Published on:

South Florida school zone crash lawyerSchool zone or zoo? Anyone who’s traversed a school zone South Florida at busy pickup or drop-off times might have a tough time discerning. For all school officials and traffic safety engineers prioritize keeping kids safe, the Florida school zone crash risk is still high : Speeding drivers, school bus drivers with big blind spots, distracted walkers and cyclists (especially those with noise-canceling headphones), jaywalkers, and unsafe pickup/drop off behaviors in among 1/3 drivers (double-parking, stopping in the middle of the crosswalk, etc.).

There are an estimated 3.2 million schoolchildren in the U.S. (public and private). According to the Florida Department of Education, about 500,000 students ride a bus. In Lee, Collier, and Charlotte Counties, about 25%-35% of kids take the bus. The rest walk, ride a bike, or are car riders. In Lee County alone, 1,300 students are classified as facing “hazardous walking conditions” on their way to school (about 12,300 statewide).

According to the Transportation Research Board, an estimated 25,000 kids are injured and 100 are killed each year while walking to or from school. Not all of those happen in school zones, though most do involve speeding vehicles. About 30 percent of school zones do not have crosswalks.

As longtime Fort Myers personal injury lawyers, we know that unfortunately, Florida has the third-highest number of annual child traffic deaths, and consistently ranks at the top of the list for child pedestrian and bicycle deaths. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the most dangerous time for child pedestrians is between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. – after school hours.

Traffic Rules in Florida School Zones

The posted speed limit in most Florida school zones is 20 mph, though some cities and counties have lowered it even further to 15 mph. Going even 1 mph over that limit can result in a $50 fine – without any prior warnings. Anything above that, and you’re facing a fine of between $200 and $500 (depending on how fast you’re going), plus 3 points on your license (both of which can be waived if the prosecutor allows you to take a traffic safety course). Flashing yellow lights are drivers’ main indicator upon entering and exiting. Enforcement times are typically posted on road signage, though it’s usually 30 minutes prior to the start of school, during school hours, and 30 minutes after school hours have concluded. And in case you didn’t know: It’s illegal to obstruct a crosswalk in a school zone, even if you’re picking up or dropping off a child. If there’s a crossing guard, drivers must obey all their instructions.school zone crash lawyer Florida

In an effort to bolster student safety near schools, a new Florida law went into effect July 1, 2023 to heighten enforcement of school zone speed limits. The law authorizes city or county governments to enforce speed limits in school zones with speed detection systems (similar to red light cameras). Although the idea of speed cameras isn’t especially popular with motorists, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention reports their presence can reduce the total crash risk from 8  to 49 percent.

Some say it doesn’t go far enough, though, because violators won’t incur points on their license, and their infractions won’t result in higher auto insurance rates.

Existing law outlined in F.S. 316.306 prohibits the use of handheld wireless communication devices (cell phones, mainly) while driving through a designated school crossing or in a school zone. To do so is considered a primary offense (for which police can initiate a traffic stop).

Reduce Florida School Zone Crash Risk

Continue reading

Published on:

Fort Myers injury lawsuit spying by defenseThe uneasy feeling of being covertly watched is one that’s inspired more than a few catchy songs, but you should know it’s a possibility if you’re the plaintiff in a Fort Myers personal injury lawsuit.

Whether we’re talking about a matter of medical malpractice, a car accident injury, or a dangerous product case, there’s nothing in Florida law that will technically block the defendant from conducting some type of surveillance on you. In fact, you should probably expect it. In personal injury cases, the goal of “spying” is to rebut damage claims. Florida courts have generally held that because of the public interest in exposing fraudulent personal injury claims, plaintiffs can anticipate that a “reasonable” investigation is likely to include independent verification of their injuries.

But that doesn’t mean your privacy goes out the window. By working with a Fort Myers injury lawyer, you’ll get a much better sense of what these investigators are likely to look for and ways you can shield your privacy. We will help ensure that your rights are protected, and injury case defendants won’t get away with playing dirty.

