Car Accident Lawyers in Southwest Florida

Also, car accident cases rely on evidence. If you did not collect any yourself and you waited a year and a half to talk to a lawyer, there may be little to no evidence left. In the meantime, you could make serious mistakes that might ruin your chance at justice.

We do not want you to have to miss out on getting justice simply because you did not set up a free consultation right away. For a free consultation, contact us online, or give us a call at 239-500-4878 today!

The One Thing You Should Never Do After a Car Accident, According to a Car Accident Lawyer

As mentioned, if you haven’t met with a lawyer, there are things you likely do not know that could end up hurting you. The biggest mistake we see people make is giving a statement to the insurance company. As you may have gathered, they are often greedy and do not want to give you the money you deserve because it can get expensive for them. When you are hurt by someone else, they will reach out to you and ask you to give them a recorded statement. Do not give them one.

They have trained their representatives to ask you questions in a way that would guide you to answer the way they want you to. They can twist your words, back you into a corner, then use what you say against you. If you even simply answered their greeting of, “Hey, how are you?” even a polite response such as, “I’m good. How are you?” could be twisted. To you, it might mean nothing aside from a standard greeting, but to them, they can use it to mean you were fine and free of pain.

You are not legally obligated to talk to the insurance company and we certainly hope you do not offer them anything that they can use against you. Instead, let your Southwest Florida car accident lawyers handle communication with the insurance.

Understanding the Compensation You May Be Entitled to After a Car Accident

Firstly, when you file a claim, you are going to be asking for compensation to cover your economic and non-economic damages. Economic damages can be defined as past lost income, future lost income, medical and funeral expenses, lost support and services, replacement value of lost personal property, monetary losses, costs of construction repairs (including labor, overhead, and profit), loss of appraised fair market value of real property, and any other economic loss that would not have occurred as a result of the accident. Non-economic damages are things like your pain and suffering.

It should be noted that not everyone who is injured in a car accident is going to be able to file a claim for compensation. Florida is a no-fault state, which means that you are going to have to turn to your own personal injury protection (PIP) on your car insurance to cover the damages suffered in an accident, unless you fall into a certain category that will allow you to sue. Our Southwest Florida car accident lawyers are going to help you figure out if you have grounds to sue.

Assuming you do have grounds to file a claim, when you go through the negotiations with the insurance company, you are going to notice that they will try very hard to reduce your compensation. Both our lawyers and the insurance companies are aware that in Florida, if the plaintiff (the injured person filing the claim) shares blame for the accident, then they can end up with a reduced compensation award.

We do not want you to end up with a reduced award, but the insurance compensation does. Because Florida is a state that follows a modified comparative negligence law, if you get blamed for a percentage of the accident, you will have a reduced compensation award.

An example of this would be if you were at a stop sign, and you thought you looked both ways before turning, but someone came flying out of nowhere and hit you in the intersection. You might share some fault if you, for example, if you did not make a complete stop at the sign before you proceeded into the intersection.

Let’s say that the insurance company found out that your stop was not perfect, this is called contributory fault. If a police report suggests you bear most of the responsibility for an accident, an insurance company may quickly use that as a reason to deny your claim. However, it’s important to know that a police report cannot be used in court as evidence of fault. Insurance companies often try to make you believe otherwise. Even if you were issued a ticket, it cannot be admitted in court as proof of fault. They can use this information as grounds to say that the accident may have been avoided or have been less severe had you had done something differently. On the flip side, even if they admit that their insured was mostly at fault, your potential compensation can be reduced. In a case like this, maybe they say you were 20% at fault for the accident. If you were given $10,000 in compensation, the award would be reduced to $8,000 to account for the role you played in causing the accident.

In the spring of 2023, Florida replaced its longstanding pure comparative negligence system with a modified version that limits an injured party's ability to recover compensation based on their share of fault. Under the previous system (pure comparative negligence), injury victims could recover compensation even if they were 99% at fault. Now, if you are found at 51% or more at fault, you are unable to recover any damages (Medial Malpractice or medical negligence cases here in Florida have an exception to this newer rule).

Some insurance companies conduct their own car accident investigations with the aim of increasing your share of fault and reducing or eliminating their liability. We believe this approach is unfair, and are committed to challenging it. Goldstein, Buckley, Cechman, Rice, Purtz, Smith & Smith, P.A. conducts thorough auto accident investigations that can counter the findings of both the police and the insurance company. By examining your accident from all perspectives and collecting solid evidence, we will work tirelessly to ensure that you are properly represented and potentially vindicated in court.  We are experienced in this strategy and know to research some or all of the following to help your case:  maintenance records for the vehicles, black box data from the vehicle event data recorder, toxicology reports, NHTSA recall data, eyewitness testimony, and even accident scene reconstruction.

Our lawyers are going to fight hard to make sure that you are not penalized unfairly by the insurance company and that your results are as full as we can possibly make it. You don’t need to worry about us trying to get your case done and over with like some law firms who just want to run your case through the mill, where bigger isn't always better. We care about each and every one of our clients. Your success is as important to us as our own family’s case would be to us. For a free consultation, contact us online, or give us a call at 239-500-4878 today!

Speak to a Southwest Florida Car Accident Attorney Today

After you have been seriously harmed in a car accident, you should urgently get medical care and then call our Southwest Florida car accident lawyers to handle your case to get you the justice you deserve. When you hire our lawyers, you are ensuring that your case is in good hands and that you will have someone fighting tirelessly to give you the results that you deserve so you can be whole again. For a free consultation, contact us online, or give us a call at 239-500-4878 today!