Fort Myers Car Accident Lawyer
A car accident turns a normal week upside down: pain, a wrecked car, time off work, and no idea who pays for any of it. We can take it from here. Call 833-370-8692 for a free consultation. You pay us nothing unless we win. Our Fort Myers personal injury lawyers have taken these cases across Lee County since 1993.
Car Accident claims in Fort Myers
The other driver caused it, and their insurer is already asking you for a recorded statement. Meanwhile you are working out how to pay the first medical bill, how to replace the paycheck you just missed, and how to get to work tomorrow without a car. Answering all of that is our job, and it starts the day you call.
The crashes we handle in Lee County concentrate on I-75, the Tamiami Trail and Colonial Boulevard, with serious injuries going to the trauma center at Lee Memorial Hospital. Lee County’s population swings sharply by season, and a meaningful share of collisions involve drivers insured in other states, which changes which policy responds and on what terms.
A Fort Myers car accident claim is decided on evidence rather than on the crash report, and you have two years from the crash for most collisions on or after March 24, 2023. Lee County’s population and its traffic both roughly double in season, and so does the share of drivers who have never driven the road before.
What to do after a car accident in Fort Myers
- Call the police and get a report number. A crash with any injury or meaningful damage should have a report. It is not the last word on fault and it is not evidence at trial, but it fixes the date, the vehicles, the drivers and the witnesses, and a claim with no report is one the other insurer will treat as a dispute about whether it happened at all.
- Photograph more than the damage. Both vehicles from the front and the side, the position they came to rest in, the debris, the skid marks, the signal, the sightline a driver would have had, and the businesses on the corner. Vehicles are moved within the hour and a scene is gone. What you photograph in ten minutes is frequently better evidence than anything anyone reconstructs later.
- Get names before anybody leaves. The other driver’s insurer and policy number, and every witness who stopped. Witnesses do not wait for an officer to work through a queue, and a witness with no phone number is not a witness. Somebody who saw the light is worth more to a claim than any argument about it afterward.
- See a doctor within fourteen days. This is the one deadline nobody hears about until it has passed. Your own coverage after a Florida crash is conditioned on being seen inside fourteen days, and adrenaline routinely hides a neck or a back injury for the first week. Going to be checked is not a claim that you are badly hurt.
- Do not give the other insurer a recorded statement. You have to report the crash to your own carrier. You are not required to be recorded by theirs. That call comes within a day or two, while you are still working out how bad it is, and what you say about feeling all right is quoted back months later when you know a great deal more.
Where these happen in Fort Myers
Lee County traffic runs on I-75, the Tamiami Trail and a handful of east-west connectors, and the crash pattern changes completely between season and summer.
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I-75 through Lee County
Long high-speed runs with widely spaced exits and heavy seasonal variation.
- Rear-end and lane-change collisions at speed rather than intersection crashes
- Construction zones and lane shifts that have been in place for years
- Serious injuries go to the trauma center at Lee Memorial Hospital
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US-41, the Tamiami Trail
The commercial spine of the county, with a driveway every few hundred feet.
- Vehicles crossing several lanes to reach a plaza entrance
- Left turns at signals carrying far more traffic in season than in summer
- Business cameras along the corridor are common and overwrite within weeks
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Colonial Boulevard and Daniels Parkway
East-west connectors between the interstate and the coast.
- Speeds that rise with the distance between signals
- Airport traffic on Daniels, including rentals and shuttles
- Signal phase timing for any intersection we can get from the county
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The bridges and the island approaches
Single routes onto the barrier islands, with no alternative when they back up.
- Stop-and-go impacts on the approaches, argued as minor and frequently not
- Cyclists and pedestrians on causeways not built for either
- Reconstruction since the 2022 storm season has changed lane geometry in places
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Seasonal and visiting drivers
From late fall the county carries a different population behind the wheel.
- Rentals and out-of-state policies, which decide who actually pays
- Drivers unfamiliar with the road at interchanges that punish hesitation
- Older drivers and commuter traffic sharing the same roads
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Residential streets and community entrances
Lower speeds and a much higher chance the person hurt was outside a vehicle.