What Are the Surveillance Rules in a Florida Injury Lawsuit?

Fairly common surveillance tactics in Florida injury lawsuits:

  • Monitoring your social media pages to see what sort of activities you’re up to. They may scour the posts and pictures for clues about not only your physical capabilities, but your mental/emotional state – which can be a significant component of damages in a Fort Myers injury lawsuit.
  • They might have an investigator post up to watch/record you as you leave your home, enter your place of employment, or carry on with daily activities.
  • They might request surveillance footage of local businesses or government agencies that might show you moving throughout a typical day – grocery shopping and lifting bags, walking through the park with a backpack on, unloading items from your vehicle at a local print shop, etc.

However, this “spying” is not without limitation. Continue reading

Published on:

Florida hotel liability for guest injuriesThere are nearly a half a million hotel rooms  in Florida available to accommodate the hundreds of millions of out-of-state visitors welcomed to the Sunshine State each year. With an average occupancy rate of 70% and daily cost-per-room at around $138, hotel owners earn a pretty penny for their presence. Along with that prosperity comes the responsibility to prioritize guest safety. Florida hotel liability for guest injuries can be established in a court of law when there’s evidence the property owner/staff failed to use reasonable care in ensuring guest safety.

That doesn’t mean you automatically have a case just because you were injured or attacked and happened to be in a hotel. You must first prove negligence. That requires establishing the hotel’s duty of care to you, the ways in which they fell short in fulfilling that duty, and evidence of how you were harmed as a result.

Some examples of incidents that might give rise to a Florida hotel liability claim:

  • Failure to fix a sidewalk out front (Ingress/Egress)
  • Negligent hiring of a staffer with violent criminal background
  • Inadequate security with failed locks, poor lighting, or understaffed/poorly trained security guards (particularly in areas with high crime rates)
  • Failure to warn guests of a known or knowable danger
  • Failure to address dangerous stairways, walkways, rugs, entrances, etc.
  • Poorly maintained gym equipment
  • Dated/inadequate swimming pool safety features

As our Key West, Florida hotel injury lawyers can explain, these types of personal injury/wrongful death cases fall under an area of law known as premises liability. Essentially, it allows people harmed by dangerous conditions on someone else’s property to pursue monetary damages.

As far as the exact standards to which property owners are held, some of it depends on the type/size/location of the hotel as well as where exactly the incident occurred. If it involved the hotel pool, for example, we’d be looking carefully at the building code requirements in Florida, as well as industry standard practices for commercial pool, and whether or not slip resistant materials were used. Questions will likely be raised about whether similar safety issues had cropped up in the past that would have alerted staff to the issue OR whether the danger had existed for so long that it should have been discovered by any property owner exercising reasonable care.

Another factor on which those standards may hinge is the relationship between the property owner/manager and the person hurt. Paying guests and members of the public welcomed onsite for the financial benefit of the owner are owed the greatest duty of care/highest level of protection. On the other end of the spectrum are trespassers, who generally aren’t owed any duty of care beyond restraint from active harm. There are exceptions for young kids who don’t know any better and are lured by some interesting but dangerous element of the property (attractive nuisance doctrine).

Recent Examples of Proven/Potential Florida Hotel Liability in Guest Injury Cases

Continue reading

Published on:

Fort Myers injury claim lawyerAs longtime Fort Myers personal injury lawyers, we recognize that most claimants in these cases are in uncharted waters. It’s not every day (thankfully) that a person is seriously injured in something like a car accident, slip-and-fall, or criminal attack on another’s property. And it’s not unheard of when these things happen for the person to try and file a claim for damages on their own. There’s no law that says you must hire a personal injury attorney for these cases. But doing so is like traversing an unfamiliar path without a guide.

