Florida Injury Lawyer Blog

Amusement Park Wrongful Death Lawsuit Heads Back to Trial Court

August 23, 2017 | Associates and Bruce L. Scheiner

A defendant amusement park missed the deadline to seek compensation from the school of an 11-year-old girl killed in accident at the park, but it can still try to prove the school was partially negligent in a pending trial brought by the girl’s parents.

That’s according to a recent ruling by the New Jersey Supreme Court. The decision was notable for the fact that it holds third-party claims against the government to the same standards for tort claim notice as first-party claims. In New Jersey, there is a 90-day deadline to file a notice – starting at the time of a victim’s death – to the defendant government agency and its subdivisions. Still, it’s a disappointing outcome for the plaintiff parents because the ruling will allow defendant amusement park to present evidence of the school’s potential liability, which could reduce its own liability and ultimately reduce damages awarded to plaintiffs.

The tragic events that spurred this case began in 2011, when the girl was on a school field trip hosted for honor roll students. The trip was organized by the school. She died after falling approximately 150 feet from a large Ferris wheel. Two years after the fifth-grader’s death, within the statute of limitations for wrongful death cases, her parents filed their wrongful death lawsuit. Continue reading ›

GEICO Liable to Cover Wrongful Death Damages After Insured Absconded, 3rd DCA Rules

August 19, 2017 | Associates and Bruce L. Scheiner

A recent decision by Florida’s Third District Court of Appeals upholds the liability of auto insurance company GEICO in covering damages awarded to plaintiffs who won a $15 million verdict against GEICO’s insured.

The case is a tragic and complicated one, and despite the commonality of Florida auto accident claims, how complex they can sometimes be when it comes to disputes with insurers. That’s why it’s so critical that claimants seek top quality legal counsel to represent them in such cases.

The case began with events that occurred in March 2011 in Miami. Court documents revealed defendant driver was operating his mother’s vehicle when he slammed into a cluster of other vehicles on the shoulder of I-95. The other motorists had just been involved in a minor chain-reaction crash set off when one vehicle clipped a stalled vehicle that was parked in an emergency lane. A total of seven cars were involved in the initial crash. People had exited their vehicles and were waiting on police to arrive when defendant swerved from the express lane, slammed into a concrete barrier and then crashed into the crowd. He instantly killed four people and a fifth died several days later of severe personal injuries. Continue reading ›

Overcoming Assumption of Risk in Florida Personal Injury Lawsuits

August 16, 2017 | Associates and Bruce L. Scheiner

When a personal injury occurs in the course of an activity the injured person knew was dangerous, the court may shoot down claims of liability, citing the assumption of risk doctrine. However, Florida courts (specifically within the 1983 ruling of Kuehner v. Green) have historically limited successful use of the assumption of risk doctrine to cases involving:

Contracts not to sue (i.e., liability waivers);
Injuries arising out of contact sports.

Florida courts have held that rather than preventing a plaintiff from proceeding with a lawsuit at the outset, jurors should be allowed to decide whether plaintiff’s assumption of the risks should be factored into whether plaintiff was fully or partially at-fault for the the accident that resulted in injuries. Continue reading ›

Negligence Alleged in Florida Boating Accident That Killed Two Teens

August 12, 2017 | Associates and Bruce L. Scheiner

Florida is a boater’s paradise, but it quickly became a nightmare for the parents of two teen boys who disappeared off the coast of Jupiter in the midst of a fierce Atlantic storm. The 19-foot boat they took was recovered months later, empty. The boys have never been found.

Now, the parents of one of those teens are eyeing a wrongful death lawsuit against the other, after a new state report alleges negligence for failure to exercise reasonable care in allowing the teens to go out into the water on an ill-equipped boat in poor weather conditions with no adult supervision. However, the prospective defendants of the case say they did not allow their son to take the boat out that day, and should not be liable for the other boy’s death.

Florida does not require a boating license for any operator. However, if a boater was born on or after Jan. 1, 1988, they will be required to complete a boater’s safety education course if they operate a boat with 10 hp or more. Most providers of these courses have no minimum age, and do not require participants to be Florida residents.

The question in this tragic case will really boil down to whether the boys were properly supervised. Although negligent supervision is a tort that could apply in a variety of contexts (think construction site managers or trucking carriers overseeing many drivers), it can also refer to failure to control a child. What must be proven is the adult knew or should have known the child needed to be controlled and/ or protected, and failed to do so, resulting in injury. Continue reading ›

Florida Slip-and-Fall Injury Claimant Seeks $15,000 in Damages

August 10, 2017 | Associates and Bruce L. Scheiner

A woman in Tarpon Springs has filed a personal injury lawsuit seeking at least $15,000 in damages for injuries suffered in an alleged slip-and-fall accident.

The incident occurred in a Wal-Mart store, which has been no stranger to such claims, given that it gets an estimated 138 million visitors every week. In fact, the company hires not just attorneys to handle cases as they arise, but also a claims management firm, with the sole aim of reducing the store’s liability in slip-and-fall and other negligence cases.

Such claims are harder to win in Florida, especially in recent years since legislators tightened plaintiff’s proof burden under F.S. 768.0755. In order to prevail in a Florida slip-and-fall lawsuit arising from a transitory foreign substance on the floor of a business establishment, plaintiffs need to prove the company had actual or constructive knowledge of the dangerous condition and yet failed to take action – whether warning you about it or cleaning it up. Continue reading ›

Pedestrian Accident Lawsuit Requires Showing Negligence by Preponderance of Evidence

August 8, 2017 | Associates and Bruce L. Scheiner

Florida is one of the worst places in the country to be a pedestrian. Data released earlier this year from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) shows that of the 5,400 fatal pedestrian accidents nationally in 2015, there were 628 that happened in Florida. To put this in context, Florida claims about 6.25 percent of the nation’s population, but nearly 12 percent of its pedestrian accidents.

