Florida injury claims, answered straight

Nothing up front. We work on a contingency fee, which means our fee is a percentage of what we recover and we are paid only if we recover something. The percentage is capped on a sliding scale set by The Florida Bar. Case costs, things like records, filing fees and expert witnesses, are advanced by us and repaid out of the recovery. If there is no recovery you owe us no fee.

Nobody can tell you honestly at the first phone call, and a lawyer who names a figure then is guessing. Value is driven by how serious and how permanent the injury is, how clear fault is, and, more often than people expect, how much insurance the responsible party actually carries. Florida does not require drivers to carry bodily injury liability coverage at all, so available coverage frequently sets the ceiling.

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Probably not. Most personal injury cases settle without a trial, which is usually the right outcome. But a firm that never tries cases has nothing behind its demands, and insurers keep track of which firms in a county do. We have tried cases to verdict, including a $3,500,000 funeral home negligence verdict, a $2,011,000 wrongful death verdict and a $1.38 million propane explosion verdict.

Two years from the date of the accident for most negligence claims, if it happened on or after March 24, 2023. Accidents before that date carry the older four-year deadline. Claims against a government body have a separate and shorter written notice requirement, and medical malpractice runs on its own clock of two years from discovery with a four-year outer limit.

Florida PIP pays your initial medical bills regardless of who caused the crash, but only if you are treated within 14 days of it. Miss that window and the benefit is gone entirely, whatever the injury turns out to be. It is the single most common way people lose money they were entitled to, and it runs from the crash rather than from when symptoms appeared.

How Florida car accident claims work →

Often not, and it is worth asking rather than assuming. Deadlines differ by claim type, some run from discovery rather than from the incident, and claims involving children run differently again. What does get lost with time is evidence: camera footage is overwritten in days, and vehicles get repaired or scrapped.

Not before you have spoken to a lawyer. You are required to cooperate with your own insurer. You are not required to give a recorded statement to the other side, and the request usually arrives early, while you are still on medication and before anyone knows how serious the injury is. Anything you say about how you feel that day gets quoted back later.

A fast offer usually means the insurer has worked out that the claim is worth more than they are offering. Settling is final: there is no route back if you need surgery afterward. The point to evaluate an offer is when your treating physician can say what the injury is and whether it needs operating on, not before.

They owe you duties of good faith they do not owe a stranger, and those are enforceable. Florida provides a specific route: a civil remedy notice is filed with the state setting out what the insurer did wrong, and the insurer then has sixty days to pay and end it. If it does not, the refusal itself becomes a claim, and a bad faith recovery is not limited by the policy limits.

Bad faith insurance claims →

Yes, up to a point. Florida reduces your recovery by your share of the fault rather than eliminating it, so being partly responsible lowers the number rather than ending the claim. Since 2023 a person found more than 50% at fault generally recovers nothing, which makes how fault is divide the whole argument in a contested case.

Your own uninsured motorist coverage is what pays, if you carry it, and it is worth checking every policy in the household because it can apply through a resident relative. Florida does not require drivers to carry bodily injury liability coverage, so this comes up constantly. Where the at-fault driver was working at the time, their employer’s policy may also be reachable.

Frequently both. Workers’ compensation covers you through your employer regardless of fault, and it is generally the only claim you have against that employer. Anyone else whose negligence caused the injury, another subcontractor, an equipment manufacturer, a driver, remains liable separately, and that claim covers pain and suffering, which compensation does not pay at all.

Florida workers’ compensation claims →

Tell us what happened and ask whatever you want to ask. An attorney will answer your questions rather than an intake script, and will tell you what Florida law does with your facts. If we do not think the claim is worth bringing, we will say so. The first conversation is free and you are not committed to anything by having it.

No. Most first conversations happen by phone the same day, and we come to you when meeting matters, including at hospital or at home if you cannot travel. We have five Florida offices, from Fort Lauderdale to Fort Myers.

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Whatever exists already: the crash report number, photographs of the scene and your injuries, the other driver’s details and insurance, your own declarations page, and the names of anyone who saw it. Do not worry if you have none of it. Most of what a case needs, we obtain ourselves.