Damages

Florida Car Accident Damages

Helping seriously injured victims of Florida car accidents recover financial compensation for damages they suffer in car accidents.

For more than 25 years, Ft. Lauderdale car accident lawyer Joseph Lipsky has helped his seriously injured clients purse and collect money damages from the people or companies who negligently caused the accident in which they were injured. When accidents are caused by someone else’s fault, seriously injured victims of all types of Florida personal injury accidents, including Miami car accidents, are entitled to seek financial compensation from Florida juries. As stated in the Florida Supreme Court approved jury instructions, the items of damages a jury may consider in reaching a verdict for a personal injury victim include those they suffered in the past (that is from the date of their accident until the date of a jury’s deliberation) and in those which they are reasonably expected to suffer in the future (from the date of the jury’s verdict forward) include:

1. Bodily injury, pain and suffering, disability
2. Medical bills, including hospital, ambulance and doctors
3. Loss of income and/or earnings
4. For a non-injured spouse, loss of services, comfort, society and attentions

Basically, these elements of damages summarize the specific categories of damages and the resulting amount of money an injured accident victim is legally entitled to seek as compensation from the person or company found to have caused, through negligence, their damages. In summary, Florida car accident victims are entitled to seek compensation for both economic and non-economic damages. Economic damages include lost wages and medical bills. While non-economic damages are so-called intangible damages, which a jury may assign any amount they believe is fair and just for a person’s pain, suffering, loss of enjoyment of life and aggravation of a pre-existing condition.

There are different standards for awarding damages in car accident cases, including those mandated by Florida’s “No Fault” Act. The No-Fault Act requires a person injured in a car accident to first seek payment of their medical bills and/or lost wages from their own insurance company, not the person who caused the car accident. This is commonly referred to as Personal Injury Protection or PIP.

Once an injured person’s own $10,000.00 of PIP coverage is used up, or exhausted, then the injured victim is entitled to pursue the person who caused the accident and try to prove that they are responsible for any additional reasonable and necessary medical expenses and documented lost wages, in the past and in the future. In car accidents cases, before awarding money for pain and suffering, so-called non-economic damages, a jury must decide that a car accident victim suffered either a permanent injury or significant permanent scarring or disfigurement. Only those injuries which a jury decides are permanent allow the Plaintiff, the person who was injured, to recover those non-economic damages.

Usually the determination of a permanent injury in Miami car accident case is based in large part upon a treating doctor’s testimony, and objective documentation of such injury, including x-ray or MRI findings. Of course, the insurance company for the person or company who caused an accident will have their own expert doctors to present alternative testimony that the claimed injuries are either not permanent or were caused by something other than the car accident, including any prior injuries or accidents. This “argument” over whether a Ft. Lauderdale car accident victim’s injuries are permanent is why it is imperative to seek the help of Miami car accident lawyer Joseph Lipsky, who has a proven track record of over 25 years of trial experience helping injured accident victims recover all of their damages.

If you or a loved one was injured in a Florida accident and is seeking damages from the person who caused that accident, we ask you contact us at Law Offices of Joseph I. Lipsky, P.A. ONLINE OR CALL US Toll Free at (888) FLA-LAW8, or at (954) 693-0073 (Broward – Fort Lauderdale), (305) 821-7333 (Miami-Dade), (561) 514-3535 (the Palm Beaches) or (305) 296-6300 (the Florida Keys) to arrange for a FREE NO OBLIGATION CONSULTATION.