Florida Personal Injury Guide

Ironically, the first line of responsibility is you. In an automobile accident case, you carry what is known as PIP, Personal Injury Protection. You may know it as no-fault insurance. You’re required to have it in the state of Florida. The reason you have it is if you get hurt in an automobile accident, that is what’s paid first. That is the law in Florida. Next, if you have health insurance, it will pick up what your PIP does not pay.

Ultimately, if we make a claim and we recover, part of that claim is medical bills and, although typically it’s one check the insurance company writes, it covers all your damages, including the medical bills. There are other complexities to that. The first line of payment is your own insurance.

If you’ve been hurt in an automobile accident or other accidents, sit down and talk with us. We can go into all the insurance issues. Typically, this is a first-time event for many clients. They do not know how it works. Working through the maze and myriad of insurance responsibilities and layers of insurance is a mystery to them. We can unravel that mystery. If you’ve been hurt in Duval County, Nassau County, give us a call. We’ll sit down and go over all of that the very first so that you have a full understanding of how to handle your medical bills and other aspects of the case.

One of the questions that clients ask when they come into the office is, “How do we get started? What are the steps in starting my case?” It differs from case to case. Initially, you come see the lawyer and we sit down and we talk about the case and find out what kind of case it is. Some cases, we will go to the courthouse immediately and file what is called a complaint. That starts your complaint in the court system. Other cases require us to put defendants on formal notice before we’re able to actually file a lawsuit against them. Come see a lawyer first. Let’s gather up all the facts. Let’s gather the evidence, which is very important. Then we know what we have, we know the direction that we need to take your case, depending on what kind it is. Here in northeast Florida, Nassau County, or Duval County, that’s how it’s done. If you live in those areas and you’ve been hurt, give us a call. We’ll be happy to sit down with you, talk to you in more detail about your case, and figure out what next steps are.

One of the very first questions that most clients ask is how long their case will last. That question, as important as it is, is rather hard to answer directly with an exact timeframe. It could be as quickly as six months. It could be several years. It depends upon your case. In Nassau County, we have lots of logging truck accidents and those cases can be complex. They can last a couple of years. If we can get into a situation where we can approach the insurance company early on, it could be six to eight to nine months. You must be prepared to go the long haul. This is not going to be over in a couple of weeks. Again, every case is a little bit different. Call us. Make an appointment. We’ll sit down together or through Zoom and we’ll go over it and figure out how best to help you.

People generally don’t like to go to trial. It’s a foreign experience. It’s filled with tension and pressure for them. We, as lawyers, have to be sensitive to that, particularly those of us who have tried many cases. We sometimes overlook the pressure points that clients experience in the courtroom. You can avoid that by settling your case before trial. The offers that insurance companies will make if your case has merit will vary from insurance company to insurance company. We will give you recommendations about what we think you should do. Trying cases in Nassau County and Duval County, we are pretty familiar with the insurance carriers and we know how they approach these issues. Whether or not we can avoid it will depend upon you as the client. We will give you recommendation about what we think you should do but the bottom-line decision is yours. You control it in terms of whether you try your case or we avoid it by settling the case. If you’ve been hurt in any form of accident in Duval County, Nassau County, or northeast Florida, feel free to call. We’ll sit down and go over the ins and outs of your case.

When we meet with clients, we talk about how the case is going to go. Settlement comes up every single time. Many times, a client will ask if they should accept the insurance company’s first settlement offer. Typically, we say no because insurance companies are like most companies. They try to get away with paying as little as they can. If you’ve been around like we have for 38 years, you know that they will not come in with their best offer initially. The short answer is no. If your case has significant problems, that could influence that answer, but generally speaking, no. We litigate the cases. We get their best dollar on the table and then sit down with the client to discuss whether we will accept that offer and resolve the case at that point. If you’ve been hurt or injured in the Nassau County area, Duval County area, give us a call. We’ll sit down. We’ll talk about your case and see how best we can help you.

People ask often if it is possible that a case will settle before going to court. The statistics show that most cases do. Even with lawyers like us who have tried a lot of cases, the majority of our cases do settle before court. The reason for that is we prepare. We know our cases. The other side of the insurance company knows that we know our case. If they know our track record, they know that we’re willing to trial the case.

When that happens, if you have seasoned lawyers on both sides and seasoned insurance adjustors on the other side, then typically we will find ourselves in the same range of settlement value. In those cases, more likely than not, we will be able to settle your case but it will be done in a reasonable manner in a range that we think is reasonable. That only comes with experience. We have been practicing for decades and have been inside a courtroom. We know what a courtroom can do for you and we have a healthy respect for the courtroom. Give us a call if you’ve been hurt Nassau County or Duval County. We’ll be able to sit down with you and go over your case in detail.

As we get into cases, we begin talking about hiring witnesses to help with the case. These people are called expert witnesses. They are specially hired for the case, with the exception of your treating doctors, who are also known as expert witnesses. Their role is to provide professional opinions about certain complex areas of the case that are beyond the understanding of the average juror. We routinely hire experts in our cases to help in those areas that are needed. We don’t go overboard in hiring experts. We hire them as we need them, but if we need them, we go get them. If you have any questions about your case, expert witnesses or otherwise, call us. We’ll sit down an we’ll talk about your case.

We had someone ask recently how to go about picking a good personal injury lawyer here in Nassau County and the Amelia Island area. This is what we told them— You want someone who has experience and someone who has been inside of a courtroom and knows what a courtroom looks like and has tried cases similar to the one that you have. That is the number one consideration. You also want someone who’s familiar with the area who’s willing to go out to the areas where the injury or accident occurred and can translate that into your claim. That is another important consideration in picking a personal injury lawyer. If you would like to discuss this further, call us. We’d be happy to go through the ins and outs of your case in much more detail.