Published on:

By

A Virginia mom of a 6-year-old girl is advocating for parents to make sure their child is properly buckled in a car seat or booster seat – every time. 

The Today Show reports the girl had not been in a booster seat one day in September when her father, who had simply forgotten the booster seat that day, veered off the road and struck a tree. The girl had been sitting with the shoulder strap behind her upper body, and the lap belt ran across her stomach. When her father crashed, the force of the impact was so severe, the seat belt dug into her abdomen, shredding the muscle and fat underneath. It even cut through the left side of her body, causing several inches of her intestines to spill outside of her belly.

A pediatric surgeon who treated the girl told Today the seat belt in this scenario acts “almost like a knife.”  Continue reading →

Published on:

By

Recently, an appellate court in South Carolina ruled on a criminal appeal brought by a woman who was accused of causing a fatal car accident while intoxicated, based on toxicology reports that showed marijuana in her system, as well as cold and cough medicines. 

In the case of Kranchick v. State, defendant was challenging the expertise of the state’s primary witness, who asserted that while the marijuana in her system could have been consumed up to 24 hours previously if she was a regular user, the amounts of cold and cough medicines in her blood indicated she was not using them for therapeutic purposes. Initially, the trial court granted her request for post-conviction relief on this point, but the appellate court reversed and reinstated defendant’s original conviction and sentence – which was for 13 years in prison.

But the case raises the larger question of how much cold medicine is too much? Can driving with a cold really be as dangerous as driving drunk? What does that mean in terms of liability?  Continue reading →

Published on:

By

The Utah Supreme Court has affirmed the right of an individual to act as both plaintiff and defendant in a wrongful death lawsuit stemming from a fatal car accident in which they were both the negligent driver and the person who suffered the loss of a wrongful death. 

The unusual case of Bagley v. Bagley has garnered international headlines, and will now proceed to trial after the state supreme court affirmed the decision of the appellate court to reverse the trial court’s dismissal of the claim. The trial court had reasoned a person can’t be both plaintiff and defendant. But the higher courts rule it is possible when we’re talking about a person who, in the plaintiff capacity, is acting as personal representative of the estate of the decedent. So in effect, they are not suing themselves for the personal injury they have personally inflicted, but rather, the wrongful death that their loved one suffered.

We don’t expect to see a glut of these kinds of cases anytime soon, but it could open the doors for some families to recover damages from insurance where they otherwise might not have been able to do so.  Continue reading →

Published on:

By

While uninsured/ underinsured motorist benefits are essential for any driver, these benefits have some limitations that you should understand. Specifically, F.S. 627.727(7) limits UM/UIM coverage only to economic damages caused by car accident injuries. By this statute, legal liability of a UM/UIM insurer specifically by this statute does NOT include damages for pain and suffering, mental anguish or inconvenience UNLESS the injury is described as:

  • Significant/ permanent scarring/ disfigurement;
  • Permanent injury within a reasonable degree of medical probability;
  • Significant/permanent loss of important bodily functions;
  • Death.

A recent bad faith insurance claim asked whether a UM/UIM insurance provider wrongly failed to settle a lawsuit with an insured for the $75,000 policy limits when it could have and should have done so. In order to answer this question, it was essential to determine whether plaintiff had proven she had suffered a permanent injury within the meaning of the state’s “permanency threshold” statute.  Continue reading →

Published on:

By

Early one morning in November 2014, a popular 17-year-old senior left her South Carolina home – and never returned. Her family didn’t know where she was headed at 6 a.m. on a Saturday, and they don’t know why she didn’t follow the highway’s sharp curve. What they can say with some certainty is that had a guardrail been positioned around that curve, she may not have careened off the road, down an embankment and head-on into a cluster of trees. 

She died on the scene of blunt force trauma to her head. Her family has since filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the state’s Department of Transportation, alleging the agency was negligent in failing to erect a guardrail that could have saved her life.

Authorities with the state declined to comment on the pending lawsuit, which accuses officials with the agency of knowing a guardrail was needed, but failing to act. Coincidentally, the family’s lawsuit was filed the same week as National Teen Driver Safety Week.  Continue reading →

Published on:

By

The family of a 58-year-old grandmother who died in a crash last month has filed a civil injury lawsuit against the 40-year-old driver, a principle at a local high school. They are seeking justice in a case where it seems apparent the at-fault driver won’t face criminal charges for allegedly driving drunk. 

The case is an odd one that started when a 5,000-pound truck fell from the sky and on top of the victim’s sport utility vehicle. The mother of four and grandmother of two was traveling home on the highway when the Ford F-150 truck crushed her SUV. The truck was driven by a 40-year-old high school principle. He reportedly struck an impact barrier with such force that it lifted the truck off the ground and made it go airborne, according to Fox News Latino. Defendant and his passengers walked away relatively unscathed with only minor lacerations and bruising.

