Personal Injury Lawyer in Lakeland
If you have been injured because of someone else’s recklessness, negligence, or aggression, then you may be able to recover financial damages against that person or persons through a personal injury lawsuit or settlement. The team at Abercrombie P.A. has a history of success with personal injury lawsuits in Florida, and will be happy to work with you to recover the damages that you are entitled to following your accident and resulting injuries.
You can begin your free consultation with a legal professional from our team immediately. In your consultation, we will go through the details of your accident, the extent of your injuries, and determine the likelihood that you can file a successful personal injury lawsuit. If you decide that you want to move forward with recovering economic damages for your suffering, then we will be happy to take your case and fight for what you are entitled to. Read more below about some common personal injury lawsuits in Florida, and some factors that go into determining the dollar amount of a lawsuit.
Common Personal Injuries
Below are some of the more-common personal injury cases. This does not mean that these are the only injuries that are acceptable for a personal injury lawsuit, only that they are common in the Florida court system. Whether or not your injuries resemble any of these situations, contact us today to determine the validity of your case, and start working towards making your case.
Slip and Fall
In a slip and fall case, we will work to prove that the party in charge of the premise you were injured on should have known about the hazard, and had a reasonable responsibility to address it before your accident. Personal injuries can take place on private property that you were allowed on, public property, government property, or semi-public spaces like grocery stores or shopping malls. We will work to recover any surveillance footage, determine the nature of your presence on the property, and prove that the property owner or manager should have fixed the situation. An example of a slip and fall would be a wet spot in a grocery store, during business hours, that had not been properly cleaned up, or signs placed to warn shoppers.
Car Accidents
Personal injury lawsuits can arise from car accidents for a number of reasons. Some common reasons are that the other driver was acting recklessly or driving at dangerous speeds, or they were texting while driving. Other situations could be a DUI, where the driver was intoxicated during the accident that caused your injuries. In some cases, the driver will be charged in a criminal case as well as the civil case we will bring against them. Car accidents are very common in Florida, but when you have Abercrombie P.A. representing you, you can be certain that we will set your situation apart and illustrate why you are owed compensation for your suffering.
Lakeland is a part of Polk County, and in 2017 the FLHSMV reported a total of 11,378 crashes, 112 fatalities, and 7,555 injuries from car accidents in the county. However, according to city-data.com, Lakeland accounted for 19 of these fatal accidents. Lakeland accounts for 18% of Polk County’s population, and 17% of the county’s fatal crashes. This means that it is extremely important to stay vigilant while you are on the road and make sure that you know that there is always an experienced attorney ready to take your call at Abercrombie, P.A. if you are one of the unfortunate victims of a car accident in Lakeland.
Drunk Driving Accident
From 2015 to 2017, Lakeland had the second highest rate of DUI-related deaths of any city in FL: 6.5 for every 100,000 residents. per If you have been struck by a drunk driver and injured, we will work with you to build a complete civil case against the driver to compensate for your injuries. There are many situations where you may be injured by a drunk driver: on a bicycle, as a pedestrian, as another driver, as a passenger, or perhaps on your motorcycle. No matter your situation, if you have been injured by a drunk driver then we will pursue the maximum damages for you.
Pedestrian Hit By Car
When a pedestrian is struck by a car, there are often serious injuries that are incurred. If you have been struck by a car as a pedestrian, then we will go through the entire situation that led to your injuries in order to make a sound case. You could be struck on a sidewalk, crosswalk, in a parking lot, or anywhere else. No matter the circumstances of your accident, contact us today so we can discuss the details and understand what the next steps in your case should be.
If your injuries are not mentioned above, contact us today to discuss your situation and learn more about how we will build a case for you.
How Much Money Can I Get For My Injuries?
There are many complicated factors that ultimately give the full picture of the amount we will file for in your personal injury lawsuit. Below are a few of the common things that we will consider when building your case, but does not cover the entire range of things that go into the full compensatory damages that you may be owed.
