian or bicyclist who does not own a car (and therefore does not have PIP insurance), the driver’s PIP insurance might also pay the medical expenses and lost income of the pedestrian or bicyclist. If the drivers involved in the accident have additional optional car insurance, such as bodily injury or uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage, then the amount covered by PIP gets subtracted from what the other types of insurance must cover. This is called the PIP setoff.

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Published on: October 18, 2015

Williams v. Clark Sand Company, Inc. – Florida’s Corporate Survival Statute

By Dean Freeman

When a company shuts down operations, pays off creditors and steps away, those involved may believe that’s the end of it and begin moving onto other endeavors. However, if the company has products that may have caused injury to others, the firm could be subject to litigation well after the doors are closed.

In Florida, F.S. 607.1407 is known as the “corporate survival statute,” and it allows plaintiffs in tort actions to bring claims against the company for up to four years after it formally dissolves.

That assumes the company has properly dissolved – and not simply stopped operations – and that there was proper notification of that dissolution, either via public notice or personally to known creditors or claimants.

In the case of Williams v. Clark Sand Company, Inc., the Mississippi Supreme Court was asked to weigh several issues pertaining to Florida’s corporate survival statute, and whether claims regarding latent injuries could be brought more than four years after the corporation dissolved. Continue reading →

Published on: April 14, 2015

Florida Student Sports Injury Case Weighed by State Supreme Court

By Dean Freeman

The family of a Florida high school student who suffered permanent brain damage as a result of oxygen loss after collapsing on a school soccer field has won the right to continue their civil lawsuit against the school district.

Continuation of the case, Limones v. Lee County School District, which had previously been dismissed via trial court’s summary judgment favoring defendant last year, hinged on whether the school employees owed a reasonable duty of care under F.S. 1006.165 to diagnose the need for, locate and use an automated external defibrillator.

What the law says is the every public school that is a member of the Florida High School Athletic Association has to keep a defibrillator on school grounds and all employees and volunteers who may reasonably be expected to use the device need to know how to use it.

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Published on: March 4, 2015

Uriell v. Regents of UC – $550k Failure to Diagnose Verdict Affirmed

By Dean Freeman

When it comes to medical malpractice, sometimes it’s as much what the physicians and health care professionals did not do as what they did.

This was the case for plaintiffs in Uriell v. Regents of UC, who accused a surgeon and surgeon’s employer of failure to diagnose breast cancer resulting in the wrongful death of patient, who was a wife and mother of three children.

A central question here was not only whether the doctor had breached the applicable standard of care, but also whether it had much effect. The type of cancer the patient had was almost certainly terminal. However, there was a real question as to how much longer she might have lived had the malignancy been diagnosed sooner.

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Published on: January 26, 2015

Schwartz v. Wal-Mart – New Negligence Trial Denied

By Dean Freeman

In any personal injury claim, the very basics of what must be proven are:

Duty of care
Breach of that duty

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Published on: December 4, 2014

DeCormier v. Harley-Davidson – Liability Waiver Enforceability Challenged

By Dean Freeman

Increasingly, companies and service providers require consumers to sign liability waivers, effectively agreeing to sign away their right to seek recompense should injury result from the activity or service.

In large part, courts have upheld the viability of these documents, considered formal legal contracts. This is why people must be extremely wary in signing these waivers.

However, this does not mean the existence of a waiver completely extinguishes a person’s ability to pursue civil litigation. To start, no waiver protects an entity from liability for an intentional tort or acts of gross negligence. Beyond that, the Florida Supreme Court has held such agreements are only enforceable when intent is “clearly and unequivocally stated.” (University Plaza Shopping Center v. Stewart, Fla. 1973). When the language is over-broad, plaintiff may have grounds to assert the specific dangers of the underlying activity were not apparent or disclosed.

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