- Gated entrances opening onto fast roads
- Backing collisions in driveways and lots, where a camera usually exists
- Association records and gate footage that nobody has asked for
What causes them
- Impairment, and the separate claim a bar or a host can face for serving somebody
- Speed that was legal and wrong for the conditions, which is most afternoons in a Florida wet season
- Lane changes into a blind spot on a multi-lane main road
- Hydroplaning on standing water where the drainage has not kept up with the pavement
- Drivers unfamiliar with the road, in a rental or a visitor’s car, at an interchange that punishes hesitation
The injuries we see, and what each one turns on
Fractures
Wrists, ribs, ankles and the pelvis, and in a serious wreck the femur. A fracture is the easiest injury to prove and the easiest to undervalue, because the film shows a bone that healed and says nothing about the hardware left in, the range of motion that did not come back, or the arthritis that arrives in that joint a decade early.
What it does to driving
A large share of clients tell us the same thing months later: they take the long way, they will not drive at night, they flinch at an intersection. It is a recognized consequence rather than a personality change, it is treatable, and it goes unclaimed unless somebody asks about it and puts it in the record.
Neck and back
Herniated and bulging discs, facet injuries and nerve root compression that presents as pain down an arm or a leg rather than in the spine itself. Age is the standard defense: nearly every adult spine shows degeneration on imaging, and the argument is that the crash found it rather than caused it. What answers that is the difference between how somebody functioned before and after, which is why the first medical record matters more than the last.
What Florida law requires you to prove
The crash report is not the finding of fault
An officer arriving after the fact writes down what two drivers say, one of whom is often already in an ambulance. Fault in a civil claim is decided on evidence: the damage patterns, the resting positions, camera footage from the businesses along the road, signal timing, and the vehicles’ own event data recorders. Crash reports are regularly contradicted by all of it.
Two years, and it runs from the crash
For crashes on or after March 24, 2023, the deadline to sue is two years under Fla. Stat. § 95.11. Earlier crashes generally keep the older four-year deadline. A claim against a government vehicle carries its own written notice requirement on top, and that clock is far shorter.
Your share of the blame, and the line at 50 percent
Under Fla. Stat. § 768.81, somebody found more than 50 percent responsible recovers nothing at all. At or under half, the recovery is reduced by that share. Expect the argument that you were going too fast, stopped short or could have avoided it, because past the halfway mark that argument is worth the entire claim rather than part of it.
The full statutory detail, and the parts that differ by claim type, sit on our statewide car accident page rather than being restated in every market.
How we prove it in Lee County
A Lee County crash file is built from footage along the corridor, county records and the data the vehicles recorded themselves.
- The crash report and the officer’s diagram, which frequently carry detail the narrative leaves out
- Business and plaza cameras along US-41 and the connectors, most on a two week loop
- Signal phase timing and streetlight maintenance history held by the county or the municipality
- The event data recorder in either vehicle, holding speed, braking and belt use before impact
- Rental agreements and out-of-state policies, which decide which insurer responds
- Construction zone traffic control plans, where a work zone was involved
- Damage patterns and resting positions, which routinely contradict the roadside account
- Treating records from Lee Health, whose trauma center at Lee Memorial takes the serious injuries here
A seasonal county loses witnesses faster than most. Names taken on the day and a written preservation demand in the first days are what hold a case together.
Who would handle your case
Being hurt in Fort Myers is hard enough without working out the legal side on your own. The trial lawyers below have handled car accident claims across Florida since 1993, and one of them will take yours from the first call to the last check. They will tell you what your case is worth and why, and they will be straight with you about the parts that are hard.
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Richard P. Pravato Founding & Managing Attorney Board Certified in Civil Trial Law by The Florida Bar since 2004, and by the National Board of Trial Advocacy. Injury cases exclusively since 1996. Full profile → -
Alazay Ventura-Coffey Trial Attorney On his first day as a sworn attorney, Alazay Ventura-Coffey co-chaired a Broward County jury trial that returned $1,387,060.58. He has built every case that way since. Full profile →
How insurance companies handle these claims
A car claim is handled by an adjuster working from a file and a set of instructions, and the instructions are consistent enough that the order of events is predictable. Knowing what is coming is worth more than anything you could say on the call.
- The call comes early, and it is recorded
- Somebody rings within a day or two, sympathetic and easy to talk to, and asks for a recorded statement while you are still working out how badly you are hurt. You are not required to give one to the other driver’s carrier. Anything you say about feeling all right that week is quoted back months later.
- A gap in your treatment becomes the argument
- Miss three weeks for work, childcare or the cost of a co-pay and the file records it as evidence you were fine. Software scores these claims partly on how continuous the treatment was. Telling a doctor why you could not come in puts the reason in the record, where it answers the point instead of leaving it open.
