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I am forced to have uncomfortable conversations regularly with clients and potential clients wherein I inform them that the party that caused their car accident does not have insurance, and that as a result, their chances of making a recovery for their damages is slim to none.  An Insurance Research Council study, Uninsured Motorists, 2017 Edition, examined data collected from 14 insurers representing approximately 60 percent of the private passenger auto insurance market in 2015.  The result was that Florida led the nation in uninsured drivers with 26.7%!

Collision coverage is the type of coverage that you purchase to protect your own car from property damage resulting from an accident, regardless of who is at fault.  When another party is responsible for damaging your vehicle that party is supposed to address your damages.  In fact, Florida requires that every driver on the road carry Personal Injury Protection (PIP) and at least $10,000 in Property Damage (PD) coverage.  Property Damage coverage protects you in that it covers damage that you cause to the property of another.  Due to Florida’s requirement that everyone carry PD coverage, many people with older vehicles that are owned outright (no financing) choose to remove collision from their policy in an effort to save money.  Many people feel that they are safe drivers and will “self-insure” against damage they cause and hold someone else responsible should that person be at fault.  This sounds like a great way to save money… in theory.  In reality, it is a mistake that costs Florida drivers untold sums of money every year.

If a person hits your vehicle and they do not have any insurance coverage, your only remedy is to sue that person individually and obtain a judgment against them.   A judgment is essentially just a piece of paper that says what you’re entitled to.  Next comes executing that judgment and actually trying to collect money.  This is where it gets ugly.  This process can take many months and you could easily end up spending more than the cost of the repairs to your car in legal fees and costs alone.  You might find yourself in a situation where your car is totaled and you are not in a position to purchase another vehicle.

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The first thing you feel after being in a car accident where no one got injured is relief that the accident was not worse than it was. Only then do the worries about finances start. How much will it cost to fix your car? Will you be able to get to your job while your car is being repaired, and if so, how much will you have to pay for alternative transportation, such as rideshare rides or a rental car? Do you have the money to pay your insurance deductible? How much will your car insurance premiums increase as a result of the accident? If you have to go to court, how much time and money will that cost? Your options for the most cost-effective way to pay for property damage vary according to the circumstances of the accident. Freeman Injury Law can help you choose the best course of action.

Florida Car Insurance Basics

Everyone who registers a vehicle in Florida must have two kinds of insurance. The first is Personal Injury Protection (PIP) insurance, which covers medical bills and injury-related lost income only; it does not pay for property damage. The other is property damage liability insurance, which pays for repairs to the other driver’s car if the accident is your fault. What do you do about repairing your own car, then? It depends.

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You probably have some kind of car insurance, since the law requires it. However, oftentimes you may not know what your car insurance actually pays until it’s too late. After a car accident, you call your insurance company, they might ask you follow-up questions by mail or phone, and then a month or more later, one of the people involved in the accidentgets a check covering the some of their eleigible expenses. Just what are all those details that the insurance companies are working out before they decide how much to pay? Different types of car insurance pay for different things, and in some cases, they can even cancel each other out. If you are not sure if the amount that the insurance company offered you after your accident is correct, contact an attorneybefore you accept the settlement offer.

What is PIP Insurance?

All registered vehicle owners in Florida must carry PIP insurance, as well property damage liability insurance. PIP stands for Personal Injury Protection, which covers up to $10,000 of medical expenses and lost income when someone gets injured at an accident, regardless of who is at fault for the accident. In order to get PIP insurance to cover your accident-related expenses, you must seek medical treatment within 14 days of the accident. If a driver collides with a pedestrian or bicyclist who does not own a car (and therefore does not have PIP insurance), the driver’s PIP insurance might also pay the medical expenses and lost income of the pedestrian or bicyclist. If the drivers involved in the accident have additional optional car insurance, such as bodily injury or uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage, then the amount covered by PIP gets subtracted from what the other types of insurance must cover. This is called the PIP setoff.

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Most Plaintiffs in personal injury cases that are in litigation are required to undergo a Compulsory or Independent medical examination also known as the CME. This is an examination that is requested by the opposing side and is done by a physician that is hired by the opposition.

