Florida Injury Lawyer Blawg
About a decade after a near-fatal ATV accident on their family’s property, Jamie Lynn Spears and her daughter are opening up about the teen’s recovery.
Maddie Watson, now 18, was just 8 years old when she was riding around her family’s property in Louisiana on an ATV around their pond. At one point, she reportedly fell in while still on the vehicle, according to reporting from national media. The mother and daughter made headlines this week following a sit-down interview with People Magazine.
“My father-in-law, my mother-in-law, me and my husband, we ran to jump in to save her and you kind of — in that moment you think, ‘This is not real. She’s going to pop up, this isn’t real,’” explained Spears, a former child star and younger sister to early 2000s icon and singer Britney Spears.
Spears, who made a name for herself while starring on hit Nickelodeon show “Zoey 101,” commented that she could not get her daughter out of the water during the harrowing incident.
“I could feel her arm, and I’m jerking it,” she said. “I couldn’t get her up because it’s a pretty heavy machine. In that moment you think, you know, logically, she’s been underwater too long.”
Maddie could not be freed until paramedics arrived. She was transported to a local hospital and was in a coma for two days before making a “miraculous” recovery.
In their interview with People, Spears revealed that her daughter did not recognize her initially. The two laughed over the memory of Maddie mistaking her mother for popular country singer Carrie Underwood.
“She was a little bit out of her mind,” Spears explained. “And so, this was the time where I was like, ‘OK, this is my baby girl now.’ Like, I didn’t care. She didn’t recognize me at first. And then, she recognized other people and … I remember I went to the bathroom and cried.”
Through it all, they explained, Maddie displayed her resilient spirit and displayed no deficits.
“And then, on top of it … she’s succeeding, she’s beautiful, she’s kind, she’s smart,” Spears said. “I feel like I don’t get to ask for anything else in life because I got the biggest blessing.”
Maddie herself expressed gratitude for her recovery in a YouTube video on her channel while her mother cheered her on in a social media post.
“What was supposed to be a fun way to document her senior year on YouTube has now turned into a way for her to share the not so fun parts of life too,” the mother wrote online. “You can work so hard, and do everything right, yet still face adversity, no matter what path you’re on in life. You can’t control everything that happens to you, but you can decide how you react to what happens to you.”
Leesfield & Partners, a 50-year personal injury law firm in Florida with a history of securing record verdicts and settlements on behalf of clients, knows just how dangerous ATVs can be, especially for children.
Leesfield & Partners: Representing Accident Victims for 50 Years in Florida
While, thankfully, this incident has a happy ending, those of many other children throughout the U.S. do not.
Leesfield & Partners’ Founder and Managing Partner, Ira Leesfield, traveled throughout the country litigating cases involving ATV crashes and minors, admonishing the marketing of these devices as children’s toys. In those cases, the vehicles were made out to seem harmless. The reality, however, was starkly different.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission reported that there are about 100,000 ATV-related injuries requiring emergency room visits in the U.S. annually. Of these ATV incidents, approximately 650 people died, the data showed. Florida was among five states in the U.S. that accounted for more than 30% of the off-highway vehicle deaths from 2018 through 2020, CPSC data showed. Other states where these deaths — about 613 — occurred included Pennsylvania, California, West Virginia, and Kentucky. Children, officials with the American Academy of Pediatrics have said, particularly at risk of dying or being injured in ATV accidents because of their lack of experience operating such a vehicle and a lack of judgement that can result in them taking bigger and more dangerous risks. One out of three ATV deaths and injuries requiring emergency room treatment involves a child under 16 years old.
“In the large majority of children’s deaths resulting from the use of an ATV, the child was not wearing a helmet,” Leesfield & Partners said in a previous blog post.
As a result of these cases, Mr. Leesfield secured more than $10 million in verdicts and settlements for the children injured in these crashes in their families. In many of the cases handled by the firm, the children were given these vehicles as holiday and birthday gifts.
Ira Leesfield: E-bike Safety Pioneer
As the landscape of injuries has shifted from ATV-related incidents to the growing prevalence of e-bike accidents over the past decade, Mr. Leesfield has remained a vocal advocate for heightened awareness of their dangers. A bill to improve e-bike safety throughout the state is expected to go into effect on July 1. If signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, riders would be required to yield to pedestrians and operate their e-bikes at 10 mph or less when within 50 feet of pedestrians. When attempting to pass pedestrians or other bicyclists on sidewalks and shared paths, e-bikers would be required to make audible signals. Additionally, a task force would be created to monitor crash data from local police departments to make future recommendations for improved safety.
For Mr. Leesfield, a NBTA-certified trial attorney who has seen far too many individuals injured on Florida roads, these changes cannot come soon enough.
“This isn’t about banning innovation, it’s about protecting people,” he said.
Previous ATV Cases
Previously, the firm settled an ATV products liability case for $5 million, causing a ripple effect throughout the entire industry. This case was one of several handled by the firm that highlighted the instability of these three-wheeled vehicles. As a result, the ATV industry abandoned their previous design and added a fourth wheel.
Leesfield & Partners attorneys were obtained to represent the family following the tragic death of their teenage daughter following an ATV crash. The girl, 15, was riding a recreational vehicle when she was killed.
The firm secured a $4.5 million settlement for the negligent entrustment of a recreational vehicle to a minor and the failure of the responsible parent to supervise the children.
Leesfield & Partners previously handled a cruise ship excursion case in which multiple people were injured in an ATV incident. In that case, a rollover crash occurred on a cruise-sponsored shore excursion, causing serious injuries to multiple passengers.
The firm settled the case for over $1.2 million.
Previous Motorcycle and Bicycle Cases
In a product liability case involving a Honda motorcycle, Mr. Leesfield obtained a $19.8 million award for a client who was paralyzed following a crash.
That case involved a defective kickstand on the bike that deployed while our client was traveling at a high rate of speed down the road. This dangerous problem with the bike’s design was not an isolated issue and led Mr. Leesfield to pursue various motorcycle manufacturers across the country on behalf of injured clients and grieving families.
A case involving a bicyclist who was hit while stopped on the shoulder of the Overseas Highway in Key West resulted in a $5,350,000 settlement for the client. In that case, the bicyclist who was stopped on the side of the road was hit by a driver who was distracted by their car’s GPS.
A Key West crash that drastically impacted the life of a prominent local businessman resulted in a record verdict. In that case, our client had the green light at an intersection when an ambulance at a red light unexpectedly plowed through the road and hit him. In the crash, he was thrown into a cement wall, resulting in permanent injuries.
The ambulance driver claimed he was on his way to an emergency and had the right of way, however, this driver failed to deploy the necessary lights and sirens. Without these indicators, our client had no idea that the ambulance would not stop when at the red light and so he proceeded to cross the intersection.
The firm previously recovered $3 million for a mother and son injured in a bicycle incident.
In a separate product liability case involving a defective motorcycle, Leesfield & Partners recovered $1.8 million for our injured client.
A serious crash with a negligent driver resulted in serious injuries for our motorcyclist client. Leesfield & Partners secured $1.76 million in that case.
In a similar case involving a negligent driver, Leesfield & Partners secured over $1.2 million for a client injured in the motorcycle accident.
The firm obtained $1 million for a motorcyclist who was injured by a negligent ride-sharing app driver’s actions.
Partner Justin B. Shapiro and Trial Attorney Eric Shane obtained a confidential result for a Florida motor scooterist.
Bernardo Pimentel II, a Trial Attorney at the firm, is representing a bicyclist who was violently ejected from his bicycle following a crash with a negligent and reckless commercial truck driver on Stock Island.
That case is ongoing.
