Florida Injury Lawyer Blawg

Published on: April 8, 2016

Creative Lawyering Yields Another Great Result for Injured Child

The vast majority of personal injury victims contact a lawyer intending to make claims against a specific entity for a specific wrongdoing. The victims often evaluate their case and form their own theories of liability before they are ever guided by an experienced trial lawyer. Unfortunately, many lawyers then evaluate cases based on their clients’ impressions without broadening their imagination and looking at the entire picture.

Our firm was recently contacted by a mother in reference to a potential medical malpractice case for her 12-year-old son. Our client’s concern was that her son underwent surgery to repair his fractured femur (thigh bone) with metal rods, and the metal rods ultimately broke free from the bone, requiring a painful second surgery. Our client thought this complication occurred because the first surgery was done negligently. Our firm investigated and concluded that the complication was likely an inherent risk of surgery rather than negligence.

For many lawyers, the evaluation would have ended there. However, our firm inquired further and asked how the boy’s leg was fractured. Our client believed that was a dead end. She explained that the injury occurred when a 13-year-old girl accidentally fell on him at the girl’s house. As we learned more, it was discovered that the girl, who was much larger than the boy, had been physically harassing him for several days with unwanted horseplay. The girl’s father, who was supposed to be supervising them, knew of this abuse and failed to prevent it or separate the children. Our firm made a claim against the father’s homeowner’s insurance policy under a Negligent Supervision theory. Within just days of receiving our lawsuit, the insurance carrier offered their full policy limits of $300,000, to compensate our client’s son.

Published on: April 7, 2016

Boating Safety Tips

By Leesfield & Partners

As we approach the summer months in South Florida, we once again see the start of another boating season. Thousands of boaters in personal water craft will soon set out across our beautiful bays, sandbars, and offshore islands to take in all that our tropical paradise has to offer. As fun as a day spent out on a boat with friends and family can be, it is important to remember that boating can also be an extremely dangerous activity. Safety should always be the number one concern when planning for a day out on the ocean.

In 2014, Miami-Dade County ranked first in the state in boating accidents with 79. There were ten deaths due to boating accidents in the county alone, including four young adults who lost their lives in an extremely tragic collision near Dinner Key Marina on the 4th of July. In the Florida Keys, five people perished due to boating accidents in 2014.

safe boating is fun.jpg Our law firm has represented many individuals who were permanently injured in boating accidents. We have also represented the families of individuals who tragically lost their lives while boating. Regrettably, we have often seen that many of these accidents could have been prevented if simple boating safety provisions were obeyed.

Published on: April 6, 2016

Insurance policy limits are not the limits of recovery

By Leesfield & Partners

If you or a loved one has been involved in an automobile accident or any other type of accident and sustained serious injuries you will want to know what compensation you can recover. Most attorneys will tell you that it depends on the liability, causation, degree of damages and the amount of available insurance. All of this is true, except that the amount of available insurance should not always be seen as the maximum amount you can recover.

Most lawyers will never look beyond the insurance policy and accept defeat that the insurance limits are the limits of available recovery. That is not always true. Over the past 15 years our office has recovered more than $26,000,000 more than the available insurance directly from the insurance companies when they engaged in bad faith handling of the underlying claims.

This amount does not include the millions more we have recovered from defendants personally above the insurance policy limits when there were no allegations of bad faith claims handling from the insurance carrier. When a defendant has traceable and collectible assets, your attorney should pursue those in order to maximize your recovery. We have done this by securing personal payments above policy limits and having personal property deeded to our clients including non-homestead properties. We recently were able to settle a claim for the policy limits of insurance, for additional cash money from the insured, and for multiple properties. In an inadequate security case, our firm secured a settlement for the policy limits and for an entire apartment building.

Published on: April 1, 2016

Don’t Forget to Read the Owner’s Manual, Trial Lawyers!

By Leesfield & Partners

We all know that consumer products can be dangerous if used improperly. Everything from vacuum cleaners to jet skis have large, orange warning decals posted on them instructing users, “READ THE OWNER’S MANUAL PRIOR TO USE.” In the owner’s manual, users will find an extensive composition of warnings, diagrams, and instructions for the safe use of the product.

