Fort Lauderdale, FL Personal Injury Lawyers Providing Legal Counsel to Injury Victims
If you were injured due to someone else’s negligence, you should consider pursuing compensation against the at-fault party. You likely have medical bills, property damage, and emotional distress to deal with, all while you’re recovering from serious injuries. Instead of trying to handle these consequences alone, you should reach out to an experienced personal injury lawyer who can take legal action to assist with your financial recovery.
At Milano Legal Group, PLLC, we have a team of personal injury lawyers who can quickly get to work on your case when you come in for legal help. Our goal is to immediately let you know you’re not alone as you deal with the aftermath of a devastating accident that has left you with injuries. Our legal team is caring and passionate about seeking financial compensation for all clients, so we encourage you to contact us for more information about how our legal guidance can help.
Do You Have a Personal Injury Case to Pursue?
Your first question may be whether your situation qualifies for legal action. After all, an injury alone doesn’t always mean you can pursue compensation, as you will have to prove that someone else caused it. This is what your free consultation is for, since this meeting will give you time to discuss the case details with a personal injury attorney in Fort Lauderdale. The following describe some situations in which you might have a personal injury case to pursue:
- You were injured while on someone else’s property
- You were attacked by someone
- Someone else’s negligence led to your injuries
- You were hurt while using a defective or hazardous product
- You were injured at work
- A doctor or nurse made a mistake that caused you serious injuries
These are just some examples of scenarios that often lead to personal injury claims. If you’re not sure if your situation calls for legal action, you can get the answers you’re looking for by talking to the caring, experienced legal team at Milano Legal Group, PLLC. Our personal injury attorneys can look at the details of your case and determine if you should pursue damages to help pay for your medical costs, pain and suffering, and more.
What Are Some Common Types of Personal Injury Cases?
Personal injury lawyers can handle a wide variety of cases involving severe injuries that were caused by someone else. However, in our experience serving Florida injury victims, most personal injury claims fall into one of a handful of categories. The following are the most common types of personal injury cases we handle for our clients:
- Car accidents
- Truck accidents
- Slip and fall accidents
- Boat accidents
- Bicycle accidents
- Pedestrian accidents
- Motorcycle accidents
- Bus accidents
- Construction accidents
- Rear-end collisions
- Drunk driving auto accidents
- Distracted driving car wrecks
- Medical malpractice
- Uber and Lyft motor vehicle accidents
- Premises liability
- Product liability
- Wrongful death
Basically, if you believe someone’s carelessness led to serious injuries for you, it’s time to approach a personal injury law firm to see if you have a case. Whether you were injured in a car accident, workplace incident, or any other situation that left you with personal injuries, you deserve the chance to recover compensation to pay for your medical bills and other expenses.
At Milano Legal Group, PLLC, we have years of experience offering legal representation to clients suffering from physical injuries caused by one or more at-fault parties. Let us look at the details of your case to determine who you should pursue damages from and how we can help with this process. Contact our Fort Lauderdale law office today for a free consultation.
What Injuries Do These Cases Usually Involve?
Personal injury cases usually involve injuries that can range in severity and type, depending on the circumstances. For example, the average car accident injury may be different from the typical workplace accident injury. But one thing these cases have in common is that they usually require immediate medical attention and lots of time to fully heal. That’s why you should get legal guidance before you seek the rightful compensation necessary to pay for your medical bills and lost income.
Whether you’re suffering from serious injuries that will take weeks or months to heal, or you have catastrophic injuries that will probably never go away completely, you deserve to get your medical expenses paid for by the at-fault parties. After all, some bodily injuries require you to spend months in the hospital, with surgery and physical therapy being necessary. The following are examples of physical injuries that may require extensive treatment:
- Traumatic brain injuries
- Spinal cord injuries
- Dog bites
- Whiplash
- Internal bleeding
- Burn injuries
- Broken bones
- Open wounds
- Facial wounds
- Limb amputation
- Vision loss
If you were severely injured in a traffic accident and ended up with fractured bones, or if a workplace accident has left you with a brain injury or spinal cord injury that may never heal, it’s time to talk to a personal injury lawyer to see how to proceed with your case. As you have likely already discovered, you will need to see a medical professional frequently for any serious injuries for the best chance of making a full recovery.
