Earlier this year, Florida enacted tort reform measures that critics argue will decrease the rights of personal injury victims and make it more difficult for them to pursue damages from insurance companies that deny claims or short-shrift compensation. Given the changes to personal injury law, the legal experts at Tallahassee’s Akbar Thomas Law thought it would be an opportune time to review the role of insurance companies in the state’s personal injury law.

No matter the cause, the death of a loved one is tragic. However, the depth of the tragedy is compounded when the loved one’s demise was caused by the negligence, recklessness, or misconduct of others. The grief surviving family members have over the loss is typically made more tumultuous by feelings of shock, denial, anger, and perhaps guilt for being unable to prevent the incident that caused the wrongful death.

Many people who get into auto accidents do not believe they need a lawyer if they aren’t at fault. However, just because you know the auto accident wasn’t your fault doesn’t mean that insurance companies will accept your account without question. Insurance companies have a notorious reputation for disputing car accident claims in Florida, and it’s in their best interest to challenge your perceived lack of fault.

Uber and Lyft ridesharing services have soared in popularity in Florida over the past decade, but the convenience of the taxi-like services is not free of problems and complications. A noteworthy problem is that rideshare drivers may be more prone to traffic accidents than the general public due to distractions and other work-related factors. And this can cause complications when a passenger injured in a rideshare accident needs to figure out who is responsible for the damages.

While you probably understand the fundamental goal of personal injury law to provide compensation for those injured by the recklessness, negligence, and/or malpractice of others, you might be less familiar with the premises liability component of the law.

If you’re injured by a defective product and pursue damages for your injuries in a lawsuit, your case could be consolidated with other lawsuits into a class action if the same product has injured multiple people. A recent case in point is the consolidation of numerous claims seeking damages for burns suffered by defective pressure cookers manufactured by Florida’s Sunbeam Products.

Nursing homes are big business, as recently evidenced by the $36 million a New Jersey firm paid to purchase two south Florida nursing homes. But in the quest for profits, some nursing homes fail to provide adequate care for their residents. Whether because of understaffing, under-trained staff, unsafe facilities, poor equipment, or some other factor—penny-pinching or not—seniors face potential neglect and abuse when they become wards of some nursing homes. And nursing home abuse and neglect are prevalent in Florida due to its large elderly population.

If you are injured in an accident or other incident, there are numerous things you should do to ensure that you receive compensation for medical costs and other damages. While insurance may provide some compensation, it could be denied or fail to provide full payment for all the expenses a personal injury might cause. Florida’s personal injury laws provide several types of compensation to account for economic and non-economic losses. They include provisions that allow victims to seek compensation even if they were partly to blame for the accident.

Earlier this year, the J.M. Smucker Company issued a voluntary recall of select Jif peanut butter products sold in the U.S. after the product was linked to multi-state salmonella outbreaks. The recall, which was conducted in cooperation with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), affected 20 other companies that had used the peanut butter to manufacture their own products. This marks the biggest FDA-related recall issued this year.

Medical care and recovery are the first things most people think about when they are injured in an accident in Florida. Considerations about the costs of medical care and the potential monetary impact of lost wages, physical therapy, childcare, property damage, and other unexpected expenses arising from the accident soon follow.

Florida laws are designed to ensure that people injured in a motor vehicle or car accident receive compensation for their injuries through personal injury protection (PIP) insurance, another driver’s insurance, civil litigation, or a combination. However, securing full and fair compensation for auto accident injuries can be challenging, as insurance companies are highly skilled at limiting claims.

Injuries are a fact of life, as evidenced by the millions of Floridians treated in emergency rooms and hospitals yearly. However, injuries are not always a natural fact of life caused by accidental circumstances because a defect in a consumer product causes some. And when a defective product causes an injury, illness, or death, Florida’s product liability laws allow the victim(s) to pursue compensation for medical costs, pain, lost wages, and other reasons. Thus, the personal injury lawyers at Tallahassee-based Akbar Thomas, Personal Injury Attorneys, advise their clients to seek legal advice...