Owner’s manuals are often the focal point in product liability cases where it is alleged that a product is dangerous or the manufacturer failed to provide adequate warnings. In such cases, trial lawyers will introduce owner’s manuals to point out the adequacy or inadequacy of warnings and instructions.

Surprisingly, owner’s manuals are largely ignored by trial lawyers in personal injury cases involving presumptively safe consumer products. Our firm has handled many cases in which hotels, attractions, and tour operators have severely injured our clients by misusing consumer products. Parasailing ropes break, picture frame supports fail, beach umbrellas fly into guests, bungee cords snap, and the list goes on.

Published on: March 31, 2016

Pharmacy Malpractice, Medication Error – Trust, but verify

By Leesfield & Partners

As consumers of so many goods and services in our day-to-day lives, it is only natural that we have become accustomed to accepting – without thinking twice – whatever goods and services are provided to us. We trust that those who provide us with what we consume are acting responsibly, have exercised due diligence, and are in fact providing us with whatever it is we have specifically requested and expect to receive. Throughout our day, we constantly ingest products without hesitation, rarely stopping to think whether we may be placing harmful products into our bodies.

The level of trust that we have in others as consumers may be even higher when dealing with and receiving goods from trained professionals. One example: Pharmacists. Naturally, when we pick up prescription medications at our local pharmacies, we fully expect that these professionals will always give us exactly what has been prescribed to us by our doctors. Of course, this is normally the case.

However, our law firm has dealt with several unfortunate occasions where pharmacies – including the largest, most nationally-recognized stores – have provided our clients with the wrong prescriptions. In these instances, these folks have gone on to consume whatever medication was wrongfully given to them, never imagining that a mistake of this magnitude could possibly occur. They have suffered permanent injuries as a result, either caused by the wrongful medication itself, or from not treating the medical condition for which they were prescribed medication in the first place.

Published on: March 25, 2016

The importance of photographs in premises liability cases

By Leesfield & Partners

They say “a picture is worth a thousand words.” As we have seen in many of our premises liability cases, pictures can be worth far more. When our clients are severely injured as a result of dangerous or defective premises, their health is understandably their primary focus. Pain and shock take over. An ambulance is often called to rush the victims away from the scene for medical evaluation. The last thing on their mind is preserving evidence by taking photographs of the dangerous condition. Who can blame them?

Our firm recently handled a case that demonstrated just how important it is to photograph the scene after an injury. Our client was leaving a fast food restaurant when she slipped while walking down an outdoor staircase. She fell down several stairs to the ground and suffered severe injuries, requiring multiple surgeries. When her husband met her in the emergency room shortly after the incident, she explained that her foot slipped off a stair that felt “slimy” and “oily.” Her husband drove to the scene of the incident shortly thereafter and noticed that the stairs were covered in thick layers of mold and mildew, which are known to be extremely slippery on walking surfaces. He also noticed the restaurant employees preparing to scrub the staircase with soap and industrial brushes in response to his wife’s fall. He immediately took out his cell phone and snapped several photographs of the filthy staircase before it was scrubbed.

Months later, the general manager of the restaurant was shown these photographs at her deposition. She had no choice but to admit that the staircase was unacceptable and unsafe for guests. This allowed our firm to secure a settlement that covered 100% of her medical expenses and lost wages, and a substantial additional sum for her pain and suffering. Had her husband not taken those photographs, it would have been far more difficult to prove the extent of this hazard, or that the hazard existed at all.

Published on: March 16, 2016

Resort Torts – Spring Break

By Leesfield & Partners

Florida beaches and warm weather resorts throughout the Caribbean are packed with Spring breakers. We just returned from our annual Key West seminar navigating mopeds, bicycles, Hoverboards, skateboards, parasailers, jet skiers and the whole gamut of fun resort stuff. This week in Miami is the Ultra Music Festival, and Florida beaches, from the Panhandle to the Atlantic and Gulf Coast down to the Florida Keys are just mobbed.

