In Florida, as in many states, there are legal requirements that identify mandatory reporters who must report suspicions of abuse of children or vulnerable adults – including elderly adults residing in a nursing home. Professionally mandated reporters include (but are not limited to):
Staff at adult day care centers;
A seven-car pileup in Fort Myers on Summerlin road killed one and injured several others after a semi-trailer truck rear-ended a passenger car, setting off a fiery chain-reaction crash.
Officials with the Florida Highway Patrol were investigating the details, but The News-Press reported all vehicles involved were traveling northbound on Summerlin Road near Winkler Road in South Fort Myers. All were in the process of slowing down for impending traffic congestion, as it was shortly before 4 p.m. They included a tractor-trailer ruck, two vans and four cars.
The tractor-trailer truck driver reportedly failed to stop in time for the traffic ahead of him. He slammed into a Town Car. That vehicle was driven by a 70-year-old man. A 38-year-old woman was riding in the rear passenger seat of that vehicle. The Town Car burst into flames. The 38-year-old woman, from Iowa, died instantly. Continue reading ›
Auto insurance policies all carry limits, which specify the maximum insurer will pay per person who is injured and how much it will pay for the entire accident. 
So for example, a policy with a $125,000 per person limit and a $250,000 per accident limit will pay a maximum of $250,000 – no matter how many people get hurt. So the fewer victims there are, the more they stand to receive – up to the per-person limit of $125,000. However, if three people are injured and each of their injuries are equal and exceed $125,000, the most each stands to receive under that policy would be $83,333.
But as in any policy or contract, the language must not be ambiguous. Any ambiguity in a policy should be skewed in favor of the plaintiff. Continue reading ›
The Florida Supreme Court recently rendered its decision in one of three key challenges to the state’s workers’ compensation law. 
In a 55-page opinion, the court in Castellanos v. Next Door Company et al., ruled F.S. Section 440.34(1), which pertains to the structuring of plaintiff attorney fees in workers’ compensation cases, is unconstitutional and a violation of due process.
Just a week earlier, the 1st DCA issued a 26-page ruling in Miles v. City of Edgewater in which appellate justices reached the same conclusion regarding the provision that bars workers from paying retainer or hourly fees to attorneys upfront. Continue reading ›
Mandatory arbitration agreements have become so commonplace, it’s often almost a given that people will enter them any time they:
These agreements serve to block access to a dispute resolution through the civil court system, instead requiring anyone with a problem to seek redress through a skewed arbitration system in which arbitrators view corporations as their “clients.” Continue reading ›
Punitive damages can be awarded in Florida personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits in which a defendant acted with gross negligence or intentional misconduct. The definitions of these terms are set forth in F.S. 768.72. 
But while punitive damages may substantially increase the amount of a certain damage award, the Fourteenth Amendment blocks these awards from being “grossly excessive.” But what does that mean? There is no dollar figure that establishes what is “grossly excessive,” which means the courts have to interpret legislative intent and rely on prior case law.
One Florida injury case where this became necessary was State Farm Mutual Auto Insurance Company v. Brewer, recently before the Florida’s Second District Court of Appeals. In this case, defendant and his insurer sought review of a final judgment entered in favor of plaintiffs in an injury case arising out of an automobile accident. The court affirmed judgment in favor of plaintiffs as well as the compensatory damages awarded. However, with regard to punitive damages, the court ruled the award was excessive to the point of being unconstitutional. For this reason, the court reversed and remanded for further proceedings. Continue reading ›
It was supposed to be one of the most mundane tasks of her day: Crossing the street. 
Instead, it ended her life and nearly claimed the life of her 5-month-old baby.
Authorities say the 35-year-old mother-of-two was killed in Port Charlotte while on vacation from Pittsburgh with her husband and two sons when she decided to go for a walk. It was about 7 a.m. She decided to take her youngest with her for the stroll. Continue reading ›
Guardrails are intended to keep motorists and passengers safe from careening into embankments, bridge parapets, signs, lights, signal supports, boulders, utility poles, drainage ditches, trees or bodies of water more than two feet deep.
Generally, they do a good job. Cable guardrails, also sometimes referred to as cable barriers, installed on Florida’s turnpike and I-75 on Alligator Alley served to slash the number of canal crashes along those roads significantly, according to reports.
But now, there is concern that new Alligator Alley guardrails will harm motorists, accident victims, workers and emergency responders. Continue reading ›
One of the greatest dangers in a Fort Myers trucking accident is the risk of a smaller vehicle ending up underneath a large commercial trailer. So serious was this problem that in 1998, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) implemented a requirement that vehicles weighing 10,000 pounds or more and manufactured after 1998 must be equipped with underride guards. These steel features are supposed to prevent other vehicles from ending up underneath a large truck, which is associated with catastrophic injuries. 
The underride guard requirement only pertains to certain trucks and even then, only to the rear. The issue still affects a significant number of cases. For example, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) reports that all the advances in modern vehicle technology are not effective if a vehicle ends up under a truck. The way most underride guards are designed, a passenger vehicle that rear-ends a semi-truck at an angle can still end up under the truck.
In 2011, of the more than 2,200 passenger vehicle occupant deaths in large truck accidents nationally, 260 died when the front of their vehicle struck the rear of a truck. It’s not clear exactly how many of those instances involved underride, but a 2011 study by IIHS found that of 115 fatal truck crashes, about half indicated severe or catastrophic underride damage. Continue reading ›
Prom and graduation season is upon us, which means many high school students will be donning tuxedos and gowns and heading out for a final bash. 
Parents concerned about the possibility of drunk driving may splurge on a limousine service for their kids, just to be certain teens won’t be tempted to drive while impaired. But limousine services can sometimes be negligent too. When a limousine accident results in injury, our experienced auto accident lawyers can help.
In a recent case out of Illinois, a limousine service carrier is the target of at least one lawsuit and a federal regulator shut-down following a fatal crash in March. Continue reading ›
Florida Injury Lawyer Blog
