How do you find a lawyer and what information do you want to know before deciding on the lawyer you ultimately hire?

We have written several articles discussing this subject:

Picking the Best Attorney — Picking Just the “Right” Lawyer

What are “lawyer referral services”?

When Should You Hire an Attorney? How Do You Decide?

But, I still get questions like: can any attorney handle an auto accident?

No. Certainly there are organizations, such as the Florida Bar, that maintain any attorney who has passed the Florida Bar Exam can handle any legal matter in Florida. That is an unsophisticated, uninformed answer.

Do you want a real estate lawyer handling your auto accident case in which you have suffered personal injuries? No more than I would want a skilled personal injury lawyer handling my real estate closing.

Can any personal injury lawyer handle an auto accident case? Yes.

Can any personal injury lawyer handle an auto accident case and do a superior job? No.

It does not differ from any other professional: some doctors are more skilled than others; some architects design better houses than others; and some auto accident attorneys are better than others.

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When insurance fraud was on the rise in the 1970’s, insurance companies, law enforcement and state governments got together and did things like launched joint task forces to investigate fraud and formed insurance exchanges to help manage the problem. Their first reactions were not to; in effect, legally defraud the consumer.

Fast forward to the 21^st century and the Florida legislators have approached similar fraud a different way: punish consumers. I suggest that the below conversation never took place, but you can certainly imagine it could, given informed consumers who were active in supervising the people we send to Tallahassee “on our behalf”

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Florida Legislators: Wow, we have a really big problem with all this fraud going on in the Personal Injury Protection insurance (PIP). We need to do something.

Consumers: How do you know there is a big problem?

Florida Legislators: Extensive studies have been conducted by really, really smart people and they told us.

Consumers: Who are these people developing and providing the statistics.

Florida Legislators: The best experts in the land and we know this because they all had badges that had “insurance company paid fraud expert” on them.

Consumers: Okay, so what should we do about it? Shouldn’t we involve law enforcement?

Florida Legislators: Now, don’t you bother your little head about it, we will take care of you; don’t worry.

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Florida Legislators to Consumers: Okay, so we have a really, really great solution to the fraud problem. Let’s see if we can explain it in terms you might understand, because it’s real complicated:

First, we pass a law that allows consumers to keep $10,000 in PIP coverage and allows insurance companies to charge for $10,000 in PIP coverage. But, we are really only going to force insurance companies to provide $2,500 in PIP coverage; unless consumers can comply with some tricky statutes and contract provisions – you know, to prove they are not committing fraud.

Consumers: Well, but, how is that fair? We pay for $10,000, but only get $2,500…

Florida Legislators: Now don’t you worry, we have you covered. If you go to an emergency room within 14 days of your accident and an emergency/trauma doctor diagnoses you with an “emergency medical condition”, you are golden! You get the full amount of coverage you paid for; but, well, you can not go to massage therapists, chiropractors, acupuncturists or maybe some other treatments.

Consumers: What about injuries that do not develop until after 14 days? Everyone has some bumps and bruises from an auto accident, but you would not go to an emergency room for that. What about a bad back injury, for example a herniated disc that does not really begin showing symptoms for a few weeks.

Florida Legislators: Never happens. All the best studies given to us clearly show that 14 days is the magic number. Any injuries you claim to have developed after 14 days are just fraud – pure and simple.

Consumers: But, if the injuries are actually proved to be real and from the accident, we get the full coverage, right?

Florida Legislators: Hmmm, probably not, because you are faking. So, you can sue the insurance company and 3 or 4 years later you may win because some “activist judge” decides he thinks you should get $10,000 in coverage simply because you paid for that amount.

Consumers: How is this law in our best interest?

Florida Legislators: Our insurance company backers, er, friends, er “expert advisors” have told us that insurance companies are going to leave Florida if we do not do something about all this fraud in PIP insurance.

Consumers: Well, rather than punish us, why doesn’t the insurance industry and law enforcement get together and fight the fraud?

Florida Legislators: But, they said they would leave and stuff; and they mentioned political contributions; and then they told us this was the way to go.

Consumers: Do you think you acted in our best interests when you cut the deal with insurance companies and passed this law?

Florida Legislators: See, we knew you would get all emotional about it. This is business and it’s in your best interests. Our friends told us so. Besides, you need to look at it in the “bigger picture”. Plus, Governor Scott signed the law, so it must be about creating jobs and lofty things like that.

If you are over the age of 65 a dangerous fall could be in your future according to federal health regulators.

