accident report privilege Florida

Naples injury attorney

Florida law requires that police be called when a motor vehicle crash occurs. The investigating officer will arrive and be tasked with documenting the scene, interviewing witnesses and preparing a crash report.

At the same time, the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees those accused of crimes the right to refuse to answer questions that could be used against them in a criminal proceeding. To prevent a possible constitutional violation, Florida law has carved out something called accident report privilege (which is not exactly a privilege, but more on that later). Basically, statements made to an investigating officer for purposes of completing the crash report can’t be used in criminal proceedings OR a civil injury lawsuit.

As a Naples injury attorney can explain, there are a lot of different reasons for this protection – constitutional and otherwise. But it’s important to note because it could have a negative (or positive) impact on your ability to recover damages from the at-fault driver. The good news is that if you work with an experienced attorney, he or she can usually obtain that same information elsewhere – especially when the details can still be gleaned during the discovery process. Continue reading

Florida premises liability lawyer In any Florida premises liability case, the question of whether the defendant is responsible for the harm someone else suffered on their property often depends heavily on the unique circumstances of the case. Sometimes, that circumstance is a giant ice cream cone.

See: Greene v. Twistee Treat USA et al., recently before Florida’s Second District Court of Appeal.

Normally, people have an obligation to watch out for potential hazards when they’re on someone else’s property. They have a duty to avoid any open and obvious dangers. But that does not excuse property owners (businesses in particular) from their duty to anticipate potential dangers – even if they are open and obvious – and to warn guests of them. This is especially true if the property owner could have anticipated that the patron would be distracted or that it would have been so long since the last time they saw the hazard that they could have easily forgotten it.

In the case of the Twistee Treat tripping hazard, the 2nd DCA ruled that the “novel architecture” of the ice cream shop itself could be distracting enough that patrons might be forgiven not noticing/avoiding some hazards as they approach. Continue reading