Florida car accident lawyer

All drivers are required to use reasonable care in protecting passengers as well as other motorists from foreseeable harm. That means operating the vehicle in a reasonably safe manner.

Some drivers may have a heightened duty of care. Primarily, these include common carriers, such as bus drivers. It does not, according to a recent ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, include designated drivers. Such drivers are members of the group who agree to abstain from drinking alcohol or taking drugs in order to be able safely to drive others in the group, thus avoiding a potentially tragic drunk driving accident.

In the case recently before the Eighth Circuit, the trial court in North Dakota applied a higher standard of care to the sober designated driver – something statutory and case law did not support. This fact was especially important here because of the way that state approaches comparative fault. Here in Florida, we follow a pure comparative fault model, per F.S. 768.81. This means even if a plaintiff is deemed 99 percent at-fault for an accident, he or she can still collect on the other 1 percent (though an attorney would have to weigh carefully the wisdom of pursuing a case with such long odds). However, many other jurisdictions do not allow plaintiffs to recover if they bear 50 percent or more of the fault burden. Continue reading ›

Florida courts do not allow plaintiffs in most car accident cases to raise the issue of defendant insurance due to concern that jurors would treat insured defendants differently from those who lacked insurance.

It is in a similar vein that courts generally don’t allow defendants to mention whether plaintiff seeking compensation for medical bills had health insurance coverage. Courts don’t want jurors giving less compensation to plaintiffs who had coverage (and maybe only paid a fraction of billed costs out-of-pocket) than those who didn’t (and are therefore solely responsible for paying bills in full). This is known as the collateral source rule, and the key is that wrongdoers shouldn’t be allowed to benefit just because plaintiff received compensation from some other source. A plaintiff’s compensation from a third party doesn’t make the actions any less wrong.

However, that also doesn’t mean plaintiffs are necessarily entitled to receive double recovery. Usually, the insurance company intercedes and collects its fair share. Continue reading ›

Articles Tagged with Florida car accident lawyer

8th Circuit: Designated Driver Not Held to Higher Standard of Care

Uspenskaya v. Meline – Collateral Source Rule in Injury Cases