All these bills can add up over time, especially if you have permanent injuries that will require you to buy specialty medical equipment. You should contact a Florida personal injury attorney before you even get your first medical bill in the mail, as it will take some time to determine who to pursue compensation from and how much you should request in your personal injury claim. We invite you to contact our Fort Lauderdale law offices to set up a free consultation with our caring, skilled personal injury attorneys.
What Compensation Can You Pursue Through Your Claim?
If you’re wondering what kind of compensation you can seek when you initiate a personal injury claim in Florida, the answer is that it depends on the circumstances of your case. Your personal injury attorney will first look at the expenses you have as a result of your unexpected injury. When those bills are added up, you’ll have an idea of the economic damages to pursue, such as medical bills, property damages, and lost earnings.
Your accident lawyer can also come up with a fair total for your non-economic damages, which can include pain and suffering, emotional distress, and other intangible costs that you likely have after a serious car accident, medical malpractice incident, or any other devastating situation.
Medical Bills
When you seek fair compensation, you should start with getting sufficient funds to cover any medical bills you have from the accident. Incidents like car crashes and medical malpractice scenarios often lead to thousands of dollars in medical expenses, which your personal injury lawyer will add up if you already got the medical attention necessary.
If you expect to need ongoing care due to serious or permanent injuries, your personal injury lawyer will estimate the costs of this so it can be added to your request for compensation. Some of the most common medical expenses after a car accident or other serious incident include the following:
- Ambulance ride to the emergency room
- Hospital bills
- Doctor copays for follow-up care
- Surgery
- Prescription medication
- Medical equipment
- Physical therapy
Medical care can be expensive, so if you don’t get a chance to request fair compensation through a personal injury claim, you will end up with out-of-pocket expenses for an accident you didn’t cause. Instead of just accepting this turn of events, you owe it to yourself to talk to an experienced personal injury attorney to find out how you can get compensated for your past and future medical expenses through your injury case.
Lost Wages
Another type of compensation you should request involves lost wages. Whether you were in a serious collision that led to a spinal cord injury or suffered a fall accident that caused open wounds, you had to take time off work to heal from your serious injuries. If that time off was unpaid, you missed out on income that you would have been earning if you hadn’t been hurt. Even if you got some paid time off, now you don’t have those days to take off in the future if you’re sick or injured again. This is why many personal injury cases pursue lost income for victims who are dealing with major financial losses due to an accident.
Your personal injury lawyer will take a look at your regular earnings and calculate a fair amount that you should get from the at-fault party’s insurance company. The total should include everything from lost wages on your paycheck and tips you should have gotten to vacation time and bonuses you’ve missed out on while recovering. This way, you won’t have to struggle to pay your bills after suffering from an accident that was caused by someone else. You deserve to be able to focus your full attention on recovering from severe injuries rather than wondering how you will pay for your rent, mortgage, utilities, and other living expenses after an unexpected injury.
Property Damage
When you seek compensation from the at-fault party’s insurance company, you should request enough money to fix any property damage that occurred in your accident. For instance, if you were in a car accident, your vehicle will need to be repaired or replaced. This can cost thousands of dollars, which can be difficult to come up with when you’re missing the wages you usually earn as you take time off work to recover.
Even if your property damages were minor, you deserve to recover compensation for them. If your smartphone, purse, wallet, jewelry, or clothes were damaged or lost during the incident, your personal injury claim should request compensation so you can afford to replace these belongings. Your personal injury lawyer will ask you about any damaged property and estimate replacement costs before including these in your claim.
Non-Economic Damages
Not all damages are easy to add up using receipts. Non-economic losses are more difficult to put a price on, since they tend to involve your mental and emotional health and your dignity. The law firm you hire can discuss these damages with you and will determine how much they have affected your life before requesting a specific amount for them.
Pain and suffering is a common example of a type of loss that is hard to calculate without the help of a lawyer who is well versed in personal injury law. When you include pain and suffering in your request for compensation, you’ll get funds to help make up for the physical and emotional pain you had to go through during the accident.
Aside from pain and suffering, your personal injury lawsuit may also request compensation for loss of quality of life, emotional distress, and scarring and disfigurement. There may be additional damages that you’re entitled to, as well. An experienced lawyer will go over all the details of your injury case with you before deciding on the damages to pursue.
