A Jacksonville And St. Augustine Law Firm Focusing on Personal Injury and Nursing Home Abuse Claims

While our injury attorneys in Jacksonville and St. Augustine now represent individuals, we used to represent insurance companies. This means that we know insurers’ strategies, tactics and vulnerabilities. We now put that knowledge to use for you.

Suffering injuries due to the carelessness of another, whether it is a business, nursing home or vehicle driver, creates an incredible burden. Often, the injured person faces lost wages, doctor’s appointments, transportation issues, medical bills, and disabilities, not to mention severe pain. Tragically, many of our cases, especially those involving nursing homes, involve unnecessary and untimely death.

The complexities of preserving one’s rights, investigating details, securing evidence and completing paperwork can be overwhelming, to say the least. When you hire our law firm, we take the burden and stress off of your shoulders so you can focus on healing. Hiring our firm for any type of injury case costs you nothing unless we make a recovery for you.

Handling personal injury claims effectively is not something every attorney has the experience and resources to do. Our attorneys have handled injury cases since the beginning of their careers – starting by representing insurance companies. Having done so provides us the perspective and tactics of insurers, experience that has proved to be extremely helpful in representing injured people.

Our injury attorneys in Jacksonville and St. Augustine handle a wide variety of personal injury matters including those arising from: nursing home neglect; car accidents; boating accidents; trucking accidents; motorcycle accidents; slip and falls; dog bites; workplace accidents; attacks occurring as a result of inadequate security; defective products; on the job injuries; stairway falls; prescription errors; assisted living facility abuse; medical malpractice; premises liability; and uninsured motorist claims.

People suffering personal injuries in Florida due to the carelessness of others have the right to obtain compensation for their pain, medical bills, lost wages and disability. Personal injury is a broad category that includes any sort of accident or incident that results in serious injury including car and trucking accidents, falls due to unsafe conditions, dog attacks, workplace injuries, defective products, medical malpractice, motorcycle accidents, bicycle accidents and boating accidents, to name a few. Our lawyers have practiced in the field of personal injury law since the beginning of their careers.

Vehicle accidents are a far too common occurrence in Jacksonville and St. Augustine due to our many congested interstates, highways, construction sites and growing population. People injured in a car or trucking accident are burdened with pain, medical appointments, the loss of, or damage to, their vehicle, the loss of transportation, missed work, lost wages and medical bills.

Going it alone is not necessary. Hiring us costs you nothing out-of-pocket as we only get paid from any financial recovery we make for you. While many firms will not assist you with handling the loss or damage to your vehicle, we do so at no cost to our clients – this is just one of the ways we demonstrate our client centered approach.

Our Jacksonville injury lawyers have prosecuted nursing home abuse cases for personal injury and wrongful death resulting from bedsores, falls, medication errors, infections, sepsis, malnutrition and dehydration, In doing so, we have learned that staffing is the greatest expense for nursing home operators and, all too often, the first thing to be cut in an effort to increase profits. Short-staffed nurses and assistants are assigned more nursing home residents than they can possibly care for and the result is unnecessary injury and death to our most vulnerable citizens. Thing will change when the cost of neglect exceeds the money saved by understaffing. We help to effect that change.

Here in Jacksonville and St. Augustine, our lawyers have noticed that the majority of the neglect happens at a minority of the nursing homes, mostly those for which the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has assigned one or two stars out of five.

Once we accept your nursing home negligence case, we have the matter reviewed by an expert registered nurse or medical doctor to determine if the nursing home was negligent or abusive. If the expert finds neglect or abuse, we hold the operators of the nursing home accountable.

Because assisted living facility and nursing home abuse and neglect cases are subject to strict regulations, including requirements that must be met prior to filing suit, hiring a nursing home abuse lawyer with experience is critical. Our attorneys in Jacksonville and St. Augustine have both the experience and resources to obtain justice for victims of negligent nursing home care or abuse.

Tragically, and all too frequently, families must cope with the unnecessary death of a loved one due to others’ carelessness. Apart from incomprehensible grief, the family must also deal with medical and funeral expenses, and often, the loss of income. Our injury attorneys in Jacksonville and St. Augustine have handled wrongful death cases resulting from: car accidents; trucking accidents; nursing home neglect and abuse; and medical malpractice.

In Florida, death claims are subject to the Wrongful Death Act, which specifies the types of damages that can be recovered. Wrongful death claims have a shortened statute of limitations of only two years, instead of the four year statute of limitations provided for general negligence claims that do not involve death.

Furthermore, in order to pursue a wrongful death act case, a probate estate must be opened. Our firm incurs this expense for our clients to hire expert probate attorneys to handle the estate. The expenses for doing this, as with all of the expenses incurred in prosecuting the claim, are paid by our firm and only repaid to us if we win the case.

When a person is injured on the property of a business or on public property, he or she can obtain reimbursement for injuries, medical bills and lost wages if the owner of the property was negligent. This type of negligence can come in many forms. Injury cases our lawyers have handled include: liquid spilled on the floor of a restaurant or grocery store that was not cleaned up promptly; stairways without a proper handrail or uneven spacing of steps; large cracks or holes in walkways; forklift operators striking pedestrians; trees covering stop signs that cause car accidents; exposed metal or rebar; poorly marked changes in flooring height; and foreseeable crime without appropriate security measures put in place.

Like nursing home neglect, claims against assisted living facilities (“ALFs”) are subject to a statutory scheme that requires compliance with a pre-suit evaluation and notice process. Florida Statute § 429.293 governs claims against ALFs.

Once we have obtained the client’s records from the assisted living facility and the hospital or other medical providers that treated the client’s injuries, we have the matter reviewed by a licensed physician or registered nurse who has expertise in the field of assisted living facilities. If that expert comes to the conclusion that the injuries resulted from neglect, we are then able to serve a pre-suit notice on the operators of the facility.

After the expiration of the 75 day pre-suit period, the operator of the ALF must either reject the claim or provide a written settlement offer. Almost always the operators reject the claim. When that happens, we file suit seeking recovery for the full measure of our client’s injuries, pain and suffering and medical bills.

Generally speaking, if a person is injured on the job, he or she will be entitled to a workers’ compensation claim that provides 100% coverage for medical bills, partial payment of wage loss and compensation for any resulting disability. However, workers’ compensation benefits do not provide compensation for pain and suffering which is typically the largest component of a standard “liability” claim.

An injured worker can have a liability claim in addition to a workers’ compensation claim for the same accident, if the accident was caused by someone that was not working for the same employer. For example, our Jacksonville injury lawyers represented a young woman whose foot was run over by a forklift operator while she was working in a Winn-Dixie warehouse. The driver of the forklift was working for a company that was delivering product to the warehouse and he did not work for Winn-Dixie. As a result, the woman was able to pursue a claim against the company that employed the forklift operator.

Understanding the interplay between workers’ compensation and liability claims is extremely important. For example, Florida’s workers’ compensation statutes require that the injured person’s employer cooperate with the prosecution of a liability. Often, we can uncover additional facts and evidence supporting a liability claim by requiring the employer to cooperate by providing information. Our injury attorneys in Jacksonville and St. Augustine have handled these types of cases for many years.

If you have suffered injuries due to the fault of others, we can consult with you at either our Jacksonville or St. Augustine offices, in your home, at a location or restaurant near your home, over the telephone or through Zoom. Consultations and second opinions are always free.