Police did not charge defendant with DUI. He admitted to investigating officers he’d just left a local tavern, where he’d been with friends. He declined to undergo a breathalyzer test and he refused to undergo a sobriety test. However, at least two officers on scene said he didn’t appear to be drunk. Refusal to submit to a breathalyzer is illegal in Florida due to implied consent laws, but police can’t force anyone to breathe into a machine. Per a U.S. Supreme Court decision (Missouri v. McNeely), police would have to seek a warrant to conduct a blood draw, but they would need probable cause. A prosecutor called to assess the situation found there was not enough probable cause to ask a judge to force defendant to submit a drug sample.  Continue reading →

Published on:

By

A fatal car accident killed both their parents and their 90-year-old grandmother. Three of the four sisters had been in the car at the time of the collision, headed to a family reunion in Texas. They were seriously injured, but survived. 

It wasn’t long after the crash that questions started to arise about what had happened and why. Specifically, what was going on with the airbags and why didn’t they deploy? As the Star-Telegram reports, the family was traveling in a Kia Sedona minivan. They were struck head-on by a Pontiac Bonneville when the driver crossed the center line while traveling on U.S. 67. The oldest sister was working and not traveling to the reunion with them that day.

Recovering from physical and emotional injuries, the sisters allege the local car dealership disconnected the fuse to the airbag system. In a lawsuit filed two years ago, the sisters say that when the dealership removed the cable from the deployment sensor, they also fraudulently replaced the seat sensor. The pre-owned vehicle dealership sold the deceased parents the van at one of its discount lots. Plaintiffs say the dealership employees’ actions caused the injuries and deaths in the crash. They do not allege defendants caused the crash, but rather that the injuries sustained were much more severe than they otherwise would have been.  Continue reading →

Published on:

By

A Texas woman sped down a Texas highway in her pickup truck, scrolling through her iPhone for messages. She was so distracted, court records would later show, that she slammed her truck into a sport utility vehicle. The driver and front seat passenger died instantly. A child passenger in the back seat was left permanently paralyzed. That was in 2013.

These kinds of distracted driving accidents are sadly not all that unusual. However, they are preventable – and not just by the person behind the wheel. A lawsuit filed against Apple in this case alleges the cell phone company had the technology prior to this accident to stop drivers from accessing their phones while the car is in motion. What’s more, the product liability lawsuit alleges, the company, in its application for a patent on that technology, cited the fact that phones are used for texting and texting and driving is a major public health issue and state legislators and local law enforcement officials had not been able to get a handle on the matter.

The driver in this case was later convicted of negligent homicide. She is serving five years on probation. Meanwhile, the families of her victims want accountability. They want to prevent this kind of tragedy from happening to another family. But what are the chances they might actually succeed? What responsibility do cell phone companies have for the actions of their driving customers?  Continue reading →

Published on:

By

Authorities in Delray Beach are investigating an intersection crash at Federal Highway and Northeast First Street, where a fitness club mogul in a Lamborghini t-boned an 82-year-old Uber driver in a Buick. Investigators believe speed and alcohol were factors in the crash, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

But what if those two vehicles never needed to cross paths? This is the theory behind the traffic re-engineering proposed by Florida Department of Transportation. Although we typically think of “advancements” in travel these days as being technological or electronic, this has to do with good old-fashioned road design. It’s called the, “diverging diamond interchange,” or DDI.

The goal of this design is to not only reduce the amount of potentially hazardous left turns, but also to make it tougher to enter a highway on-ramp traveling the wrong direction. Continue reading →

Published on:

By

Although the distracted driving problem appears to have remained steady from 2014 to 2015, researchers with the NHTSA say there is one area of concern: Young drivers who visibly manipulate their electronic devices.

That’s according to the latest research by federal analysts with the traffic safety administration, which reaches conclusions based on researcher traffic counts, as well as anonymous driver surveys. Analysts physically sat at intersections across the country and observed and recorded driver behavior for 11 hours at a time. Researchers looked to see whether there were visibly manipulating their phones, talking on visible headsets or holding phones to their ears. They also cross-compared this data with the surveys and scaled the data to a national level.

What they discovered is that while overall, the texting-and-driving/ visible manipulation of electronic devices fell slightly (2.2 percent, a statistically insignificant amount), there was an increase of .5 percent total. In fact, 5 percent of those 16 to 24 were seen doing this, as were 2.1 percent of those 25 to 69. This might not seem like a lot but consider another figure: The rate of drivers holding phones to their ears. That fell from 4.3 percent in 2014 to 3.8 percent in 2015. That sounds like good news, until you consider that this still means 542,000 passenger vehicles were being driven by someone using a handheld cell phone at any given moment of a typical day in 2015. That’s alarming.  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
MIAMI
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

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Please do not include any confidential or sensitive information in a contact form, text message, or voicemail. The contact form sends information by non-encrypted email, which is not secure. Submitting a contact form, sending a text message, making a phone call, or leaving a voicemail does not create an attorney-client relationship.

Copyright © 2025, Freeman Injury Law
JUSTIA Law Firm Blog Design