The injury claims process is foreign to so many people, and thus opens the door for inadvertent mistakes that can sabotage their chances of full and fair financial recovery for injuries.

Some of the most common mistakes we’ve seen torpedo Florida injury claims:

Published on:

Florida bicycle head injury risk defective bike helmetMany serious and recreational cyclists know they can reduce their risk of a Florida bicycle head injury by 60%-90% just by wearing a bicycle helmet. But what if the helmet you’re wearing is defective and provides inadequate protection?

Bicycling has never been more popular in Florida than it is now. With its flat terrain, year-round sunshine, and an abundance of nature trails, beaches, and scenic roads to ride, Florida has residents and tourists alike increasingly partaking. But the risk of Florida bicycle head injury is higher than you think – and defective bicycle helmets certainly don’t help.

In the first seven months of 2023, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has announced at least eight bicycle helmet recalls. These include:

  • Giro Merit Bicycle Helmet. Does not meet CPSC federal safety standards for bicycle helmets, and would fail to protect in the event of a crash, posing a heightened risk of head injury.
  • Xinerter Teal Adult Bicycle Helmet. Sold exclusively on Amazon from 2020 to 2023, the helmets don’t comply with positional stability and certification requirements of the mandatory federal safety standard for bike helmets, and would fail to protect riders from head injury in the event of a crash. The CPSC has warned consumers to immediately stop using them, cut the straps, and dispose of them so no one else can use them either.
  • SQM Bicycle Helmet. Sold on Amazon from 2022 to 2023, the single-sized helmet doesn’t comply with positional stability and certification requirements of federal safety standards. It would fail to protect the head in a bicycle accident or car accident.
  • Ventura Adult Bike Helmets. Roughly 1,750 of these helmets have been sold in the U.S., but they don’t provide adequate protection against Florida bicycle head injury risk.
  • Hurtle Multi-Purpose Children’s Helmet. About 1,800 of these bicycle helmets for kids were sold – despite failing to meet federal safety standards to ensure protection against brain injuries in the event of a crash.
  • Lelinta Multi-Purpose Kids Helmets. These kids’ bicycle helmets, manufactured by Lucky Global and sold exclusively at Walmart.com, don’t comply with federal safety standards and won’t adequately protect a child from the possibility of a serious head injury in the event of a Cape Coral bicycle accident.
  • TureClose Bicycle Helmets. These bike helmets don’t comply with federal safety requirements for positional stability, retention system, impact attenuation, or labeling requirements. Although the Chinese seller has refused to issue a recall, the CPSC is continuing to pursue a recall because if a rider crashes, they will not be adequately protected from a head injury.
  • Multi-Purpose Kids Bike Helmets, size medium. Sold on Amazon by Ouwoer Direct, these kids’ helmets don’t meet the standards for positional stability and impact attenuation required to ensure prevention of a child head injury.

What Legal Options Do I Have if a Defective Helmet Causes a Florida Bicycle Head Injury?

Continue reading

Published on:

Cape Coral car accident attorney on speeding dangersExcessive speed is a factor in approximately one-third of all fatal crashes, according to the NHTSA. As Cape Coral car accident lawyers, we’ve seen far too many cases where rushed drivers recklessly put others’ lives at risk just so they could get to where they’re going a bit sooner.

Most drivers recognize speeding as risky, according to a recent AAA survey, and yet more than 50 percent admit driving 15 mph or more over the designated limit on the freeway at least once in the last 30 days.

What many people don’t realize is that even if they’re careful and attentive while sneaking past that speed limit, such violations have the potential to significantly curb the amount of financial compensation they can collect if they’re injured in a Cape Coral car accident – even if they weren’t the primary cause of it. This is especially true given the recently-passed state legislation introducing modified comparative negligence rules, limiting the right to any compensation whatsoever to drivers deemed more than 50 percent at-fault for a crash. (It used to be that a driver who was 99 percent liable could still collect on the other 1 percent in damages from the other at-fault driver, though obviously such a disparity wouldn’t be a desirable outcome.) Speeding can be considered in determining comparative fault behind the wheel.