- How your own no-fault coverage actually works
- Florida is a no-fault state, so your own Personal Injury Protection pays first regardless of who caused the crash: up to $10,000, at 80 percent of medical bills and 60 percent of lost wages, and only if you are seen by a qualifying provider within 14 days. Without an emergency medical condition finding the limit drops to $2,500. It is the floor rather than the claim, which is why it belongs at the bottom of this page rather than the top: what it pays runs out long before a serious injury does.
What a claim can include
Out of pocket and household costs
Travel to treatment, equipment, and help with the things somebody used to do themselves. Small individually, and routinely left out of a claim nobody documented.
What you can no longer do
The stairs at home, lifting a child, a shift you can no longer work, sleeping through the night. Argued from the specifics of a week before the crash, which is why we ask about them early rather than at mediation.
Medical care, past and future
Everything already billed, and what the treating doctors say is still coming. Future care is where these claims are won and lost, because it is the part that has to be proved rather than added up.
What we have recovered
Verified matters this firm has handled on car accident claims. Figures are gross recoveries, before attorney fees, costs and medical liens come out of them.
A client was seriously hurt making a U-turn in Fort Lauderdale, and the responding officers assigned fault for a right-of-way violation.
Broward County policy limits settlementEvery verdict and settlement we publish, with the press coverage for the ones that were reported. No result predicts another case: every claim turns on its own facts, its own evidence and the insurance actually available.
Why Wolf & Pravato in Fort Myers
A Lee County crash is filed in the Twentieth Judicial Circuit at the Lee County Justice Center, and that is the courthouse this office works in. The circuit a case would be tried in shapes what an insurer offers to settle it.
Richard Pravato is one of 861 lawyers Board Certified by The Florida Bar in Civil Trial law, out of a membership over 109,000. The certification is about trial experience rather than advertising spend, and it is the part of a firm’s record that an insurance company checks.
Nothing is charged for the first conversation and nothing is charged at all unless there is a recovery. If we do not think you have a claim, we would rather tell you now than a year from now.
Fort Myers car accident questions
The driver who hit me was a visitor and has already gone home. What now?
It is a reason to move quickly rather than a reason to give up. The claim runs against the insurer rather than the person, an out-of-state policy or a rental agreement usually stands behind it, and service and testimony can both be arranged across state lines. What suffers from delay is the evidence, not the ability to bring the claim.
It happened in a construction zone on I-75. Does that change who is responsible?
It can add a defendant. A work zone runs on an approved traffic control plan, and where the signage, the taper or the lane shift on the ground did not match the plan, the contractor may share responsibility with the driver. Those plans and the daily logs exist whether or not anyone volunteers them.
The other driver says the sun was in their eyes. Is that a defense?
No. A driver is required to drive at a speed that lets them stop for what they cannot see, and glare on an east-west road at a predictable time of day is exactly the condition that rule is about. It comes up often here on Colonial and Daniels, and it is an explanation rather than an excuse.
How long do I have to bring a Fort Myers car accident claim?
Two years from the crash for most collisions on or after March 24, 2023, under Fla. Stat. § 95.11, and generally four years for earlier ones. A crash with a county or municipal vehicle carries a separate written notice requirement with much shorter timing.
Where would my case be filed?
In the Twentieth Judicial Circuit at the Lee County Justice Center in Fort Myers. The Twentieth also covers Charlotte and Collier, but each files in its own courthouse, so a Lee County crash stays in Fort Myers.
How long do I have to file a car accident lawsuit in Florida?
For crashes on or after March 24, 2023, two years from the date of the accident under Fla. Stat. § 95.11. Earlier crashes generally keep the older four-year deadline, and claims involving a government vehicle carry their own shorter notice requirements. Evidence deadlines are far shorter than any of these.
Do I still have a case if Florida is a no-fault state?
Yes. No-fault decides who pays your first medical bills, not who is responsible for the crash. Once your injury meets the statutory threshold, which includes permanent injury, significant permanent scarring, significant and permanent loss of an important bodily function, or death, you can bring a claim directly against the at-fault driver for the full extent of your losses, including pain and suffering.
The questions that come up on every kind of claim, deadlines, fees, recorded statements and fault, are answered on our Florida injury claim FAQ.
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Tell us what happened
A lawyer will listen, tell you what Florida law does with those facts, and be straight with you about whether it is worth bringing. We are at 1825 Colonial Blvd, Fort Myers, FL 33907.