Florida Injury Attorney Blawg

Fault (or negligence) is always an issue in Florida motor vehicle accident personal injury cases. For an individual to be successful in claiming damages against another party, the claimant has the burden of proving that the other party caused the accident. In some cases, proving fault is an easy matter. In others, the issue will…

Since the establishment of a workers’ compensation system in Florida more than 80 years ago, business and insurance interests have steadily tried to whittle away workers’ rights with varying degrees of success. The high water mark for them arrived in the late 1990s with the election of Jeb Bush as Florida’s Governor. For the next…

Florida law imposes a duty on insurers to act reasonably in the discharge of the fiduciary duty they owe their policy holders. In the case of an injury claim against a policy holder (insured), the insurance company is duty bound to settle within the policy limits when it can and should do so. When the…

It is common practice to seek PIP benefits for an insured who has paid money out-of-pocket to satisfy a workers’ compensation lien. Is the PIP carrier let off the hook for payments when the workers’ compensation lien is waived? According to the holding in Cannino v. Progressive Insurance Co., Fla: Dist. Court of Appeals, 2nd…

In our firm’s continuing effort to inform the public of important legal issues, from time to time we will reproduce in our blog letters, articles, and papers written by other people. Today’s entry, published in the March, 2011 edition of The Florida Bar Journal, was written by Rutledge R. Liles, one of the most esteemed…

The newspaper article reproduced below, written in 2003, does an excellent job of illustrating the importance of having strong bad faith insurance laws designed to persuade insurance companies to settle cases for fair value rather force every case to trial. Florida’s bad faith laws impose a duty on insurance companies to act in the best…

In my opinion, the most important Florida workers’ compensation case of all time is Aguilera v. Inservices, Inc., 905 So.2d 84 (Fla., 2005). Aguilera made it clear that workers’ compensation insurance carriers and adjusters are not immune from being sued for the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress where their conduct in handling a…

At the urging of Governor Jeb Bush, Florida’s Republican-controlled legislature in 2002 passed a workers’ compensation bill designed to limit carrier-paid attorney’s fees to claimants’ attorneys. The measure was challenged in the courts by claimants (injured workers), who argued that it was unconstitutional (denied access to courts & equal protection) and that it should be…

Under no circumstances may a civil action alleging medical malpractice/negligence be started in Florida more than seven years from the date of the incident or occurrence out of which the action accrued. This 7-year limitation is imposed by what is called a statute of repose, set forth in Florida Statute 95.11(4)(b). This is not to…

A statute of limitation is an enactment in a common law legal system that sets forth the maximum time after an event that legal proceedings based on that event may be initiated. Most people are familiar with the concept. Far less familiar to the general public, and even to some lawyers, is the legal concept…