None of us likes to think we’re getting older but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)  finds that among Americans age 65 and older, one in three will experience a fall every year with results than can range from minor to fatal. Even a minor fall can lead to head trauma that is not initially recognized.

According to the CDC there were 2.3 million Americans who experienced falls in 2010 and were treated in emergency rooms. Among those more than 662,000 were hospitalized with injuries that included hip fractures, lacerations and head trauma.  Hitting your head can easily cause anything from traumatic brain injury (TBI) to a concussion and can be experienced by people of all ages, but falls are the most common cause according to the CDC.

Falls are the cause of hip fractures about 95% of the time says the federal agency.

Falls are preventable if some precautions are taken.

• Americans of all ages commonly trip from pets, loose rugs or objects on the floors or furniture that is in the way. The CDC recommends your walking space be adequate and the floors have a lot of traction.
• A grip bar in the bathroom is recommended especially around the tub, shower and next to the toilet.
• Keep areas well lit.
• Have eyes examined and update glasses prescriptions as needed.
• The CDC suggests regular exercise will increase leg strength making a fall less likely and recovery easier.
• Any dizzy spells should be taken seriously. A consult with a physician can help determine if a medical condition is causing dizziness or a medication may be the cause.

The CDC campaign called, “Heads Up to Brain Injury” was created to recognize March as Brain Injury Awareness Month.

TBI causes at least 1.7 million injuries every year and can be described as a head injury that alters the normal functioning of the brain. Even a mild bump can cause TBI. The majority of TBI are concussions.

The CDC reports there are about 3.5 million Americans with TBI which has proven fatal to 53,000.

Wearing a seat belt, avoiding drunk and distracted driving and wearing a helmet are some suggested ways to protect your head from blows.

I, and the other attorneys in my firm, represent people who experience tragedies in their lives. Sometimes clients do receive justice.

Sometimes the defendants make honest mistakes, other times their neglect is particularly egregious.

The case I recently tried, with Greg Barnhart and Matt Schwencke in my firm, was flagrant because the nature of the negligence was so preventable. The case was particularly tragic because of the emotional devastation suffered by the parents of a child struck down before his life even began.

How many times have you tried to pull out of a parking lot into traffic, only to have your vision of the roadway partially or totally blocked by a bush, a sign or some other obstruction? How many times as you pull across the sidewalk do you think to yourself, “Why the property owner couldn’t cut their bushes?”

My last case involved a death trap designed by the people who were supposed to make sure the trap did not exist: the land owner and their property management company.

The trap resulted in the death of 9 year old Andrew Curtis, struck and killed by a motorist who could not see him on his bike while exiting at Jupiter’s Villas on the Green Condominium complex. The trap resulted in the emotional destruction of the lives of Andrew’s parents, Tracy Curtis and Andre Kovacs.

This tragic crash occurred one afternoon while Andrew and his father Andre were riding their bikes and approaching the drive way to the condominium complex. Andre and Andrew could not see the car coming out of the exit way and the driver could not see them as a result of the unmaintained bushes and poor placement of a stop sign. The driver pulled through the exit and ran right over the top of Andrew’s head.

I am not a mother and when I handle cases involving the death of children, I always try to gain a firm appreciation for parents suffering the sudden and unexpected death of their children.  The emotional loss for parents who is devastating especially when the death is sudden, unexpected and preventable.

They will never see Andrew his first homerun, surf his first tough wave or see the joy of his first soccer goal. They will not see their child go to the prom, attend college, fall in love for the first time, get married or have grandchildren run through their home.

No amount of money will ever make it better. In our society, though, the rendering of a full verdict is the only way a parent who has suffered losing their beloved son can legally obtain some amount of justice, some amount of closure.

We were in trial on the case for several weeks. We made multiple efforts to reasonably resolve the case with the defendants in an effort to keep our clients from having to relive losing their son over again, the defendants were not interested.

After requiring my clients to relive losing their son and the circumstances of that loss, the jury found that the condominium’s property management company 60% at fault and the condominium association 30% at fault and awarded a $12 million verdict. Sadly, the defendants even tried to place blame on Andrew’s father Andre, claiming that he should have been able to keep Andrew from being struck by the car.

Clearly our trial team had illustrated my clients’ devastation to the jury in a way they would ask to give my clients what they really needed: someone who said they understood and were sorry for their loss.

After the verdict was read, the foreperson said, “Judge, we just have one request, can we hug the parents?” It was the most moving moment in my 18 year professional career.

