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florida injury casesThe average personal injury verdict in Florida is $1,819,751, according to Jury Verdict Research, a company that tracks jury verdicts. In Florida personal injury cases, plaintiffs win approximately 61 percent of cases that go to trial.

Florida’s threshold requiring a more serious injury in motor tort cases is one reason why the average jury verdict in Florida much higher than the national average. These Florida jury statistic verdicts also underscore that large cases inflate average jury verdicts and settlements. The median—as opposed to the average—money damages in Florida personal injury trials in Florida is $122,674.

If you have been injured in a serious car accident (our lawyers only handle serious claims), call us t 800-553-8082 or click here for free no-obligation consultation.

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Very dated but still interesting data on Florida workers’ compensation cases: the average back injury settlement was $ 38,000 with medical care continuing (called “keeping your case open”). The average  workers’ compensation back injury settlement is $ 9,800 with no continuing opportunity for further medical care.

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Interesting car accident case reported in South Carolina Lawyers Weekly. Plaintiff was a passenger in a car driven by his grandmother, and a hit-and-run driver T-boned them at an intersection. It was a small accident case: medical bills totaling $3,230 and lost wages totaling $4,352.

State Farm, standing by its insured as always because, you know, you are in good hands, offered $6,500.   Typical.  At trial, State Farm’s lawyer argued during opening statements that the jury could determine whether what the Plaintiff had already been paid was sufficient. Plaintiff’s accident lawyer objected, and the trial judge sustained the objection and later instructed the jury to disregard the setoff argument in its deliberations because any setoff would be handled by the judge.

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Pennsylvania’s highest court last week in Fitzpatrick v. Natter that circumstantial evidence provided by a plaintiff’s spouse in a medical malpractice lawsuit is sufficient to get past summary judgment in an informed consent malpractice claim. The court found that a Pennsylvania Superior Courty had erred in concluding that Pennsylvania’s informed consent law required the Plaintiff to testify herself about information that was not provided by her doctor.

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The Iowa Supreme Court reversed a Scott County District Court summary judgment ruling in an important discovery rule medical malpractice ruling.  This case,Rock v. Warhank, is a failure to diagnose breast cancer case, rejecting malpractice defense lawyer claims that Plaintiff should have known of her injury, for purposes of the statute of limitations, just because a doctor made her aware that her breast was not normal.

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Mr. Miller:

Hi, I am a Maryland attorney and would like to get little mentoring on any differences between an unidentified motorist claim and an uninsured motorist claim. Please call or send me an email and I promise I’ll be brief. Thanks so much for any help!

Dear Maryland Attorney:

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Yesterday, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that a wrongful death lawsuit against the city Park Ridge can move forward because the city is not immune from a lawsuit. An Illinois trial court had granted the city’s motion for summary judgment.

This wrongful death case is gathering attention because of it bizarre facts. A 15-year-old boy’s father called 911 and reported that his son was unconscious and needed resuscitation. Paramedics arrived 5 minutes later but did not treat the patient. We have no idea why. The father called back at about eight hours later. When the paramedics arrived, the boy was in cardiac arrest. Tragically, hospital records showed that he died at the hospital from overdosing on cocaine and opiates.

Bizarre facts. The lawyer for the city of Park Ridge says he cannot talk about the case until it comes out in court. Please.

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Medical malpractice lawyers filed an informed consent lawsuit last week accusing a doctor of amputating a man’s penis without his consent. In the lawsuit, a Kentucky man alleges that the doctor was only authorized to perform a circumcision. What happened—right or wrong – was the doctor did what he thought he should, to save the patient’s life when he found cancer during the operation.

I won’t prejudge this lawsuit without hearing the evidence. I can certainly imagine a scenario where a doctor finds cancer during a routine operation and does what the doctor believes he must do to save the patient. The Plaintiff affirmed the doctor’s prerogative in this regard by signing a consent form acknowledging that unforeseen conditions discovered during the circumcision “may necessitate additional or different procedures.” But I would reserve judgment on the merits of the case because it really depends on whether reasonable minds could differ as to what was the appropriate course.

But I find disturbing that the lawsuit seeks punitive damages. Unless facts in the case exist that were not included in the Courier-Journal article I read, there is no malice or even recklessness in a doctor – right or wrong – deciding to save a patient’s life.

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The Court of Appeals of Washington in Shoemake v. Ferrer, 182 P.3rd 992 (2008) considered an interested argument by a defendant in a legal malpractice case. The Defendant lawyers blew a statute of limitations by two days in a serious head-on car accident collusion case with a drug driver. This was a guy that needed a car accident lawyer in Washington that was competent to handle his case.

The problem was that he apparently did not find a competent car accident attorney. Instead, he found a lawyer that ignored State’s Farm’s $100,000 offer to pay on Plaintiff’s uninsured motorist claim because he was “was unsure of the legal ramifications of accepting that payment.” The lesson, as always: if you are not qualified to handle a serious car accident case, don’t to it. So many lawyers who don’t handle car accident claims regularly think they can. They think it sounds so easy. But it is not.

But that is not what is interesting about the case. What is interesting is the Defendant contended successfully to the trial judge that the negligent car accident lawyers were entitled to have the damages awarded reduced by the amount stated in the lawyer’s contingency fee agreement with the client.

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Bob Zarbin and Jim MacAlister write a telling article in this month’s journal of the Maryland Trial Lawyers Association about Maryland’s new bad faith law. The authors note that the avalanche of bad faith claims the insurance companies said were coming down the pike with Maryland’s new bad faith law was actually only 12 in the first quarter of the 2008 and only 12 all last year.

Similarly, on the medical malpractice front, Maryland malpractice insurers claimed the sky was falling one minute and the next they are declaring $74 million profit to their doctor shareholders and lowering malpractice insurance rates. The legislative process requires that the viewpoints of all stakeholders. But can we at least make sure we put the proper discounted value on “the sky is falling” on the next go around? I’m hoping the next go around includes a revised bad faith law with more teeth than mere costs and expenses.

In the same issue, Kevin Goldberg, who is with Goldberg, Finnegan & Mester in Silver Spring, Maryland, writes a great article laying out a great checklist of avenues to explore when you have a catastrophic accident and what appears to be limited coverage.

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