But just because a pedestrian accident happens – even one that results in serious injuries – doesn’t automatically mean the injured party will be entitled to damages. It is still necessary for claimants to be able to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that defendant motorist was negligent in striking the plaintiff, causing the asserted injuries. This isn’t to say you must be 100 percent innocent in the entire incident. In fact, Florida operates under a standard of pure comparative negligence (per F.S. 768.81), which means even if you are 99 percent to blame for what happened, you could technically still collect that other 1 percent in damages from at-fault parties.

However, a recent case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit (which oversees cases out of Puerto Rico, where this claim originated), plaintiffs still have to establish by a preponderance of the evidence that the other party was negligent.

Florida Jury Awards Plaintiff $5 Million for Ladder Injury

August 6, 2017 | Associates and Bruce L. Scheiner

The potential for falls and serious injuries on ladders is a very real one, as more than 20,000 people are injured and nearly 135 die annually in the U.S. due to ladder falls just in the workplace. Although construction workers are the most at risk for obvious reasons, they aren’t the only ones. Any homeowner – particularly those who prefer to do household maintenance themselves, may find themselves at risk of a fall.

Whether these incidents can be grounds for an injury lawsuit, however, will depend on a variety of factors. For instance, if you were using a ladder on a property owned by another (say, a retailer), you might have grounds for a premises liability claim if you can show the ladder presented an unsafe condition and the property owner was aware of it or should have been aware of it and failed to warn you about it. If, however, you are injured by a ladder you are using at home, you may want to look into whether the ladder itself was defective. It certainly would not be the first time.

In fact, a jury in a federal court in Florida recently awarded nearly $5 million to a plaintiff who alleged injury as a result of a defective ladder. In the case of Ore v. Tricam Industries Inc. et al., a South Florida resident filed the personal injury lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. He alleged at least one of the rivets in the ladder manufactured and sold by defendants failed while in normal use. The holes were reportedly punched in the wrong place in the fiber glass. The ladder was never properly inspected before it was shipped to the hardware store for sale. The hardware store also failed to look it over before selling it. Continue reading ›

Fort Myers Car Accidents: Damages Exceed PIP Coverage

August 4, 2017 | Associates and Bruce L. Scheiner

Florida law establishes strict requirements for auto insurance, including requiring all drivers to carry a type of coverage called personal injury protection, or PIP. Per F.S. 627.736, this PIP coverage provides up to $10,000 in medical and disability benefits and $5,000 in death benefits resulting from bodily injury, sickness disease or death arising from the ownership, maintenance or use of a motor vehicle. This applies to crashes, regardless of who is at-fault.

When lawmakers established Florida as a “no-fault” state, the goal was to make it easier to obtain fast coverage for injuries suffered in a crash – even if the other driver didn’t have insurance – and to reduce the burden on the court system.

However, our accident lawyers know that while there are some benefits to this PIP system, the problem is far too many victims who have suffered serious injuries are denied benefits, or else they are offered settlement “deals” that are far less than the actual losses they suffered. Plus, there are a number of exclusions. Still, the only way a person can step outside the boundaries of PIP is to meet the threshold of injury as outlined in F.S. 627.737. Continue reading ›

Venus Williams’ Florida Car Accident: The Tricky Business of Determining Fault

August 2, 2017 | Associates and Bruce L. Scheiner

Initial investigation of a fatal South Florida car accident involving tennis star Venus Williams resulted in law enforcement’s conclusion that Williams was at-fault. However, new video evidence – specifically, surveillance footage obtained form a nearby community just south of the Palm Beach Gardens intersection where the crash occurred – led police to walk back their original findings.

Although Williams is listed in a defendant by decedent’s widow, who was also in the vehicle at the time of the crash, police now say it was Williams who was cut off by another vehicle upon entering the intersection. This in turn set off a chain event crash that within seconds resulted in a fatal collision with a third vehicle that critically injured a 78-year-old man who died two weeks later.

His estate, represented by his bride of 33 years, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Williams, alleging Williams was negligent and seeking damages for medical and funeral expenses, pain and suffering, lost earnings, loss of companionship/ consortium and funeral expenses. Although Williams has expressed her “devastation” over the incident, her attorney insisted from the beginning that she was innocent, traveling only 5 mph when she entered the intersection with a green light.

The case underscores how determinations of “fault” in Florida car accidents may not always be a simple, straightforward matter. Eyewitnesses to the very same events can emerge with a different accounting of what happened. Experts must work to piece together what they can with accident reconstruction methodology and technology, but even that sometimes is subjective. Absent clear video footage of the crash – and even that sometimes doesn’t tell the whole story – the truth of what happened may be obscured. Continue reading ›

Court Affirms $11M Defective Vehicle Verdict

July 15, 2017 | Associates and Bruce L. Scheiner

An $11 million verdict stemming from a claim of a defective vehicle resulting in a fatal crash was affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Among the plaintiffs were family members of decedents, as well as one of the drivers, who was originally convicted of vehicular homicide. That conviction was later vacated after the vehicle manufacturer began recalling vehicles for the same defect involved in this case – unintended acceleration.

The three-judge panel ruled unanimously in favor of plaintiffs, who alleged the vehicle malfunctioned, leading to three deaths and the driver’s imprisonment.

At trial two years ago, driver was found 40 percent at-fault and vehicle manufacturer deemed 60 percent at-fault. Total damages were set at $14 million, but that was reduced to $11 million based on damages obtained in previous settlements with other defendants. That $11 million will be divided among plaintiffs. Continue reading ›