“Be extra careful driving late at night.  You are likely going to be sharing the road with drunk drivers.” 

If your parents were like mine when I started driving in South Florida, you likely heard this familiar warning many times.  Unfortunately, they were sometimes right.  If my two children were teenagers learning how to drive now, I would offer the same admonishment.  I would also add the following:

“Be careful driving anytime and anywhere.  You are definitely going to be sharing the road with drivers who are distracted and not paying attention because they are using their cell phones.” 

The truth is that drivers who are distracted by cell phone use can be just as deadly as an impaired driver.  The scary truth?  There are a lot more folks out on the roads that are distracted by cell phones than impaired drivers.

A recent article in the Palm Beach Post highlighted an alarming trend.  For the first time in five years, there was an increase in the number of traffic fatalities per year in Palm Beach County.  In Palm Beach County alone, there were 137 traffic fatalities in 2012 compared with 113 in 2011.  The likely suspect?  Mobile devices according to law enforcement officials and state legislators.  The problem of distracted drivers due to cell phone use is not unique to our county. This is a national trend.  More and more people each year are dying as a result of someone texting, emailing, or talking on the cell phone.

If we are going to reverse these troubling trends, we will need to do two things.  First, we need to increase awareness about the deadly consequences of texting while driving.  Get the message out.  Reinforce the message with your family, friends, and people with whom you travel.  Encourage your employer to institute a companywide policy banning the use of cell phones without a handsfree device.  There is no phone call, text, or email that is so important that it would justify putting your life, the lives of your passengers, and the lives of the rest of the motoring public at risk.

Second, we need to demand that our elected officials in Tallahassee finally pass a law banning texting while driving.  Since 2002, there have been dozens of unsuccessful attempts in the Florida legislature to pass legislation to make it illegal to text while driving.  It’s high time for our representatives in the House and the Senate to get on the same page and finally pass this lifesaving legislation.

It can happen to any one of us, almost anywhere and usually it is over within seconds. We sometimes have no control over it and it can cause us and our loved ones untold injury.

It is an automobile accident and the incidences of them in Palm Beach County are back on the rise after years of decline.

Between 2006 and 2011, deaths from traffic crashes had declined by 46%, falling from 212 to 123. In 2012, however, Palm beach County saw 136 vehicle accident related deaths; an increase of 17% over 2011.

Is it because people in Palm Beach County were out and about more in 2012 than in 2011? The statistics say no.

Lt. Tim Frith, with the Florida Highway Patrol, offered an explanation born from thousands of miles travelled on Palm Beach County roads:

“We see distracted driving changing people’s driving habits,” he said. “It’s prevalent during the day and it has the characteristics of a DUI driver — driving a lot slower, tapping the breaks. When we pull alongside them, they are trying to text or talking on the cell phone.”

Based on scientific studies, we know the human brain cannot multi-task and too many multiple functions are required just to drive your car down the street. Add to those responsibilities texting while driving and the many other distractions we have all witnessed at one time or another:

• Speaking to or taking care of other passengers in the car
• Internal distractions such as retrieving dropped objects
• Manipulating radios and dashboard controls.
• Personal hygiene activities best left in the bathroom (shaving with a razor, applying makeup or other personal hygiene-related actions)
• Eating or drinking while driving.
• Rubbernecking, sightseeing or taking your eyes off the road to watch someone or something else.
• Singing, dancing, air guitar or aerobics.
• Smoking
• Distracting thoughts or daydreaming.

We also know, as Lt. Frith pointed out, that texting while driving is the equivalent of drunk driving or driving wearing a blind fold.

Laws involving things like injury from automobile accidents and coverage in automobile insurance should not be “gotcha laws”. But, that is what the new personal injury protection laws which took effect on July 31^st will do.

Last year, Florida’s governor and legislators championed a revision to Florida’s “Personal Injury Protection” (PIP) laws under auto liability insurance statutes. The insurance industry complained to the legislature that they were suffering rampant fraud in the PIP industry and needed this relief or they would go out of business, the sky would fall or life as we know it would end. Effectively what they have done for consumers is to create stumbling blocks to coverage and for insurance companies they have drastically reduced the potential exposure when consumers suffer injuries in automobile accidents.

Traditionally, PIP provided up to $10,000 coverage to drivers and passengers of vehicles involved in accidents. The idea was to allow payment of a set amount of money for the treatment of injuries, regardless of fault. That way, consumers were able to seek and pay for injuries they suffered in auto crashes.