What is Comparative Fault?

Comparative fault is defined in Florida Statute 768.81. It’s the recognition that there can be multiple factors that contribute to an injurious accident, and that each party should only have to pay their fair share.

As our Cape Coral car accident lawyers can explain, it’s the contributory fault of the plaintiff in a negligence action that proportionately diminishes the amount of money (economic and non-economic damages) one can collect for an injury. While it proportionately reduces the amount a person can collect, contributory fault won’t entirely bar recovery of damages – so long as their share doesn’t exceed half.

Every state has their own rules about contributory fault standards. Some hold that if you are even 1 percent responsible for the crash, you walk home with $0. Others set the cutoff bar at somewhere between 49 and 50 percent. Florida was one of the few pure comparative fault states that had no bar for recovery. That changed this spring with a slew of state tort reform measures.

Comparative fault is sometimes referred to as “the claim killer” because if proven, it can erode the monetary value of your case. An experienced personal injury lawyer can work to push back against comparative fault claims – but clear evidence of speeding is unquestionably going to count against any plaintiff in such an analysis. You may not have made the wrong left turn, but if you were going 15mph over the speed limit, the severity of the crash was likely amplified – and that factors into the comparative fault analysis.  Continue reading

Published on:

Fort Myers teen car accidentsFor a teenager, that first set of car keys feels like freedom – at last! Parents, of course, usually have a different perspective. There’s often a great deal of apprehension around those first few driving years. Unfortunately, those concerns are well-founded, as the risk of Fort Myers teen car accidents is especially high for new drivers.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, car crashes are a leading cause of death for teens. In a single recent year, 3,058 teens ages 13 to 19 were killed in car accidents and another 227,000 were injured. Not all of those involved teen drivers of course, but the risk of fatal Fort Myers teen car accidents is three times higher for those 16 to 19 than in any other driving age group (per miles driven). Drivers aged 16 and 17 were at higher risk than those 18 and 19.

The good news is that since the mid-1990s and early 2000s, more states started adopting graduated licensing systems for young motorists. The purpose is to phase in driving privileges, rather than simply hand over the keys and hope for the best.

In Florida, graduated driver licensing laws outline limits and restrictions for drivers 15 to 17. For instance, teens with a learner’s permit (which they hold for at least 12 months or until they turn 18, whichever comes first) are only permitted to operate a car during daylight hours for the first three months. They’re restricted from driving after 10 p.m. They must always be accompanied by a licensed driver over the age of 21, and they need at least 50 hours of supervised driving – including 10 nighttime hours. Once they earn their driver’s license, 16-year-olds aren’t permitted to drive between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m., and must always be accompanied by an over-21 licensed driver – unless they’re driving to or from work. Once they turn 17, they are given a bit more freedom with nighttime driving, but still can’t be on the road between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. They also must be accompanied by an over-21 licensed driver unless they’re driving to and from work.

So, Who Pays For Fort Myers Teen Car Accidents?

Continue reading

Published on:

Fort Myers crash lawyerCar fires aren’t anywhere near as common as they used to be a few decades ago. However, as a Fort Myers crash lawyer, I’ve seen more than a few lead to serious injuries.

Thousands of vehicles have caught fire over the last decade – including at least a half a dozen electric vehicles that went up in flames in Southwest Florida following Hurricane Ian-related flooding. (Similar issues were also reported with golf carts and scooters post-storm – especially dangerous because unlike car fires caused by engine combustion, those involving compromised batteries can keep reigniting.)

Are Florida Vehicle Fires Truly That Big of a Problem?