Medical Bills
Your medical bills will play a large role in the foundation of your case, as a simple economic factor as well as an indicator of the extent to your injuries. We will submit a total of all current medical bills for the injury, and will additionally estimate any future possible bills that will go into your recovery as well.
Lost Wages
In a similar fashion to how we will consider your medical bills, we will use your pay stubs to show the amount of money you have failed to earn up to this point as a result of your injuries, as well as any possible future impact to your earning power or pay amounts.
Job Retraining
In some cases, personal injuries limit a person’s abilities to return to their previous job, or return in their previous capacity. If this is the case with your injuries, we will work to identify any costs associated with retraining or finding you new work and include that in the total amount.
Non-Economic Factors
In addition to the purely economic factors that we will include in your lawsuit, there are many “intangible” issues that we will put a numerical value on. This includes your pain and suffering following the injury, any loss or limitation to companionship, shame or fear, and a diminished quality of life. There are more factors as well that we will work towards including into your suit to ensure you are fully and fairly compensated.
Frequently Asked Questions about Personal Injuries in Lakeland
The following are some of the most common questions that we are happy to answer for you during an initial consultation; however, keep in mind that even after a few meetings together we may not still have every answer to these questions since they will take a significant amount of time and research in order to reach a conclusive answer. The following are intended to simply provide you with an idea of what to expect for your own situation, not to provide you with legal advice.
From a purely legal standpoint, you do not need an attorney to file an insurance claim, and could go through the entire process, including a lawsuit and trial, representing yourself. However, this is absolutely not recommended, for a variety of reasons, including the fact that your main priority should be recovering and getting your life back on track, not working with an insurance company.
Tort law in the United States is complicated and overwhelming for the uninitiated, and even an experienced personal injury attorney would want to hire legal counsel if they were trying to prioritize their own recovery. Remember that you are going against a company that wants to pay you as little as possible, and will leverage your injuries and compromised condition to their advantage.
You should never accept any offer from an insurance company without consulting with an attorney first. The insurance company will conclude their claims investigation once they have identified every possible way to reduce the amount of money that you are entitled to, and this offer will reflect that minimum amount.
The initial offer from an insurance company should be the start of an aggressive series of negotiations that your personal injury attorney will be able to handle while you are recovering. This offer is rarely, if ever, close to what you truly deserve, and the insurance company won’t pay you what you deserve without a fight.
In some estimates, 95% of personal injury claims are settled before trial, and 50% are settled before a lawsuit is ever filed, meaning that the victim accepts an offer from the defendant or their insurance company. Do not be confused, though, about the amount of work and negotiation that goes into a case before a settlement agreement is reached.
In order to understand your options and the value of your injuries, there are many different calculations that we will need to go through that factor the severity of your injuries, the impacts to your income, and more. Each accident and the resulting injuries are unique, and our work will need to take each of these unique details into account as we are calculating the damages that you are entitled to.
Once we have done our initial investigation, we will then be able to identify a target amount for an out-of-court settlement, and another for damages that we would seek in a trial in the Florida courts.
Florida has a strict statute of limitations for personal injury cases under FL § 95.11 of the Statutes & Constitution that allows for a victim to file a lawsuit within four years of the accident. After this statute has expired, a victim will have very few options to file a lawsuit, such as if their injuries took a while to become clear.
During these four years, you and your legal team will be able to work directly with the defendant or their insurance company to negotiate a settlement, and if these negotiations fail then we will decide to move forward with filing a claim with the courts. The more time that we have to negotiate, the better chances we will have of reaching a settlement agreement without needing to pursue action in court.
Contact Abercrombie P.A. Today
Contact us now for a free consultation and begin working towards recovering what you are rightfully owed for your injuries. When we are handling your case, you can focus on recovering your normal quality of life while we focus on getting you the compensation you deserve.
