In a recent case, a Florida appellate court considered a personal injury case in which it was alleged the plaintiff had committed a fraud upon the court. The plaintiff had sued the defendant after a car crash in January 2010, claiming injuries to his neck and back. He had a…
Stacking inferences is impermissible in Florida personal injury cases, but a defendant may not frame a single inference as multiple inferences in order to defeat a plaintiff’s claim. In a recent case that illustrates this point, a Florida appellate court considered a single-vehicle accident that happened on a part of…
Sometimes settlement with one defendant in a case is appropriate while settlement with another defendant cannot be reached. In those cases, a plaintiff can proceed to trial against one of the defendants while settling with the other and dismissing him or her. One concern a plaintiff may have in such…
Personal injury victims in Florida are entitled to jury trials. In a recent case, a plaintiff appealed because the trial court denied her challenge to a jury for cause. Also at issue was the trial court’s refusal to permit her to tell the jury about her Social Security disability status…
A Florida statutory subsection limits damages when an owner loans his vehicle to another person whose negligent operation of the car leads to damages to a victim. In that case, the owner is liable only up to $100,000 per person and up to $300,000 per incident for bodily injury and…
Both plaintiffs and defendants are subject to intense questioning about personal subjects when engaged in a personal injury lawsuit in Florida. Each side will attempt to find information to discredit the other side. If you drove on a suspended license, if you have a history of traffic violations or you…
Critical to some Florida car accident cases is the testimony of an expert on accident reconstruction. Often it is unclear what actually happened–the parties either don’t remember or have grossly different accounts of the events. In those cases, an accident reconstruction expert can shed light on all that is unknown…
A Florida appellate court recently addressed this issue in the context of a personal injury plaintiff who claimed her financial situation did not permit her to seek or receive consistent treatment for claimed injuries. The case arose out of a car crash in which the defendant claimed his car was…
In Florida, there is a rebuttable presumption that the rear driver caused a rear-ending car accident–that the rear driver’s negligence was the sole proximate cause of a collision. When this rule was put in place, Florida was a contributory negligence state. That meant that when a plaintiff was at all…
As if getting into a car accident and suffering serious injuries weren’t bad enough, some people in Florida find that they are further injured when they go to the hospital to treat their injuries from a car accident. In some cases, the original person or people who caused the accident…