Overall occurrences of vehicle fires have dropped by 60 percent since the 1980s, according to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). But whether the car is powered by gasoline, lithium-ion batteries, hybrid powertrains, or electricity – car fires are always a possibility after a crash. In a single recent year, the NFPA estimates there were more than 212,000 vehicle fires in the U.S., resulting in 1,500 injuries, 560 deaths, and nearly $2 billion in property damage. It breaks down to about 400 vehicle fires daily. Vehicle fires resulted in 4.5 times the number of deaths as non-residential structure fires and 1.6 times the number of apartment fire deaths. Fires involving vehicles account for 16 percent of the 1.3 million fires that get reported to fire departments annually, as well as 15 percent of fire-related deaths and 10 percent of fire-related injuries.

The vast majority of these are highway vehicle fires, the most common causes are:

  • Mechanical failures & malfunctions
  • Electrical failures & malfunctions
  • Misuse of certain products or materials, such as spilling caustic liquids too close to the car

Older vehicles are especially prone to issues with flammability. When larger trucks are involved in a crash-related fire, the potential injury or death rate soars.

In some cases, vehicle manufacturers may be responsible for vehicle fires. For example, more than 7 million Kia and Hyundai vehicles have been recalled for vehicle fire risk, with more than 3,100 such fires (and 103 deaths) reported since 2010, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). It’s thought that perhaps these fires are related to the type of engine used by both car makers (they use many of the same parts suppliers), but it’s also possible faulty brake systems, wiring, and battery issues may be to blame. Where manufacturers haven’t been able to fix the fire risk right away, they’ve urged drivers to park the vehicles both outside and away from structures to minimize the odds of property damage if the vehicles do catch fire.

What Should I Do if My Car Catches Fire?

Continue reading

Published on:

Fort Myers Florida swimming pool accidentsHere in South Florida, swimming pools are a way of life. Unfortunately, they can also be the cause of death and serious injury. Florida swimming pool accidents result in hundreds of drownings each year – many of them children.

While pools can be a ton of fun, understanding the inherent dangers can go a long way toward keeping pool-goers alert, particularly when kids or other vulnerable populations are in close proximity.

Residential pools – of which there are well over 1.1 million in Florida – are the site of 60 percent of all drownings in the Sunshine State. Still, resorts, water parks, hotels, apartment complexes, and condo associations are common sites as well. Individuals and entities can be held legally liable for drownings or other injuries if there is evidence they failed to provide proper maintenance, signage, security/fencing, or supervision.

Kids under 5 are at the highest risk of drowning deaths. It doesn’t take more than a minute or two. The vast majority of young kids who drown in Florida are out of sight for no more than 5 minutes – and 70 percent of those weren’t expected to be anywhere near a pool at the time it happened.

In addition to drowning, other types of Florida swimming pool accidents include: Continue reading

Published on:

Cape Coral injury lawyers summer driving risks

Cape Coral injury lawyers talk summer driving risks

People tend to think of winter as the most dangerous time for drivers. To be sure, there are unique, cold-weather road hazards like ice, snow, and an increased likelihood of engine trouble. That’s not so much of an issue here in Lee, Collier, and Charlotte Counties Florida. But summertime driving dangers actually lead to more crashes – and Cape Coral injury lawyers know South Florida isn’t immune to those like we are those wintry road risks.

A number of highway hazards are heightened from late May to early September.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), August is one of the deadliest months for Florida drivers. Cape Coral injury lawyers know it’s not a coincidence this is also around the same time there’s an uptick in heavy rains/flooding, increased traffic, higher temperatures (causing heat-impacted vehicle damage), holiday parties/vacations, and no school.

The “Summer Scaries” on SWFL Roads

Maintaining safety on the roads means anticipating what hazards you are likely to encounter. For South Florida in the summertime, those include: Continue reading

Justia Lawyer Rating for Jeffrey R. Garvin
Florida Legal Elite 2016
Super Lawyers
Million Dollar Advocates Forum
The Best Lawyers in America
Martindale-Hubbell
American Association for Justice
Florida Justice Association
Contact Information