Initiating a Personal Injury Lawsuit in Florida

While most of us use as much care as we can in our day-to-day lives to avoid hurting others through our own carelessness, accidents still can and do occur in Florida on a daily basis. Fortunately, state law protects accident victims who suffer injuries because of the negligence of others. This is known as personal injury law and it allows injured plaintiffs to seek compensation for their medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering from the at-fault parties responsible for their accidents. Read on to learn more about personal injury lawsuits in Florida, including how to go about imitating a lawsuit.

Filing an Insurance Claim

 One of the first, albeit unofficial, steps in the legal process following an accident is to file an insurance claim with the at-fault party’s insurer. It’s important to note, however, that filing an insurance claim won’t bring a case to court. It will, however, give the parties the chance to negotiate a settlement in an out-of-court setting and so avoid a potentially costly and time-consuming legal case. If, however, such negotiations aren’t effective, then injured claimants have the option of filing a personal injury lawsuit in court.

Filing the Lawsuit 

To get a personal injury case started, an accident victim will need to file a number of legal documents with the court clerk’s office in the county where the accident occurred. This is when the injured party files what is known as a Complaint and it will contain:

• A statement of the facts behind the accident;
• A full description of the victim’s financial, physical, and emotional losses; and
• A request for relief and an award of damages.

Once submitted to the court, this document will then need to be served on the defendant.

Serving the Defendant 

The next step of pursuing a personal injury lawsuit will be to notify the defendant of the suit through service of process. At this point, the court will issue a Summons to the defendant and the plaintiff will need to arrange to have the defendant officially served with the Complaint and the Summons. In most cases, a physical copy of these documents will need to be left in the possession of the actual defendant. Once the defendant has been served, he or she will have the chance to file an Appearance and an Answer to the plaintiff’s allegations.

Pre-Trial Proceedings 

After the defendant has been served and has had the opportunity to respond to the plaintiff, the parties can move forward with initial court appearances, usually within a few weeks. During this portion of the proceedings, the parties will need to attend status conferences, engage in discovery (where both will need to produce evidence), file motions, and eventually set the date for trial.

Contact Our Florida Personal Injury Attorneys 

There are a lot of steps involved in initiating a personal injury lawsuit and the experienced Fort Lauderdale personal injury lawyers at Boone & Davis are here to help you throughout the entirety of this process. Call us at 954-566-9919 to set up an initial case review today.

Sources:

 law.cornell.edu/wex/personal_injury

leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&Search_String=&URL=0000-0099/0048/Sections/0048.031.html