The CME involves a review of records, a physical examination, face to face interview, review of test results, and conclusions. The goal of this examination is to confirm the initial injury diagnosis and determine whether such injury was due to the accident. The physician is also looking to verify that the current symptoms and findings are consistent with the diagnosis made. Lastly, they are looking to determine whether the individual is exaggerating or making up their complaints. This examining physician is not a treating physician and is also considered a hired expert for the opposition. Due to this, it is understood that there is always an element of bias involved in their conclusions.

It is important to keep in mind that by the time the plaintiff enters the examination room, the physician has already had the chance to review all treatment records and other records that were provided to him prior to the examination. The Plaintiff must be prepared for this examination and understand what could potentially be asked by the physician. Hired CME physicians are trained to look for and document potential indicators of fraud and deception during the interview portion of the examination and the availability of all these records prior to the appointment makes it easier for them to find. The physicians look for things such as verbal behavior indicators, omitting information such as prior injuries, too much information, overly specific answers, aggressive reactions to the questions, invocation of religion not to answer the questions and the use of qualifiers such as “honestly” and “truthfully”.

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I regularly have uncomfortable conversations with clients wherein I inform them that the party that caused their car accident does not have insurance, and that as a result, their chances of making a recovery for their damages are slim to none. An Insurance Research Council study, Uninsured Motorists, 2017 Edition, examined data collected from 14 insurers representing approximately 60 percent of the private passenger auto insurance market in 2015. The result was that Florida led the nation in uninsured drivers at 26.7%!

Collision coverage is the type of insurance that protects your own car from property damage resulting from an accident, regardless of who is at fault. When another party damages your vehicle, that party is supposed to address your damages. In fact, Florida requires that every driver on the road carry Personal Injury Protection (PIP) and at least $10,000 in Property Damage (PD) coverage. Property Damage coverage protects you by covering damage that you cause to the property of another. Due to Florida’s requirement that everyone carry PD coverage, many people with older vehicles that are owned outright (no financing) choose to remove collision from their policy in an effort to save money. Many people feel that they are safe drivers and will “self-insure” against damage they cause, and they will hold someone else responsible should that person be at fault. This sounds like a great way to save money in theory In reality, it costs Florida drivers untold sums of money every year.

When someone does not have any insurance coverage, the only remedy is to sue that person individually and obtain a judgment against them. A judgment states what you’re entitled to. However, next comes executing that judgment and actually trying to collect money. This process can take many months, and you could easily end up spending more than the cost of the repairs to your car in legal fees and costs alone. You might find yourself in a situation where your car is totaled and you are not in a position to purchase another vehicle.

Continue reading →
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How much Compensation for Car Accident Whiplash in Florida

According to the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, there were over 400,000 car accidents in Florida in 2017. Whiplash just so happens to be the most common injury related to car accidents, but the symptoms are not always instant. Hundreds of thousands of whiplash cases each year result in chronic pain and disability, showcasing just how serious whiplash can be. If you suffer from whiplash after car accident, then you may be wondering whether it’s worth it to pursue a claim.

First, What Exactly is Whiplash?

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‘Tis the season for good cheer – but don’t let this one be ruined by a holiday car crash. Fort Lauderdale car accident attorneys know we tend to see more collisions over the holidays between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day than at most other times during the year. People are rushed, speeding, distracted and sometimes impaired – and the roads are crowded with folks shopping, visiting family and running other related errands. 

The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety reported some 94 million people travel 50 miles or more during the holidays, a number that has been steadily increasing the last few years. More than 90 percent of those travelers get to their destination by motor vehicle. Travel rates may be impacted this year – increasing the risk of a Miami holiday car crash – thanks to low gas prices and an increasing tendency of people to travel further distances by car. This likely has something to do with the spiking cost of air travel, leading more people to opt for a road trip than a flight.

Last year, New Year’s Eve drunk driving case ended in tragedy, making headlines in the Orlando Sentinel. An alleged drunk driver in Winter park was reportedly traveling an estimated 130 mph on Orange Avenue in a residential neighborhood and crashed into another vehicle. The speed limit on the road was 35 mph. He allegedly t-boned a sport utility vehicle, killing the two 23-year-old women inside. He had previous speeding violations on his driving record, but for the last, had only paid a $254 fine. The reportedly impaired driver was charged with two counts of vehicular homicide. Continue reading →

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If you’re like many people in the wake of a collision, you may be wondering, “How much compensation for car accident can I expect?” Our Fort Lauderdale injury attorneys can explain there are a number of factors that are weighed – by the insurance adjusters, attorneys and the courts.