Wrongful Death
If you lost a loved one to a tragic car crash, workplace incident, medical malpractice issue, or any other accident, you need to talk to a lawyer about damages for wrongful death. You should not be left with bills related to the incident that killed a close family member. If your spouse, child, or parent was killed due to someone else’s carelessness, wrongful death lawyers can assist you in getting the damages you’re entitled to.
When you file this type of lawsuit, you can request damages to pay for any expenses you’ve paid since your loved one passed away, as well as any bills you are facing. For many families, this includes funeral and burials costs and any medical expenses left from their time under a doctor’s care.
If you can prove that you relied on your loved one for income and benefits, such as health insurance, you can also request damages for lost income. Additionally, depending on your relationship with the family member, you may be entitled to request money for emotional trauma, loss of companionship, loss of support, and more.
The lawyers at the law offices you choose can study your case and let you know which damages you could be entitled to. If you need to find a Florida law firm to start your claim against the insurance company, come to Milano Legal Group, PLLC for your free consultation.
What Should You Do After an Injury?
After being injured in Florida, you should take some steps to protect yourself and improve the chances of getting compensation from your personal injury claim against an insurance company. The following are some tips on what to do after you suffer an injury caused by someone else:
- Get medical attention. First, get the emergency medical care you need. This means calling 911 to get an ambulance to the hospital if necessary. If your wounds don’t warrant immediate medical care, you should at least see a doctor the same day. This way, you can undergo a physical exam and complete tests that your doctor recommends. You need to have proof that you were injured and sought medical care to initiate a personal injury claim, so don’t attempt to just treat your injuries at home if you plan to pursue legal action.
- Collect evidence. If you’re able to, gather as much evidence as you can to show how you were injured and who the at-fault party was. This means taking pictures and videos of your injuries, any property damage, and the accident scene. You should also write down a description of what occurred and ask witnesses for contact information. You should also contact the police so you can make a police report. All of this evidence can strengthen your personal injury case.
- Keep track of your expenses. As you get medical care and repairs for your property, keep track of your bills and estimates. You may have to pay a lot of bills out of pocket right away, but once you get a settlement from the insurance company, you can reimburse yourself for those. If you’re low on money, find out if you can be billed later for certain medical expenses so you can use your settlement money to pay.
- Do not share information about the event. As with any legal matter, it’s best to keep details to yourself until the case is closed. Any details you have made public could be used against you if they don’t support your claims about what happened. Remember that insurance companies will try to get out of paying whenever they can, so don’t give them the chance to refute your story using details you put on social media.
- Contact a personal injury lawyer. You should contact a Florida law firm as soon as you’ve gotten medical treatment. The right lawyers can start your claim quickly, which is important since there is a statute of limitations on personal injury claims. In Florida, you have four years to file a claim. But this can go by quickly if you’re busy getting medical treatment, and you’ll start to forget details after too long, so don’t wait to decide that you need to take action against the person who hurt you.
How Can a Personal Injury Lawyer Help?
If you want to make sure the person who hurt you is held liable for your injuries, you will need legal assistance filing a claim against their insurance company. This means hiring Florida personal injury lawyers who can assist with your case. Your lawyers will take on the important tasks of proving that the negligent person who injured you had a duty of care that they failed to uphold, and that their action or inaction caused you physical and financial harm.
When you hire a law firm to help with your personal injury lawsuit, you can rest assured that you will have lawyers on your side to collect evidence, define legal terms to you, and ensure that your case meets every filing deadline set by the court. The right law firm for your case will handle all communications and negotiations with insurance companies, and will head to the courtroom to argue your case if the insurance companies won’t settle out of court.
If you’re worried about how you will afford a lawyer, note that most attorneys take on personal injury claims on a contingency fee basis. This means you don’t pay legal fees until you get your money from the insurance company. As a result, the injured party typically finds hiring personal injury lawyers worth it in the long run if they want to recover damages from one or more insurance companies.
If you’re not sure how a lawyer can help with your legal issues, come to Milano Legal Group, PLLC for a free case evaluation. Our legal team has a proven track record of assisting injured victims in getting compensation for pain and suffering, lost wages, medical bills, and more from at-fault parties and their insurance companies. Call our Fort Lauderdale office today at 855-545-1777 to schedule your free consultation.