West Palm Beach Legal Blog

As a Florida driver, you know that traffic keeps getting worse and other drivers seem to be getting more aggressive and/or more distracted. This deadly combination makes it likely that sooner or later, one of these negligent drivers will hit your vehicle. When that happens, the results could be catastrophic, especially if you receive a traumatic brain injury as a result of the accident.

By definition, a traumatic brain injury is a blow to your head that injures your brain to such an extent that it becomes dysfunctional. Per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over 286,000 people receive such an injury each year due to car crashes. Crash-related TBIs usually happen in one of the three following ways:

1. You hit your head on something inside your car, such as your windshield, steering wheel, etc.
2. Something penetrates your skull, such as flying debris or glass.
3. The impact gives you a whiplash injury whereby your head and neck jerk sharply forward and backward, causing your brain to violently hit the inside of your skull.

Some people decline to pursue personal injury claims because they mistakenly believe that, because they had a degree of fault in the accident, the law does not entitle them to anything. However, Florida is a state that practices comparative fault. You can often still recover compensation even if you bore some of the fault for an accident.

The concept of comparative fault is designed to account for the reality of most accidents. It is only the rare accident that is entirely black and white. For instance, a person jaywalking in a residential area with a 25 mph speed limit in broad daylight is unlikely to be hit by a driver who is not being reckless. If a provably intoxicated driver is texting, speeding excessively, and hits the jaywalker, it would hardly be fair to deny the pedestrian any compensation because he or she was crossing illegally.

People are on the water many months out of the year in Florida, and this summer will be no exception. The beautiful beaches and marinas throughout the Sunshine State provide many opportunities for recreation and sport, but they can also be the source of an unexpected danger you may not know about – electric shock in the water.

The Electric Shock Drowning Prevention Association calls electrified water an invisible drowning risk. Most people are unaware this type of risk exists, and it is impossible to tell if the water surrounding a boat or marina is electrified until you jump in or make contact with a metal surface that is touching the electrified water. In fact, some people who mysteriously drown in marinas, despite being able to swim, may have been electrocuted in the water with nobody knowing the true cause.

One reason that some people are hesitant to sue after a car accident or personal injury is that they know the other party. For example, in car collisions, maybe the other driver was a colleague or a relative. The same idea applies in other personal injury cases. It may seem very wrong to sue your beloved cousin after you slipped and fell on her property.

However, your medical bills are mounting, and your injuries are serious. You do not see another way out of it. How do you handle having to sue someone you care about?