The two basic types of car accident compensation in Florida are compensatory (actual) and punitive. Compensatory damages are intended to compensate you for losses you have sustained. Punitive damages are intended to punish the other person for conduct that was grossly reckless or flagrantly disregarded the rights and safety of others, as explained in F.S. 768.72. As our Fort Lauderdale car accident lawyers can explain, the only time that is ever really applicable in car accident injury cases is in drunk driving crashes. For the most part, when we determine how much compensation for car accident in Broward County, we’ll be looking at the varying kinds of compensatory damages. These include:

  • Special Damages. These are damages that compensate for quantifiable monetary losses. These would include thing repairs, lost wages, medical bills, etc.
  • General Damages. These would be non-monetary damages for the harm, such as pain and suffering, emotional and mental anguish, disfigurement, loss of life enjoyment, loss of consortium/ companionship.
  • Speculative Damages. These are damages that have not yet occurred, but that plaintiff can reasonably anticipate. These damages usually cannot be recovered unless plaintiff can prove they are likely. An example would be loss of earning capacity in your career. Continue reading →
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Occasionally our Fort Lauderdale car accident attorneys are asked, “A drunk car hit me? Now what?”

First we need to clarify: While the car may have been the object that struck you or your vehicle, it was in fact the driver who was impaired. It is also the driver who would be held accountable if you’re asking what to do if a “drunk car hit me.” 

The good news is Florida law enforcement officials launch regular crackdowns on drunk drivers over holiday weekends – necessary because drunk driving accidents in Florida tend to be higher over these high travel periods. NBC-2 in Cape Coral-Fort Myers on Florida’s Gulf Coast announced numerous police departments plus the Lee County Sheriff’s Office would be launching their own, Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over” campaign over the recent Thanksgiving holiday weekend, a national effort repeated by law enforcement agencies across the country. Heightened enforcement has been shown to reduce drunk driving crashes, injuries and wrongful deaths in Florida, but of course they don’t eliminate them entirely.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report 2.1 percent of Florida drivers admit to driving after having too much to drink, higher than the national average of 1.9 percent.  Continue reading →

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With the Thanksgiving travel rush now over and December holidays upon us, our South Florida injury lawyers sought to answer a question we often hear: What holiday has the most accidents? 

Of course, it depends on the type of car accident we’re talking about, and the area of the country has a lot to do with it too. For instance, if we’re talking about what holiday has the most accidents in parking lots, those peak in December, though Black Friday is ripe for such collisions too.

An Osceola County car accident on the Florida Turnpike left one person dead when a Ford Explorer driver carrying 10 passengers swerved to avoid another sport utility vehicle that abruptly changed lanes, causing the Explorer to flip multiple times. Nine people – including five children – were injured, and one died, according to FOX35 Orlando. Another crash the same day, same county, same stretch of Florida Turnpike also proved fatal, when a driver reportedly made an abrupt lane change and was rear-ended. That driver suffered serious injuries. His passenger, age 28, died. The other motorist suffered minor injuries. (As our car accident attorneys in Orlando can explain, there is a presumption in rear-end crashes that the rear driver was at fault, that presumption can be rebutted if the driver in the lead makes a move that is wholly unexpected or unwarranted, contributing to or causing the crash.)  Continue reading →

Contact Information
WEST PALM BEACH
5 Harvard Cir #110,
West Palm Beach, FL 33409
Phone: 561-999-9999
Fax: 561-689-4310
PLANTATION
8751 W Broward Blvd #106
Plantation, FL 33324
Phone: 954-999-9999
Toll Free: 800-561-7777
Fax: 954-979-1225
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7685 SW 104th St #200
Miami, FL 33156
Phone: 786-517-9774
Toll Free: 800-561-7777
Fax: 954-979-1225
ORLANDO
258 Southhall Ln #140
Maitland, FL 32751
Phone: 407-999-9999
Fax: 407-956-3820

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