The new law provides you only $2500 of the $10,000 PIP limits if you do not present to an emergency room within 14 days after the accident and receive a diagnosis of “an emergency medical condition”. What is an “emergency medical condition”? The law does not clearly set forth exactly what that means. Is a herniated disk that has not begun to exert pressure on nerves or the spinal cord represent an “emergency medical condition”? What if that herniated disk further herniates on day 15 and begins to compress the spinal cord?

In addition, although recognized by physicians in the U.S. and in many other countries as highly effective treatments, acupuncture and massage therapy will no longer be covered at all under the new law.

What did insurance companies promise to do in exchange for these unfair restrictions on PIP coverage? They were supposed to reduce auto insurance/PIP premiums by at least 10% in the first year. Insurers were supposed to file rates by January 1, 2013 that reflected a 10% reduction.

What did insurance companies do? Many have already filed for rates that show no reduction and in some cases, have filed for rate increases. Insurers have claimed that the lack of reduction is really a reduction; because without the new PIP law they would have filed for substantial rate increases.

What do consumers get?

We get to pay a premium for PIP coverage that is calculated on $10,000 in coverage; while only receiving $2500 in coverage if we do not immediately rush to an emergency room and get lucky enough to have an “emergency medical condition” that actually gets diagnosed.

We get to pay a premium for $10,000 in coverage that is no less cost than it was before Florida legislators and the governor squandered away our rights under PIP insurance contracts.

So, consumers get a “gotcha” when they find out they only have $2500 coverage for what evolves into a serious medical condition.

Did you get up this morning have breakfast and a few glasses of wine or cocktails before getting in your car to drive to work?

If you found yourself texting while you were making that trip to work, answering emails or maybe even talking on your cell phone, you might just as well have had the cocktails. Your level of performance impairment behind the wheel when you are texting is as bad, maybe worse, than driving a car drunk!

Hundreds of thousands of people are injured and killed every year as a result of distracted (impaired) driving. Sadly the loss of lives is preventable if we simply stop operating a ton of steel at 70 miles per hour while we are not really paying attention.

Believe me and the many researchers who have studied it: you are not a multi-tasker, a super-tasker, or anything but a single tasker. Your brain simply does not process in a way that accommodates doing more than one thing at a time.

There is help for everyone who feels the need to get a response to those people texting us, even when we are driving. It’s an app called “Free Safe Text” and there are some advantages to it over some of the other apps out there.

First, Free Safe Text does generate an immediate response to those texting you and it can be customized to your specific situation: “I can not respond to your text because I am driving at 70 mph.”, “I am in the movies. Will respond to your text soon.”

There is another benefit. The more you use Free Safe Text, the more you build up reward points that can be used toward money rewards or merchandise.

So, give everyone who loves you a holiday present this year and don’t drive distracted – try Free Safe Text!

We in Florida must stop being distracted from passing valuable and comprehensive laws regulating distracted driving.

We know that distracted driving is the equivalent, in terms of accident risk, to drunken driving.

We know that the brain can perform only a single function at a time and that asking a driver’s brain to operate a 5000 pound piece of metal at 70 mph, when trying to answer the latest received text is asking more from our brains than they can safely deliver.

We know that driving requires focus and concentration and that Sending or receiving a text takes a driver’s eyes from the road for an average of 4.6 seconds, the equivalent – at 55 mph – of driving the length of an entire football field, blind.

There are 300 million wireless subscribers in America and, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, some number of us caused over 3000 deaths last year as the result of distracted driving.

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You are in an auto accident and the other party is at fault. Your injuries are permanent according to your physicians. As is all too often the case, you cannot receive reasonable settlement offers from the other party’s insurance company.

You sue the other driver to collect compensation for your injuries.

Now what?

Under Florida’s jury instructions, the court will typically instruct the jury that, besides out-of-pocket losses, you have the right to prove the following general areas of damages:

• Cost of medical treatment (both in the past and the future)
• Loss of or reduction in the ability to earn money
• Bodily injury
• Pain & Suffering resulting from the bodily injury
• Disability caused by the injuries
• Mental anguish
• Loss of the capacity to enjoy life (both in the past and the future)

You must present evidence that the other party (defendant) was negligent; that the defendant’s negligence caused your injuries; and you must prove the amount of your damages.

Conversely, the defendant has the right to present evidence he/she was not negligent; that the negligence, if any, did not cause any or all your damages; and your damages is unsubstantiated.

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