Click here to read our latest Petition online

Tragically, we have already received a number of calls from students and the families of spring breakers on vacation reporting hazardous and dangerous conditions on the roads, in the water and at resort properties.

Published on: December 17, 2015

Broward bicyclist struck and killed by truck

By Leesfield & Partners

According to Broward Sheriff’s Office, a bicyclist was killed today after he was hit by a cement truck near Davie Boulevard. The authorities have not revealed the circumstances of this latest fatal bicyclist accident, but one can reasonably suspect that the truck driver did not see the bicyclist, or did not see the bicyclist with enough time to avoid fatally striking the victim.

Last year, Leesfield & Partners began its “Share the Road” campaign, by promoting the same message on its U.S.1 signage as illustrated below. This campaign was born out of the necessary collective realization that Florida is the most lethal state in the nation for bicyclists. South Florida alone has reported over 2500 bicyclist accidents in 2014. A trend that is continually increasing by all measures. Florida leads the nation in fatalities with 119 in 2014, which rounds up the number of bicyclists killed on the road to over 550 between 2010 and 2014.

This epidemic has not been curbed by community leaders, politics, policies, or fines and criminal penalties. If a change does come in the future, it will have to be triggered by a collective behavior modification of drivers throughout the entire state of Florida. The tragedy that occurred today is even more personal to Leesfield & Partners because it is eerily similar to a recent case where friends of members of our lawfirm were involved in a bicycle accident with a truck. In that case, the incident was caused by a distracted truck driver who decided to take his eyes off the road to adjust his GPS and failed to avoid two bicyclists whom he struck with incredible force and violence that it permanently changed two innocent lives.

Published on: December 3, 2015

Wrongful death of construction worker at a downtown Miami construction site

By Leesfield & Partners

According to reports, a worker was killed while working on a Miami high-rise condominium building construction site yesterday. The details of the incident are unknown, but the Miami Herald reported today that, the 29 year-old construction worker was hit by a piece of heavy machinery being hoisted by a crane. According to Miami Fire Rescue Capt. Ignatius Carroll., the employee was working on the 37th floor of the condominium at the time, and the heavy piece of machinery that fell on him weighed more than 2,000 pounds.

For the past 15 years, the downtown area of Miami has seen an explosion of condominiums and office buildings, and endless construction sites. Sadly, every year construction workers are gravely injured, some fatally, due to the failure of heavy equipment or a varying degree of negligence of co-workers.

The latest incident reported by the Miami Herald today is very similar to a complex case Leesfield & Partners resolved recently. In that case, a crane operator lowered the crane down for the night. To do so, he had to follow a certain procedure in order to properly and safely lower the crane: First the operator had to lower the luffing boom, make sure it was not extended, and then lower the main boom. Unfortunately for our client, the crane operator lowered the main boom first, while the luffing boom was still extended. A split second later, the crane began to tip forward. The workers present on the site ran for cover, but our client was unlucky. While running away, the crane boom struck him on his hard hat, knocking him to the ground. Then the boom bounced off the end of a beam, ricocheted to the ground demolishing and crushing his right leg. A lawsuit was filed immediately and after a successful litigation process, the injured construction worker was able to settle his lawsuit with all of the at-fault parties.

Published on: October 2, 2015

Explosion in Sunny Isles Beach caused by Gas Leak in Boiler Room

By Leesfield & Partners

An explosion took place this afternoon in Sunny Isles Beach. Early reports mention a gas leak in the boiler room of a high rise condo was responsible for the damages. As many as 6 people have been reported injured on site, and off site, including a person who was airlifted to Jackson Memorial Hospital.

Boiler rooms require extensive and appropriate maintenance in order to avoid potential devastating consequences to members of the public and residents. Natural gas is one of the most widely used fuels for heating commercial and industrial properties. The dangers of gas leaks is they can go undetected for a significant period of time, and they present a clear and present explosive risk leading to structural damage, or worse, the loss of life.

A proper and adequate maintenance plan must be in effect to prevent against leaks and any other types of dangers that boiler rooms present. An automatic gas detection system will provide early warning of a gas release during unmanned periods.